Saitama Omiya and Fukaya Tougeki quals

Earlier this week I went through my phone and just emailed everyone I figured might team with me, asking if they wanted to join forces this weekend. On Friday I got a reply from Umemura (the Baiken I teamed with last weekend) saying that he could team up for Saturday but would be busy sunday. He said he had a friend who plays HOS who didnt have much tournament experience but was good. Komayuki (the Eddie that was with me and Umemura last weekend) had a different team already planned for this weekend.

On my way to Tokyo on the train, Matt emailed me saying he wanted to meet up in Shinjuku to go drinking and play games so I said I would go to Vegas and he could meet me there. When I got to Vegas there were a good ammount of players but Matt wasnt there yet, he was still at an Izakaya doing nomihodai (all you can drink). HH and Imo were there and so was Komayuki and various other players. At one point I got a call from Shiratori (the I-no I teamed up with several times before from Tochigi). He said he would like to team up with me for the Sunday tournament. However, he said Eve (our ussual ABA player) wouldnt be able to make it, but that he had a friend named Ma who plays Venom who is good and he would join us. So now I was set with 2 solid teams for the weekend. After that I went back to playing. I played against HH's Ky and won. Then he rematched me and beat me and someone else got on the cab. I played more people and then I later battled his Dizzy on a different cab but lost 2 times in a row. The side I was on had a HS button that only worked like 50% of the time and it was getting frusterating so I decided to just not play on that cab anymore. Then I played against Imo's Zappa for like 5 matches in a row. Just about every single round (and this is not an exaduration) I would be beating him and would need like one more hit to kill him, but he ALWAYS just managed to come back and pull a win out of his ass (aside from the times I actually won the round). After losing to him like 4 or 5 times in this way, I finally beat him and then he left cuz it was getting late. It started to die down and I was beasting on the last few people that were still there pretty effortlessly so I told Matt I was just gonna go get some food and then head to Current, and that he should just meet me there.

On the way to Current, I stopped at a resturaunt just down the street from the bar. I had some kickass katsu curry and then headed out. As soon as I left the resturaunt, I passed by a group of 3 gaijin. I overheard one of them saying "we need to find a watering hole around here". I passed by them and thought about it for a second and figured... alright ill be a nice guy and help them out. I went back over to them and said "you guys looking for a bar?" and they said yea, so I told them to follow me. After about a minute of walking we arrived at Current. The most notable thing about these guys is that one of them was cosplaying as Naruto with a wig and everything. I mean... ok, I can see cosplaying at an anime con or something, but what kinda dork shows up to Japan and just walks around the street dressed as an anime character? LOL! The guys told me they were on vacation and one of them just arrived a few hours ago. I took a picture of te Naruto guy and I will put it on my pictures page soon. After we walked in, Mogi asked me if these guys were my friends but I was like... nope, just random gaijin! Current was fairly packed and there were lots of regulars. The 2 Norway dudes that were there a few weeks ago (the ones that went to do Kara0ke with Matt and those chicks after the bar closed from before) were there. Eventually Matt showed up too. We all talked for a bit and then eventually this group of 4 young Japanese girls shows up and they sit at a table in the back. Naturally the Norway guys and Matt now wanted to go sit at the table next to them so I went over to join them. Some of the girls said they remembered seeing me at Current before but I dont even remember them at all. They said I was wearing a Street Fighter shirt, so it must have been me haha. I dont think I actually talked to them before though so whatever. After talking to the girls for a while, eventually the Norway guys were making out with 2 of the chicks. One of them who is a 27 year old virgin, at one point, had the chick like straddling his lap for a while. Unfortunately for the Norway guys, these chicks were total novices when it came to drinking and it didnt take long for them to start going in the bathroom and throwing up. I guess the poor guy is destined to become a 28 year old virgin. After that we didnt see them for a while but eventually we found out they were sitting outside on the balcony by the entrance on the stairs just trying to sober up until the bar closed.

Saturday I woke up and headed to Omiya in Saitama for the tournament that would be at Game Garage game center. When I got there, not many people were there yet but FAB/Nakamura/Shoot were there playing casuals. I signed our team up and then started to play some casuals. I noticed that FAB team had left. The reason why is because this arcade only had one AC cab set up and it was set on one coin equals 2 credits, meaning you had to wait for someone to lose twice before the next person could play... this resulted in very long waiting times. At one point no one was playing so I got some icecream from the vending machine (this was my breakfast). While I was eating, a bunch of people started showing up and FAB team came back but couldnt find another arcade. Now there was a very long wait to play. Eventually I was about to play but Shoot wanted to play at the same time so we did RPS to decide and he won so he went. Shoot lost and then I went next. I beat whoever it was (I dont remember) and proceeded to stay on the cab for 15 wins in a row and eventually lost to some good random blue Axl player. During this time, Umemura and our HOS player (whos name was Gin, but is not the same person as Slayer Gin.... who was also at this tournament btw) showed up. After I lost to Axl I told them Im weak but Umemura was like, you just got 15 wins, you arnt weak at all. I asked HOS Gin how long he has been playing Guilty Gear and he said for 8 years since the original Guilty Gear. This guy doesnt have much tournament experience I guess but he certainly has been playing for a long time. He played against the Axl and almost beat him and was looking good. Then Umemura played the Axl and won in a close match and stayed on for about 4 wins or so. Finally after like an hour, the people at the game center changed the board inside the Melty Blood cab next to the AC that was just sitting there not being played, and put in another AC. I have no fucking idea why they didnt put it in there in the first place since it was taking forever to get a turn in. Gradually more people began to show up and eventually it was FUCKING PACKED! This was the only tournament going on today in this area so TONS of teams came. In fact, today's tournament had 41 teams (123 people). All the big name teams were there today like FAB, Sharon, Osaka B, Imo, Kazuki, En, and tons of others. Machaboo showed up as well to watch. The 15 win streak was the only casuals I got to play since there were just too many people. While we were waiting for the tournament to start, a dude came up to me and introduced himself saying he was Ma, the Venom I would be teaming with tomorrow. He had a completely different team for today. Also, at one point, i went up to my teammates who were standing around watching casuals and SAVP(socially awkward venom player) was standing next to them. As I approached them and SAVP saw me coming his way, he thought I was trying to go talk to him and started to turn the other way and walk away from me, but then when he saw that I was talking to the other guys he went back to where he was! Fuckin hilarious. (Later on in the day, Umemura would ask me who I teamed with the previous week, and I told him I was with ABEGEN and SAVP, but I told him I didnt know his name and explained the whole story. Umemura said he probably isnt used to being around gaijin and probably feels awkward around them or something, but he thought the guy was strange too, lol). There was this one Anji player there who was just tearing it up. Im not sure who he was but he had 19 wins and was beating lots of top players. He eventually lost to Osaka B.

Tournament starts. One of the first matches I found to be amusing was this one Jam player who was going against ABEGEN's team. The Jam player kept talking shit and yelling stuff over to them while they were playing. Then when he fought ABEGEN, he did a slidehead and knocked him down into OTG to heatfist combo, and then just proceeded to repeat the same thing on wakeup and Jam just kept getting knocked down in this way about 5 times in a row, resulting in a perfect. Too bad he couldnt do that to the Jam we lost to last weekend. Shortly before our first match, a team of guys came up to me out of no where and said they were from Shakujikoen and remembered me from there and were complimenting me on my Faust and were all like shaking my hand and being all humble and stuff. Then they called our match. Our first match would be against a team of ABA, Ky, and Testament. Gin went first and just RAPED this Testament player with his HOS. If youve ever seen that vid of Hase just beating the shit out of a Testament player in the corner and absoloutly predicting every single thing he does... this was the same thing.. but with HOS. Tournament experience or not, Gin is a beast. Up next he played against Ky and handled him as well. Finally, Gin played against ABA but he lost. Then Umemura went next and also lost to ABA. I was last and managed to take ABA down with good zoning and strategically baiting her stupid auto guard forcebreak. My team was very happy that I won. During the time between this and our next match, Osaka B and Nakamura both scored an OCV for their respective teams. Also, I didnt see the match, but I looked at the bracket and noticed that Sharon/Inoue/Basara lost first round to some random team of CH/BA/SL. I wouldnt be surprised if they all just got beat up by Slayer. Our next match was against a team of Potemkin, Eddie, Testament. I decided to go first since I know all 3 of these matchups pretty well. They put their Eddie player first. The 1st round I was doing well and eventually I got Eddie in the corner. I was about to hit him with a mixup and kill him, but then I got hit by an off screen bomb that I threw but failed to notice for whatever reason, which resulted in me losing the round. The 2nd round I pretty much just ended up blocking something in the corner which led to him not letting up the entire round and I really just couldnt move end eventually got hit by an unblockable and died. I was pretty bummed because I knew I could have beat that guy. Umemura went next with his Baiken and managed to take Eddie down. He then went and beat Testament. Unfortunately he seems to have a lot of trouble against Potemkin and lost. The final match was Gin vs PO. This was probably one of the closest tournament matches ive ever seen. Gin was rushing him the fuck down really well but PO took a round. It eventually went down to the last round with both characters having like no health at all. Next hit would determine the winner, but Gin got pot bustered and lost. I was dissapointed cuz we were so close and I really liked this team. I thought we were really going to make it to the finals. I sorta blame myself for losing to Eddie right away.

After we lost, there was still going to be tons of time till the tournament ended since they had it split into 5 brackets and the winners would play off in a 5 team round robin finals... which was not going to be short. Gin said he knew of another arcade close by where we could go play casuals so we headed out together. When we got there, a few players including ABEGEN were there. This place ALSO had it set on one coin equals 2 credits AND the rounds were set to 3 rounds, which resulted in it taking forever, once again, to get a turn. We played for a while and at one point, most people left. A testament player left with his game still going so I got on the cab and played his Testament and then Gin played against me and picked Millia (2ndary vs 2ndary, since I used to play Testament often but havnt been using him at all since I got to Japan). I beat his Millia but then he picked Sol and I lost. ABEGEN had also left with his Potemkin still active on the other cab so I just got on the cab and started playing against the computer with his PO. Then some guy actually put money in the machine and played against me and he ALSO picked PO (which seemed to be his main). I dont know what the hell was going on, but I actually WON a Potemkin mirror match against this guy and I DONT EVEN PLAY PO. AT ALL! I just did random slide heads and pokes, and would just do really ghetto tick throw setups into pot buster and even empty jump into pot buster and he just fell for it a lot LOL! After that he rematched me and won and then I picked Faust on him and beat him. Shortly after, more people came back and eventually Machaboo, Basara, Ririko, and a few other people came. It was getting late and after a little longer, Umemura and Gin were ready to leave. I said goodbye to them and they both said they enjoyed teaming up with me and would like to team up again in the future. Neither of them could enter tomorrow's tournament and I already had a team anyway. I played a little longer and then decided to leave. My friend Liz emailed me and said she wanted to meet up for a few drinks at Current.

I took the train back and eventually arrived at Current and it was pretty much completely dead. There were only a few people there. Liz was already there, talking with Taka and Sushi. She was only able to stay for about an hour since she had to catch the last train to get to the hostel she was staying at and she had plans to go to the Design Festa convention and Tokyo Big Sight the next day. I talked with Taka and Sushi for a bit and then Matt showed up with this French dude he knows from his college. Shortly after, the French dude left because he had to go look for his twin brother who was with them earlier at an Izakaya, but had left because he was angry at Matt for talking about some chick's huge rack right in front of her in English assuming she wouldnt understand due to her being Japanese. We stayed at Current a bit longer but no one was showing up so we decided that we would check out GODZ. Taka, Matt, and I walked over to GODZ and went inside but it was just full of some dudes and Matt was determined to talk to some ladies, so then we checked out PSY but there were just 2 guys in there so we left there as well. Everyone was hungry so we stopped at McDonalds real fast and then we were gonna go back to GODZ, but I recieved an email from Chip, saying he just got to Current. Taka wanted to go to GODZ but Matt wanted to go back to Current. I didnt give a shit so I just flipped a coin and Current ended up winning so I went back to Current with Matt. When we arrived, in addition to Chip being there, these 3 hot Japanese chicks had showed up too. We spent the rest of the night talked with the chicks and Chip and Sushi. At one point, Sushi had one of the girls go behind the bar and was letting her DJ for like a song or 2. While he was helping her find a CD on the CD rack, he somehow strategically was able to use his cellphone to take a picture of underneath this chicks skirt and got a nice clear panty shot. The girl had no idea he took the picture. This girl will now be known as Pantyshot cuz I dont know her name. Sushi is like THE stereotypical lecherous old man (but hes not that old yet... probly in his 50s) but I still love the guy. Eventually Taka came back to Current as well. The rest of the night was just more drinking and talking and eventually we left. As we were walking back towards the station I told Chip about SAVP and he thought it was pretty funny too.

The next day I woke up with about 5 hours of sleep. I headed to the station and got on a train to Fukaya, which was about an hour and a half ride. I slept for most of the way there. Eventually I got there and was able to easily find the arcade as it was very close to the station. As I was walking in, I noticed they had some gachapon machines outside in front, and among them was a machine of STREET FIGHTER II sound effect keychains! These sound effect keychain things are pretty common in Japan and they have various kinds for different anime and video games. This was the first time ive seen Street Fighter ones. Without hesitating I bought like 6 of them. I got Ken (shoryuken!), Ryu (hadoken!), Sagat (Tiger uppercut!), Dhalsim (yoga fire!), and Honda (hundered hand slap sound, you can mash it for the full effect). When I got a double of the Ken one, I decided that was enough. There was a Chun-li and Guile one too but I didnt get them. (Side Note: back when I was in Osaka, I forgot to mention that I found a machine like this that had sound effect keychains for the original Super Mario Bros. I got the coin and the pipe which are both awsome. If you ever manage to get the pipe one, next time you get it on with your girlfriend, make sure to press the pipe sound effect when you stick it in her. Trust me... coming from personal experience, its pretty fucking hilarious!).

So after that I actually went in the arcade and saw Shiratori and Ma and said hi. They already registered our team and lots of other players were already there (most of them were all the famous broken teams that I had mentioned from yesterday). I asked Nakamura who had won the tournament yesterday since I never found out and he said that the winning team was Osaka B/Shuumatsu/ASA. This place had 2 AC cabs. En-Slayer was on one of the cabs with a 16 win streak. I played against him and lost to him in the last round by a pixel. Then Ma played against him and beat him with his Venom (this was the first time I actually saw Ma play so I was very happy to know I had another great team for today!). Shortly after, Gin (original Slayer Gin) showed up and asked me if I could team with him today but I told him I already had a team. Shoots Axl got like 8 wins and lost to Kami-chan. There was also a funny match in casuals of an I-no player vs a HOS player (I dont know their names) where the HOS player beat the shit out of the I-no player first round and taunts after the match, giving I-no half meter next match. Then at the start of the next round, I-no does a super right away but HOS just empty jumps straight up and air dashes right over and punishes I-no. However, I-no ends up winning the round anyway and then taunts HOS at the end, giving him bar. The next round, I-no just rapes the shit out of hos and he dies with a full bar and didnt even use a single bit of meter the whole round, lol. SAVP was there again, and at one point, I walked over and stood like sorta near him cuz i was trying to get a better view of one of the matches that was going on. As soon as he noticed I was standing near him, he fucking walks all the way around the crowd of people and goes to stand on the other side! A little later, shortly before the tournament was about to start, Shiratori and I were watching Ma play this video Majong game. It looked kinda old and it had these lame pictures of these slutty girls, and as you cleared pieces off the majong board it revealed more of the picture. Your reward for winning a stage was seeing their titties. When he won the first game, I pretended to twist the chick's nipples and they all were laughing. Then this one guy pointed out that her nipples were dark (the Japanese have this thing where they think having dark nipples means a chick has fucked lots of guys, while pink means virgin) and I yelled out "joro!" which means whore. They found this amusing as well. Eventually Ma got owned by the majong game on level 3 and the tournament was about ready to start.

There were 24 teams total (todays tournament had a cap on teams while yesterdays did not). One of the first matches was Kazuki team vs Kami-chan team. Yossan OCVed all 3 of them (Oguma, Kiro, Kazuki) with his I-no. He also double perfected Kazuki. Our first match was against Kishitaka's team. I dont know the names of his team mates but they were ED and DI. We decided to have Ma go first with his Venom and they put their Dizzy player first. Ma said he cant fight Dizzy at all and he gets raped by her. Then Shiratori goes next and manages to take Dizzy down but then he loses to Kishitaka's Sol. It was now up to me to handle this shit. I went next against Kishitaka and pretty much beat the shit out of him. Then I went against Eddie and was determined to not lose to another Eddie player this weekend in a tournament. I won the first round. 2nd round I had him down to very low life but he came back and won. Final round I took care of that shit and he died while trying to fly over my while i was in pogo stance and he got hit by a hammer ftw. Everyone who was watching was getting pretty hype during my matches. My teammates kept saying how strong I was after that and I was just like.... naaa. Shortly after this, En-slayer team (En, Mugen, Limekey) eliminates FAB team (FAB, Nakamura, Shoot). We had a little time to kill before our next match so Shiratori and Ma were playing a Ufo catcher machine that had these little paper slips and you have to try and get as many as you can with each grab. If you get enough of them you can use them to get whatever prize from the machine you want. They both spent like about 1000 yen probably and got a bunch of paper slips. Then they called our next match shortly after... which was to be against Yossan/Imo/Kami-chan team. Shiratori decided he wanted to go first. First match was Shiratori vs Imo. Imo wins. I asked Ma how confident he is vs Zappa and he said so-so. I decided I would try since I was coming so close to beating Imo in casuals on Friday night. The first round was long and epic. I fought off so many dogs and zoned very very well. I needed like one more hit to kill him........ but just as almost every single fucking round as before... he came back and killed me. The next round, I pretty much just died to a big ass Roah combo which I couldnt even burst out of. Ma goes next and he just went into fucking beast mode and RAPED Imo in the corner for 2 rounds. It was just some straight up "balls in yo face" Venom action. I really wish I would have just let Ma go first against Ino because up next was Yossan and Ma lost to him. I probably would have done better against Yossan than I did against Imo. In any case, that was the end of it. After that, Imo team gets OCVed by a Jam player named Jam Ojisan (which means Grandpa, so his name is basically Jam Grandpa). Also, Sharon/Basara/Inoue get OCVed by a Slayer named Kakeru. It was then time for the finals, which would be a 3 team round robin. The 3 teams were:
En(SL)/Limekey(AN)/Mugen(BR)
Komayuki(ED)/Keba(AB)/Jam Ojisan(JA)
Kakeru(SL)/Kubo(AB)/and some Jam player whos name I didnt catch

First match, unknown Jam beats Limekey and En, Mugen beats Jam, Kakeru beats Mugen. Next match, En beats Komayuki, Keba beats En, Mugen beats Keba, Jam Ojisan beats Mugen.
Final match, unknown Jam beats Keba, Jam Ojisan beats other uknown Jam, Ojisan beats Kubo, Kakeru beats Ojisan and Komayuki. The winning team is Kakeru's team (NOTE: at the time of writing this, the tougeki site results have not been updated, I will edit this entry with the winning teams name once I find out).

After that, Shiratori and Ma cashed in their paper tickets from the UFO catcher machine. Shiratori, being the Nightmare Before Christmas fanboy that he is, got a bunch of Jack skull things. Ma got these cosplay outfits they had in the machine. They had a nurse, a doctor, a flight attendant, and a pilot. I asked him if he was going to give them to his girlfriend and he said he has no girlfriend. I wonder what else a Japanese dude is going to do with female cosplay outfits 0_0. He selected the flight attendant and the doctor and gave me the doctor one as a gift for being on his team. Ill see if I can get my girlfriend to wear it haha. After that they needed to leave so I shook their hands and thanked them and they said they would like to team up again sometime. After that, since Fukaya is pretty close to Gunma and is on my way home, I was able to stay and play casuals till like 10 pm. I got a lot of good games in, but just as all the other fucking arcades in Saitama, they had it set on 2 credits per coin and 3 rounds so it took forever to get a turn in once again. This is like the 5th Saitama arcade ive been to that does this.
On my way home when I transfered trains at Takasaki, my friend Cynthia was on the train again as well, going back to our town, so we talked on the way back.

Next weekend on Saturday will be the first tournament in a brand new Chiba block series and Sunday will be the finals of the Saitama series that I played in this weekend. Kyle (Stunedge) from the US will be coming to Japan as well as Axel from Singapore. I will form a new team with them for next weekend. I have a good feeling about this team.