Golden Week Kanto Tour

Golden Week is a time in Japan in which there are a ton of holidays back to back. As a result, I had a 4 day weekend and every day was an SBO qualifier in a different prefecture. I started off as usual in Akihabara on Friday night for casuals. There were various players there as always. At one point I had a 17 win streak. Eventually I finally lost to Bleed's Johnny. After that I went over to the cabinet next to that one where Abagen was playing and had a 16 win streak. I proceeded to beat him and end his 16 win streak. After more time had passed and winning a few and losing a few, towards the end of the night I played a bunch of matches against various people, mostly a female HOS and a blue Eddie player and got another 20 win streak. It was getting late and people were heading out so I just got up and left the cab without losing.

After that I headed to Current. It was nice to go there after a 2 week absence. Mogi and Sushi said they were wondering where I was last week since I pretty much have gone there every single weekend since I found the place haha. Anti was there as well as Chip. Anti was talking with some of his Finish friends who were visiting Japan on vacation. He was telling me that he was going to go on a road trip for the rest of spring break starting the next morning. I told him to check out Rock Rock when he goes to Osaka. Eventually I took Anti to GODZ cuz he had never been there, we stayed for a beer and watched some good live metal DVD footage on their big flatscreen TV. Chip showed up and joined us for a bit later but then we went back to Current for one last beer and it was closing time.

Saturday, I headed over to Shakujikoen for the qualifier. This was the arcade where I first met Matt as well as Gin a long time ago during the DF2 quals period. I had pretty much emailed just about everyone I had ever teamed with before who I had the email for (except for Basara) earlier in the week asking them to email me back if they would like to team up at all over the course of the long weekend. Everyone had either told me that they couldnt play or didnt reply, with the exception of Shiratori who said that he was good to team up with me and Eve (Ibu) again for the Gunma tournament which would be on Sunday. As a result, the plan for today would be to enter with Matt who had preregistered at the arcade for us the night before and hopefully find a 3rd person at the tournament. Shortly after I arrived at the arcade, it was already packed. I played a game against a good Skeletor Zappa (the blue and purple color, it reminds me of Skeletor from He-Man) and came a pixel away from beating him. About a minute later, the Venom player who I had teamed up with twice in the past (once with 012 and once with JT at the Game Chariot tournament recently) came up to me asking if I had a team. I told him I had a 2 man team and he asked if it would be ok to join my team. Of course I said its cool. Matt shortly arrived after that. I told him to go say hello to the Venom player and introduce himself because hes on our team for today. I still dont know the guys name because I never can find the opportunity to find out as he signs up on the sheet in all Kanji that I dont recognize and hes not a very talkative guy. Matt went up to him to say hello and the guy just sorta like mumbled and stuff and just stopped talking. At first I used to think this guy didnt like me because he considered me deadweight and crappy ever since the 012 tournament since he would never talk to me, but now it became appearent that this guy just has really bad social skills or something. I looked at the signup sheet and there was another 2 man team he could have joined, but the fact that he asked me to team up with him at least shows he doesnt think I suck.

Anyway... the tournament eventually started with a total of 23 teams divided into 3 brackets. Our first match was against a team of May, Bridget, Aba. Matt went first against the Bridget player and beat him in a close match. He was very happy since this is the first tournament match he has won with his HOS. Up next Matt went against the May player but lost. I hate May with a passion so I asked our Venom to go next. He busted her up pretty good and moved onto the ABA player who he also defeated and ended the 2nd round with a perfect. The match that took place after ours in our bracket would determine who we fought next. I watch carefully and one team had a pink May who OCVed the entire other team. I wasnt too happy about that. Gin was there as well btw, but he had never gotten back to me after I emailed him. His team lost first round. After that, our next match was against a Potemkin, May, Faust team. Matt went first again this time against PO and lost. Then I went against PO and beat him. After that the bastards threw their pink May player at me and I was defeated. However, Venom was able to defeat May and also made short work of their Faust player, so we were able to advance. After a little bit of time our next match came. It was against Machaboo (KY), Tatsumi (the cute female Millia player), and Natsume (DI). Matt once again went first. He fought against Tatsumi and lost. Our Venom told me he hates fighting Millia, and so do I as her and May are my most hated characters but I said fuck it and went next anyway. First round I beat her pretty well with good zoning. The next round was extremely close and we both had pretty much no health left at the very end of the round. I was in the corner and super jumped to throw a bomb bag and she got up in my face and we both got hit by the bag as it exploded. Initially I had no idea who won or if it was a draw game, then I pressed a button and was pleased to see Faust air recover, marking a win against Millia. Up next I had a fight Natsume's Dizzy. The first round went well and I won. The 2nd and 3rd rounds I unfortunately lost. Too much random Dizzy garbage on the screen and I couldnt get in on him. Up next, Venom managed to take out Natsume in a close game. Finally was Machaboo's Ky. The first round, Venom took the round, and lots of people started doing a chorus of low pitched "oooooo!" The 2nd round, Venom lost by just a little bit. The last round was hype as hell and Venom needed one more hit to defeat Machaboo. They battle for a while constantly successfully blocking eachothers shit but Venom just couldnt manage to land that last hit and eventually Machaboo got his last hit in first. Had we won that match, we would have gone to the finals.

The 3 teams to make it to the finals were the brown Testament player named Shuumatsu team (hes the guy who defeated me at the last chance DF2 qualifier, hes good and is around a lot and his team also qualified in the series that ended at Game Chariot earlier. He has a good Potemkin named ASA on his team and a good Chipp... im not sure who it was but might have been Minami-Chipp). The other 2 teams were Machaboo team and Zero's team (with Haken (PO) and Ka2 (JA)). The first match was brown testament team vs machaboo team. Tatsumi lost to Chipp, Machaboo defeated Chipp and PO, Shuumatsu defeated Machaboo and Natsume. Up next was Zero team vs brown Testament team. Zero beats Chipp, Po beats Zero, Ka2 beats Po and Shuumatsu. Finally was Zero team vs Machaboo team. Tatsumi beats Zero, Ka2 beats Tatsumi, Machaboo beats Ka2. Up next in Haken vs Machaboo, a whiff burst somehow goes right through a heavenly Potemkin Buster which I found shocking. Round 1 ends with one second left as Haken squeezes in the last hit in the corner. Machaboo dominates round 2 but Haken comes back to take round 3. Natsume vs Haken was next and Haken comes out ahead, despite the unfavorable matchup. The result is Zero/Haken/Ka2 winning the tournament.

After that, me and Matt went to get some food, this time at a much cheaper but still good Yakiniku place. Shortly after we sat down, Gin and a bunch of top players showed up and sat at another table. After we finished eating we went back and played casuals for a few hours. I have no idea why, but for some reason EVERYONE was just picking May. Even tons of people who I know for a fact arnt even May players. It was pretty fucking annoying. Its like they were all trying to fuck with me but didnt even know they were doing it. Fucking Shakujikoenmae game center May-fest 2008. A ton of people were also picking Slayer as well. There was another cabinet sorta off the the side from the other 4 and I ended up playing against this one Venom player who I beat 12 times in a row until he eventually gave up. After a little more time it was getting late so Matt and I decided to head out.

We had to pass through Ikebukuro to get back to Shinjuku so we decided to go check out Paradise City since Matt said he knew where it was. If you remember last time, I tried to find the place a long time ago, I never found it and it turned out that it was closed. When we got there there were a few people there, the place was nice but much smaller than Current. We had a few beers (they have Kirin Heartland on tap, nice) and talked about Guilty Gear and other random shit for a while and they were playing a shit ton of Mr. Big songs for whatever reason, which is cool with me.

Eventually we decided to head back to Shinjuku and get some more games in at Vegas. HH was there and I ended up getting a lot of games in with him and beat him a few times. I perfected him the final round of the last game I played him in and he left. He said nothing to me the whole time and I had emailed him again with the other people just to ask if he might want to team up this time but obviously he didnt want to heh. Since I knew I would probably have to fight Kazuki's Dizzy the next day at the Gunma tournament, I was glad to get some Dizzy practice in. After that we headed out and went to Current.

Current was good times, we just pretty much hung out and chatted with the 2 Finish guys that were there the night before, as well as some of their other Norweregian friends. There were also these 2 hot chicks at the bar and one of the Norwegian guys who I was told was a 27 year old virgin was trying to hit on one of them. Appearently hes a shy guy or something. We talked about random shit throughout the night but one of the things that stuck out was when this one Norway guy was talking about when he tried Meth once. Ive never done Meth and never will cuz that shit is fucking retarded but he was describing his experience saying how doing Meth feels like you are taking a shit ALL DAY for HOURS. Matt and I found this increadibly hilarious and couldnt stop laughing. The drunken young Japanese guy that passed out and had to be carried out of the bar at closing from a few weeks ago was there again too. Once again, this guy was already plastered. He kept coming over to our table and trying to get everyone to dance with him. Eventually at some point he vanished and I didnt notice him leave, but I cant really say I was sad to see him go, haha. Anyway, as the night went on, Matt started spitting some game to the 2 hot Japanese chicks at the bar which was good. He told me one of them works at a makeup store or something and the other one works at an S&M bar in Kabukicho... hot. Her name was Beni. Eventually it was time to go and everyone sorta headed out together. As we were walking down the street we passed a Karaoke place and they all decided to go do some Karaoke. I declined and said I was just gonna go to sleep since I had to get up and go to Gunma tomorrow for the tournament and it would take an hour and 40 minutes and I was getting picked up from the station by Shiratori so I didnt want to be late. After I got to the Manga Kissa and went to sleep, I was woken up about an hour and a half later by my cellphone vibrating. Matt had sent me an email that said "When Beni said goodbye to me she grabbed my junk." I found this amusing and went back to sleep.

Sunday, I woke up and decided it was time to buy a new backpack. I dont think I mentioned it before, but during my time on my Kansai trip, at some point, a hole started to form in my backpack and as time went on, it got bigger and bigger. A few weeks ago I put some tape over it and it more or less fixed the problem, though it looked ghetto as fuck. However, all day yesterday, the zipper on my backpack kept undoing itself and it would take lots of tries to get it to zip properly. I didnt want all my shit to spill out so I figured it would be a good investment to buy a cheap backpack rather than losing my mp3 player or DS or something. After I bought the new one for like 2000 yen, I didnt really want to have to carry the old one around. It was worth saving since the main compartment was still fine so I could at least use it for something in the future if need be. I went back to the manga kissa and in the stairwell in the hallway, there are some big orange cones blocking he upwards stairs to the top floor since its just used to store garbage. I rolled the empty backpack up and shoved it into the bottom of the cone and turned it into a free storage locker! I figured no one would find it and if they did I honestly didnt really give a shit.

After that I headed to Shinjuku station and took the train out to a part of Gunma I had never been to in the Ota area. As I was transfering to the 3rd and final train of my trip, about 2 minutes after I got on the train, in walks Kazuki and his team. They wave hello and go sit down at the other end of the train. Shortly after we arrived at Nannakano station. Shiratori and Eve were there waiting for me. As we were leaving, Shiratori pulled up his car along Kazuki and his team who were sorta standing around on the corner. He told them its 7 km walk to the arcade and asked if they needed a ride. They said sure, so after he dropped me and Eve off at the arcade, he went back to pick them up. Such a nice guy. The arcade was called Lupan122. We played casuals for a bit but they only had 2 cabs and there were lots of people so I didnt get to play that much. In addition to Kazuki's team and the usual Inaka suspects, Machaboo's team ventured out to this one as well. 24 teams entered total. Our first match was against a team of Eddie, Millia and Baiken. Shiratori went first against the Millia player and defeated him. Up next he went against Baiken and lost. Eve said he hates Baiken, and while I struggle with the matchup from time to time, I said id do it. I went against Baiken and got sorta beat up the first round. The 2nd round I was losing but I really didnt want to lose the tournament first round so I sucked it up and was patient as hell and just zoned her out and stayed back in the corner waiting for something good to happen with my items. I eventually got him poisoned and he was down to very little health. After a little bit of footsies and poking at eachother, he eventually ran into a mini Robo-Ky and I was able to combo him off of it for the win with having only a pixel of life left myself. The 3rd round I felt a new hope arise within me and I Fausted his ass. Up next was Eddie. First round I won pretty well. 2nd round I was winning but fucked up and he managed to squeeze in a win on me. 3rd round I raped him really bad and almost perfected him. My team was pretty proud of me. Our next match was against a team of May, Axl, Potemkin. Shiratori went first again with his I-no and beat Potemkin first, perfecting him in round 2. Up next he went on to defeat May and then Axl for the OCV. Shiratori was in beast mode. Once again the poor guy was tired from working late the night before and was sorta resting between matches but that didnt hinder his performance one bit. During the time when this match was going on, on the cabinet next to us was Machaboo team vs Kazuki team. All 3 of us somehow wound up in the same bracket and the winner of this would decide our next opponent. I didnt see the whole thing, but Kiro's Faust beat Natsume and then Tatsumi and that was the end of it. I didnt see who beat Machaboo, but it didnt matter cuz they were finished. Up next was Kazuki's team. As usual, Shiratori went first. I was a little worried as he told me he lost to Kazuki twice last year in SBO quals as well. The first round, Shiratori beasted and took down Kazuki. Unfortunately he lost rounds 2 and 3. Up next, Eve went with his ABA for the first time all day in the tournament. Eve got beat down 2 rounds in a row. I was last and had to try to OCV their whole team. I was able to get in Kazuki's face and rushed him down and took the 1st round. 2nd round and 3rd round he did a much better job of keeping me at bay and eventually killing me. After this (which was the semi finals)... Kazuki's team went on to the finals which was another 3 man round robin. He proceeded to OCV both of the other teams in the finals as well. There was just no stopping him. Everyone except for me, Shiratori, and this one May player in the finals couldnt even take a round on him. He was just in ass rape Dizzy install beast mode. The 2 teams he OCVed in the finals were ED TE DI and MA CH VE. After he won, they had the other 2 teams fight to determine 2nd place though it didnt matter anyway. The May team beat the Eddie team. After that we pretty much just left right away cuz Shiratori had to get home. I asked them to contact me if they can ever team up with me again in the future. Shiratori told me he always has to work late on Saturdays (which I believe, since the poor guy is always exhausted at every tournament weve gone to which has always been on a Sunday) so he would not be able to team up next Saturday for the Gunma/Tochigi series finals. I didnt realize this at the time but in retrospect, I wonder what he was planning to do then if we had actually won today... In any case they said they would contact me again when they could team up again and would like to sometime in the future. We took a group photo in front of the station after they dropped me off and said goodbye and then I got on the train for another long trip back to Tokyo.

After I got back, I headed to Las Vegas in Shinjuku again to meet up with Matt for casuals. There were various players there but no one there that I particularly recognized. After a while, Kiro showed up. After I lost to someone, I went over to the other side to play against his Faust. We had a LONG session of Faust mirror matches and just kept battling eachother. It was pretty epic. Most of the matches were very close. We went back and forth but he won like the first 2 and then I got like 4 in a row. Then he would come back with a couple and I would then win some, and for the most part I was consistantly ahead by about 2 or 3 wins most of the time. Towards the end though, he cut down my 3 win lead by following it up with 6 wins in a row and he was then ahead by 3 wins. I played him in one final game were I won all 3 rounds cutting his lead down to 2. After that he got up and left and waved goodbye on his way out. Kiro is a beastly Faust and I remember back when I first fought him during the DF2 qual at Mikado a long time ago where I could hardly even touch him. I beat him once back then but it took me like tons of tries to end his epic win streak at that time. Now I am easily on his level for sure. I was glad to see that I had improved so much. Around the end of my long duel with Kiro, Matt wanted to start pregame drinking before we went to Current so he went to the conbini to buy some booze. He came back with a bottle of gin and some Mitsuya Cider. I chugged half the cider and then he went into the bathroom and poored half the bottle of gin in each of our bottles. We stayed and played casuals for a bit longer and got nice and sauced. It had been a while since I played sorta drunk and it reminded me of back in he day in Chicago when we always used to enjoy some good brews while we duked it out at Prucha's or my old apartment. I could still play good buzzed.

Eventually, Matt and I stopped at a resturaunt on the way to Current to grab some food. While we were there, I recieved an email from Gin. He asked if I could team up with him for the tournament tomorrow in Kanagawa. I told him I had a 2 man team and he was welcome to join us. He then asked if it would be possable for me to join him with another Axl player instead. Matt told me to just go ahead and play with those guys. I asked him if it was really ok cuz I didnt wanna be a dick and just ditch him, but he told me he just wants to see me make it to SBO so he was totally ok with it. After that we finished our food and got to Current. That night at Current was good times but pretty standard. Chip showed up with Sawa and some other regulars I know were there, but nothing extremely note worthy happened. However, because I was already drinking tons of hard liquer earlier, I didnt wanna switch to beer and risk getting a hangover. I decided to order some hard liquer based drinks instead of beer. When I ordered one, Mogi was shocked and did like a double take. Ussually I just show up and he already starts pooring me a beer. It was a nice change to have something different but beer is still the best. I got drunk as hell though since hard liquer ussually tends to fuck me up more. Good times. Eventually it was time to head out and everone left. Matt said he MIGHT go to the tournament anyway but wasnt really all that sure about it.

Monday, after waking up I headed right for the station and took the train on about an hour trip to Fujisawa station in Kanagawa prefecture. Shortly after ariving I found FunFun Game center. They had 3 cabinets and tons of people were there playing casuals. Machaboo was on one of the cabinets playing HOS for some reason, and he had a huge win streak. Several people tried to beat him including Mitsurugi with his Zappa but failed. I played him once and lost in a close one. Eventually I played him again and beat him, ending his win streak at 29 wins. Eventually I saw Gin and he introduced me to our Axl player whos name was Hikaru. There was also this one guy there who came up to me and said he remembered me from one of the Tochigi tournaments. He asked me if I wanted to team up with him today but I told him I already had a team. I told him I could call Matt over to team up with him and he asked me to try, but Matt didnt reply and was probably passed out and still drunk from the night before. There was also these 2 guys there who came up to me and said they were from Kansai. They remembered me from a-cho. They said they were here for golden week weekend. Their names were Kuni (a Baiken player, and not the same person as the famous ST Zangief player), and Tomoko. They told me they would not enter tomorrows tournament because they were going sight seeing but they told me if I was ever in Kansai again that they would like to team up with me.

Eventually it was time for the tournament to start. This tournament was the only qual going on in the area today and was also the final qualifier for the Kanagawa series so ALL of the good teams were there. I knew today was not going to be easy. One of the first matches to happen was Nakamura (MI)/FAB (PO)/Shoot (AX) vs Tatsumi/Machaboo/Natsume. First match was Nakamura vs Tatsumi mirror match. During the first round, Nakamura's stick died. They had to stop the match and repair the controls. This would be the first of many times this happened on ALL 3 cabs throughout the course of the day. I have never been to a tournament where the controls have broken more than at this tournament. Eventually the match continued and Nakamura beat Tatsumi, Machaboo beat Nakamura... and I didnt see the rest because they called our match. However FAB's team ended up winning. Our first match was to be against En-Slayer, Mugen (BR), and Limekey (AN). I always seem to have the unfortunate luck of running into this broke ass team in tournaments. Hikaru went first with his Axl against En-Slayer. He put up a good fight but lost. Gin said he wanted to go next and attempted the Slayer mirror match, but En-Slayer is far superior to Gin's Slayer, so he unfortunately was defeated. I was to go last. The first round I did pretty well and almost won. The 2nd round I got put in the corner and he just proceeded to keep me there for the whole round. My big stupid mistake was trying to throw out a standing kick to have it get stuffed by a forward punch for the lose. I hate Slayer.

After we lost, I stayed and watched the rest of the prelim. Kaqn was there with his team of a Dizzy player and an Eddie player. However, instead of picking Millia, Kaqn has pulled his HOS out of retirment for this tournament. They went against a team of Anji, Jam and someone else. Anji beat Eddie and Dizzy. Kaqn proceeded to beat the Anji player. During the match, people were shouting in Japanese "Your not Domi!" at the Anji player from across the cab haha. Kaqn OCVed the rest of the team. His HOS was in top form. Another noteworthy match was OsakaB (FA)/ Inoue (HOS)/ Sharon (BA) vs a team of some black Dizzy, a Slayer and someone else. Sharon and Osaka B both lost to the black Dizzy. I was shocked cuz I had no idea who he was. Then Inoue cleaned up the rest for them for the win. Up next was En-Slayer team vs FAB team. En-Slayer beats Shoot's Axl but then loses to FAB and gets perfected in round 2. Mugen then faced against FAB and wins round 1 by running away all day and winning by time over with a pixel of life left. Mugen proceeded to win round 2 and take down FAB. Up next was Nakamura. He must have been nervous because he went to go use the toilet before his match. When he got back they checked the stick and then he faced Mugen in a crazy intense match. Mugen was losing but had a big comeback and defeated Nakamura for the win. For Osaka B's team's next match, they faced a team from Shizaoka of green Dizzy, white Testament, blue Zappa. Osaka B went first against green Dizzy and lost by a pixel. After seeing him lose to 2 Dizzys in this tournament I didnt feel so bad anymore since it seems im not the only good Faust player who has been losing to Dizzy this weekend, though I wanted him to win of course. Up next Sharon takes out Dizzy and then loses to white Testament. Inoue goes next and also loses to Testament. I was surprised by the result. Up next was Imo( ZA)/Yosan(ED)/Kami-chan(SL) vs En-Slayer team. Imo beats Limekey, then Mugen, and then En-Slayer for the OCV. The Zappa beasting was relentless. En-Slayer won the first round but then lost to the 2nd round by dog bite loop in the corner and then Raoh finished him off in round 3. Following that was Shizaoka team vs Kaqn team. Shizaoka green Dizzy beats black Kaqn team Dizzy in a mirror match. Up next Kaqn takes out green Dizzy and it was a very intense match. Up next, Kaqn fights blue Zappa and wins round 1. Round 2 he gets perfected by the onslaught of the dog. Final round, Kaqn wins it. Finally he faced Testament. He was winning the first round but then got hit but a big tree that he forgot about and lost. He then perfected Testament 2nd around and won round 3 as well. The amazing thing about Kaqn is even when he loses a round and is getting raped, the guy never looks worried and always keeps his cool. Hes ALWAYS smiling. Up next was the finals of the entire tournament.... Kaqn team vs Imo team. Imo starts off by defeated Dizzy. Then Imo defeats Eddie with more dog rapage. Kaqn then proceeds to take out Imo. Next was Kaqn vs Kami-chan. Round 1 was close as hell and Kaqn lost by a pixel. Kaqn fought hard but lost round 2 as well. The winners of the tournament were Imo/Yosan/Kami-chan. After this, it was time for the finals 5 team round robin to start. Since the cabinets were all broken and they were just running it on one cab with the others out of use, I knew this was going to take forever, and it was already late and I wanted to play some casuals. I decided that I was just gonna leave and go back to Vegas to play instead of watching. I said bye to a few people on the way out and headed back to Shinjuku. (At this time I do not know who won as the results have not yet been updated on the Tougeki website).

After I got to Vegas, I played for a good while and won a lot of games. There was a good HOS player there and a good Axl. Me and the Axl took turns fighting HOS and eventually I beat him and he left. Then I played a bunch of games vs the Axl. He was really good and had lots of tricks but I was doing very well against him. At one point he came over and told me I was strong. I asked him if he wanted to team up for tomorrow but he said he wouldnt be entering. Eventually we played a little more and then he left. I grabbed a sandwich and a redbull and was drinking it outside and then the Axl came out of no where and started talking to me a bit again but still said he probably wouldnt enter. It seemed like he wasnt confident enough in his skills to try for Tougeki but I think he could have done well... too bad.

After that I went to Current. It was a pretty standard night. I talked with this one girl I know for a bit. Eventually she was tired and left and there were only a few people in the bar. There were these 3 young college girls and they were talking with me for most of the night. Not really much else to mention. The place closed and we headed out and I went to sleep.

I woke up on Tuesday and retrieved my rolled up backback from he orange cone. It was still there and no one probly even noticed it... sweet. After that I headed over to Ageo at Purabo game center in Saitama for the next tournament. This would be the first tournament in the Saitama series that would be going on for the next couple weeks. I had no team for today as Matt had a picnic to go to and no one else could team with me. When I went to sign up there was a 2 man team among all the other teams. I tried to find them to ask if I could join them but they were no where to be found. I went to play some casuals and Hase was there beasting as ussual with a big win streak. I lost to him. Then on the other cabinet (there were only 2) there was a default color Dizzy who had 17 win, I beat him 3 rounds in a row and ended his streak. Eventually after a while, the 2 man team returned and they said it was ok to team with them. They were 2 young guys from Saitama. Ura (venom player) and Mame (Eddie player). The tournament was capped at 16 teams and the bracket was completely full. Our first match was vs I-no, Zappa, Johnny. Mame went first with his Eddie and struggled against Johnny and lost. I could tell he wasnt very good and his pressure was kinda weak and he kept dropping combos. I went next and OCVed their entire team with ease, perfecting the Zappa and winning every round. After that my team kept telling me how strong I was and said I should go last next time. After that, there was this yellow Sol player and everyone was getting really rowdy as hell while he was playing. He kept yelling "VORUKANIKU!" and "SHORYUKEN" randomly and didnt do any DPs haha. He ended up losing though, I was sad cuz he was amusing and I wanted to see him play more. Our next match was vs HOS, SL, ED. Ura went first with his Venom vs HOS and did ok but lost. up next, Mame went and got beat down. I was last and won the first round. The next 2 rounds were very close but I lost. I was bummed but those guys were a pretty weak team to be honest so maybe it was for the best. My team left as soon as we lost. After that, Shuumatsu team was there and he OCVed the HOS team that beat us. Then eventually it was the finals of ASA(PO)/Yukine(JA)/Shuumatsu(TE) vs another team of Nanariiranperuuji(MA) Beni tsuki karen(DI) and Shirushiru(ED). PO beats MA and then loses to ED. TE beats ED and loses to DI. Final match was DI vs JA. Final round Dizzy does flame super and Jam does puff ball forcebreak and hits her, but eats the flame super and loses. MA DI ED win. Hase didnt even play the entire time, I think he just showed up to watch or something, otherwise im sure he would have won.

After it was over they just had casuals going, but for some reason they had the machines set on 2/3 rounds but it was 2 credits for each coin, so everyone was playing classic US casuals style 2/3 two round matches. I lost a few, won a few. As time went on more people cleared out and I got to play alot. At one point I had like 12 wins in a row on these Baiken and Ky players. Eventually someone picked Eddie on me and I narowly lost. After that I played the Eddie a ton. I beat him 4 times in a row and finally lost to him but then I had to leave because it was getting late.

Thats about it. Long post... but it was a long weekend. Next weekend is the Gunma/Tochigi series finals in the capital of my prefecture, Maebashi, which is only 45 min train ride from where I live. After that, the Tokyo C-2 series final is at Ikebukuro GIGO on Sunday. I will be at both. No idea who my team will be but im sure ill figure something out.