Bantus Capoeira Japan/ バントゥス カポエイラ ジャパン (Kichijoji/Mitaka, Tokyo/吉祥寺・三鷹・東京)

The new GBC Blog is here!

I hope you like it. I’ve been working on this thing night and day for the last few weeks, and even taught myself how to set up my own server and how to use wordpress. I’m not sure if capoeira instructors are supposed to know how to use computers, but this one does. I’ve also gotta say “Muito obrigado” to Tartaruga in Malaysia for setting up our server, and doing all the techie stuff in the first place. He ‘forced’ me into the blog world, and I haven’t looked back since.

So what’s new?

Well, when you first open the blog you’ll be amazed at how bright, colourful, and sexy everything looks. I’ve tried to make things easier to find, easier to use, and more fun to play around with. The pages themselves will be bursting with colour and content, the words and pictures are going to jump out from your screen everytime you logon to jp.bantus.org. Already it’s a huge improvement from our previous design.

Read More

But wait, there’s more!

Let your eyes wonder over to the right for a moment, what can you see? Well, if you’re on our homepage, you may be overwhelmed at first. “Where to click? Where to click?”. For starters, if you want to get in touch with us, click on the language of your choice next to the “envelope/contact” icon (we also speak Portuguese and Spanish, we’ll try our best but please speak slowly).

Under the contact section we’ve got a quicklink to our schedule. Again, choose Japanese, or English. You’ll be taken to a page with a brief rundown of our class schedule, and you’ll also see our high-tech Google Calendar with a list of our classes (times and locations), special events, and shows. You can even get reminders of our events emailed to your mobile phone if you’re one of those people who forgets stuff easily. But you have to sign up to the Google Calendar service first (it’s worth it).

Are you still reading? We’re almost done…

If you’re reading this, you should also be able to see that cute home button at the top of the page, clicking that link takes you back home. On the homepage (and schedule page) you’ll be able to see the flyers/posters for all our upcoming events. Right now we’ve got 6 up there, and there’s one more to come. Gee whiz we’re a busy capoeira group! We’ll have full details for all the events really soon, I promise.
Under the upcoming events you’ll see our 6 latest photos on flickr.com and below that we’ve got links to external sites full of capoeira goodness! Our Cafepress.com online shop (people from all over the world are buying our awesome t-shirts/stickers/caps), our videos on YouTube.com (there’s only a couple now, but all our videos will be transferred there ASAP), a link to all our fantastic flickr.com photo albums, a link to our mobile site (check out the class schedule and directions to our class venues from your mobile phone), and lastly get in touch with other GBC Japan members through our mixi and orkut communities (we really recommend you join mixi even if you don’t speak Japanese, but you’ll need an invitation first).

Then we’ve got links to our Bantus Capoeira family overseas. Unlike some other capoeira websites, we don’t just link to our international branches to look cool, we actually personally hangout with these guys at batizados and other international Bantus Capoeira gatherings. Bantus is in 9 countires at the moment (and growing), yet we are still small enough to consider every member of our group an importmant member of our family. Infact, if you’re ever in Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, Netherlands, or Singapore you’re guanteed a place to stay (we can’t guarantee 5 stars though).

Just a few more seconds…

The next four things are pretty standard on blogs these days; Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Catergories, and a Search. And the last section is dedicated to our sponsors. At the moment we are an affiliate of Virtual Capoeira. So if you’re after some instruments, or DVDs, they’re a good place to start.

Well, that’s about it, any questions?

PS. Sorry to keep you waiting, the berimbaus and pandeiros I brought over from Brazil are ready to sell. We’ll have an instrument fair on Sunday November 19th December 3rd, so start saving your money. Bantus members will get first choice.

That reminds me, we’ve still got 5 months left in the academic year (April-March) but because we are such a bunch of reasonable people, we’re going to offer a discount on membership fees. Membership comes with serious discounts on classes, capoeira t-shirts and pants, free entry to special capoeira events and much, much more. For a full-year membership you only pay 5000yen but you’ll save x3, x4 more than that in 12 months. Members also receive a cool, handmade capoeira music file from Caçapa. Half-year membership is now 3000yen.