More of the same... with skiing!

So I'm not gonna lie... as far as Guilty Gear goes, this weekend was pretty much just the same old stuff with nothing too noteworthy to talk about. There were no tournaments so it was mostly just casuals for 2 days. It seems as if during the first weekend of the month, tournaments are pretty rare.

Friday night I went to Akihabara, played Nemo, Ogawa, and FAB a lot among some other people. I beat Nemo one time but couldnt get wins on the other 2. When I was leaving I stopped to go to the bathroom and then on my way out FAB was leaving just before me and we ended up waiting to cross the street at the same crosswalk so I made some small talk. I asked him if he had a team for SBO yet and he said he would be teaming up with Osaka B and a Millia player (I forgot who he said but it wasnt Nakamura). We got on different trains so I said bye to him and headed for Shinjuku to go drinking at current.

At Current there were a good ammount of regulars and they were playing a ton of great music. One of the guys just broke up with his girlfriend so he showed up with a bunch of friends and did lots of drinking, I did a shot with him. He seemed like he was gonna be alright. Also, Sushi (the owner of Current) played some Symphony X, and when he was looking through the booklet for Twilight In Olympus, he had some Symphony X post cards that were in there that only came with a limited edition special version of the album. He decided to just give them to me as a gift since I go there all the time and hes a cool guy, so I was pretty happy about that. There were also some random guys there who were doing backstage work for one of the Cirque Du Soleil shows that was touring around Japan right now. They said they would be staying at a hotel just down the street from Current until April and they would be coming there pretty often. Most of them were from Canada and the US and they were cool guys so I had a few beers with them too.

The next day I played a few random games here and there at various Shinjuku arcades but they were pretty dead so I eventually headed to Akihabara again. I stayed and played casuals there all day and eventually Matt (hintalove) showed up too. Nothing too noteworthy to talk about really. Won some, lost some... just a standard day of casuals.

That night at Current, much to my surprise, some people had booked a special event there... but unfortunetly it was like some pop song event and they were playing abosloutly no good music. They had some guy handing out free CDs at the door, they were just like cheap burns he made, not even labeled on the CD or anything haha. Im not even gonna bother ot listen to it. The place was packed with people I didn't know just dancing to shitty pop songs. There were also some other Cirque du Soleil guys there this time who also didnt seem very happy about the music being played. Eventually Chip showed up and we both decided that this shit sucks so we went to 16-shots (the video game bar) together. The place was pretty dead since it was sorta snowing/raining at the same time so most people probly just didnt wanna make it out there. We had a few beers and talked with some people there about video games for like 2 hours. In addition to working on ST, Alpha 1 and 2, Chip also did the sound effects for XmenVsSF, Marvel Super Heroes, Xmen:COTA, and MSHvsSF. He asked if I was gonna get a PS3 for DMC4 since he said he worked on the game a little bit before he left Capcom but I told him PS3 is still too expensive for me. Maybe after MGS4 and FFXIII come out ill give it another thought. Eventually we decided to go back to Current for like the last hour. From there I had like a few more beers and then left to go to sleep.

Since there were no tournaments this weekend, I decided that I would just go back to my town right away when I woke up on Sunday. I told my girlfriend that if there were no tournaments this weekend that I would take her to go skiing. My town is full of great ski slopes and it had been about 4 or 5 years since the last time I went. I was planning on going for a while now but was waiting for a weekend with not much going on so this worked out well. We went skiing for about 4 hours or so and it was awsome. This was pretty much Ryoko's first time since she was in 4th grade so she fell a lot at first but she really got better at it as the night went on. I wiped out a few times on the steeper slopes myself but for the most part I was still pretty decent at it. We got lift tickets for only 1000 yen since a friend of her older sister works there so it was a great deal, and ski rental was only 1500 yen for each of us. Were certainly going to go again soon since it rocked pretty hard. Though my legs are pretty sore but its cool.

Overall the weekend was decent, skiing was defintely the highlight for me. At least my dumbass didnt walk around random parts of Saitama for 2 hours looking for a tournament (and failing) like last time there were no tournaments in Tokyo. Next weekend should prove to be much better for Guilty Gear since its a 3-day weekend and theres like at least 2 or 3 tournaments going on, so I will definetly be hitting all those up.