Have A Drink On Me

This weekend I headed for Tokyo with no real plans other than meeting up with my friend Dana from Chicago who I ran into last week on accident at PSY. On the way to Shinjuku on Friday I tried to send her an email on my cellphone (she has a rental phone while shes here) but I got one of those postmaster cant send errors. When I copied down her email last weekend I made a mistake and inputed it wrong. As a result I had no way of contacting her. However, she said her plan was to go to Zin on Saturday night for their 1 year anniversary party so I figured if I just show up at Zin I can meet her there.

When I arrived at Shinjuku station and was heading for the exit, suddently someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turn around and this white dude is like, is your name Mike? Im like... yea. Hes like, are you ElvenShadow? Im like... yep. He introduced himself as RTL from the dustloop forums. I knew he was in Japan for a while now but we never ended up having the opportunity to meet eachother. He said he was actually at the station waiting for his girlfriend but he said he just came from Vegas and that there were a lot of people there, among them he said a Swedish Guilty Gear player was there. He said he had plans so he wouldnt be going back. I said bye to him and headed out of the station.

After that I pretty much just headed to Vegas for some casuals. The very first match I played was against Kusoru's off the wall Sol and I won. In addition, other well known players such as FAB, HH, and Natsume were there. Its nice to know that people are still playing even though SBO just ended last weekend. The French players were still there too and I won a match vs their Ky player but other than that they didnt seem to stay long and just vanished at one point. Also, the Swedish Slayer player Jonas was there. I had met him last weekend. Not much happend. FAB was beasting and had a huge streak. I played him a like a couple times and came extremely close to beating him each time. I also got a win on HH's Ky and ended his like short win streak. Then he picked Dizzy on me and I won again. He left after that. I ended up staying on the machine for 21 wins until the comp started to fizzle out and I ended up just deciding to leave. I asked Jonas if he wanted to come with me to Current for some beers and he was down with it. We stopped to get some food at McDonalds first. From last Wednesday to the end of this month, they have a special deal for 200 yen big macs going on! I took advantage of that and got myself 2. After that we headed to Current.

It was still fairly early at this point, maybe like 11 pm. It wasnt very packed but a few people were there. Jonas and I had like 2 beers and talked for a bit but then he decided to take the last train back because he wanted to go stay at his hotel. As the night went on, more people showed up. I spent most of the night drinking with Antti who I hadnt seen in like over a month. Chip showed up later as well. There were these 2 girls sitting in the back at a table and at one point Antti and I joined them. One of them knew me but she hasnt been there many times, the other I never met but she was kinda older looking. Her friend said she just broke up with her BF and was strongly suggesting she was looking to hook up with someone. She seemed to be interested in Antti.

After a long night of me and Antti buying eachother rounds of beers back and forth we were good a shit faced and with no major plans tomorrow, I wanted to keep drinking! So we decided to head to PSY since they are open till 6. The other 2 girls decided to come with us. PSY ended up being packed as hell and there wasnt even really anywhere to sit. We drank until about 6 and then headed out. The girls wanted to get some McDonalds but they just got some to go. At one point Antti was missing but then he found us, I guess he was so wasted he went upstairs instead of downstairs when we left PSY and ended up on the roof. The one older and not very attractive girl was all like looking for him. It was obvious she wanted to go home with him. Antti said to me, he wasnt interested in sleeping with her, so he ditched her and want home by himself haha. I just made my way down the street to the manga kissa and passed the fuck out.

I awoke around noon with a massive headache. First thing I did was head to a drugstore and get some headache pills. After that I got some more bigmac action but I didnt have much of an appetite since my head hurt. With no other real major plans I just went back to Vegas and pretty much spent the entire day there playing. For the most part I was doing well throughout the day. Some highlights of the day... There was this cute female Sol player that just came in with her other female friend out of no where. Im pretty sure Ive never seen this girl before. She sat down at the cab next to me and got on and just started beasting on people while her friend just stood behind her the whole time and watched. After a while we both had like 12 wins on our respective cabs. She eventually lost, but she was totally kicking ass. I actually wanted to play her but she left once she lost and I was still winning. Jonas showed up again as well. Baim, the cute Dizzy player I was talking to last time was there too. About halfway through I stopped to get some food at McDonalds again. This time I decided to get a bigmac and a shakashaka chicken and I combined them into one epic sandwich: the shakashaka mac! Imagine a bigmac but add a big thick chicken patty to it as well. It was top tier. (Also, I noticed that they raised the prices of just about everything on the 100 yen menu to 120 yen. Youd think its not really that big of a deal but it just pisses me off that one of the largest and most successfull coorporations in the world needs to raise their prices. Fuck them, after this Bigmac thing over Im gonna try to avoid eating there.)

When I returned to Vegas, Natsume had like a 17 win streak on one of the other cabs with his Dizzy and then I beat him. He played me a few more times and I kept winning against him. As the night went on, Inoue was there and he had racked up like a 50+ win streak... using Ky! He was seriously just destroying people with his Ky. I dont even think ive seen him use Ky before but his Ky was fucking amazing! Like Machaboo level amazing! I decided to try and end his win streak. After like maybe 3 or 4 failed attempts, I actually got him down to no health and was about to kill him but I dropped my combo and he came back and won. This actually sorta agitated me and I said to myself that I wasnt allowed to stop until I stop his win streak. I played him a ton more times but I just couldnt beat him! He was just knew exactly what to do at like every moment! I would get rounds but I couldnt get 3 on him in one game. Finally after lots of tries I fucking beat him.... but god damn! His Ky was just a monster! I honestly was getting a bit pissed off which was affecting my ability to play well, I guess mostly because I know the Ky matchup so well and its like not even his main. In any case, im at least glad I finally took him down. After that I went up to him and told him his Ky was good as hell and I was really surprised. I told him I thought his Ky was better than his Testament. He said he didnt think so but he then asked in Japanese, "you know who my main is though right?" I said to him that of course I know he used to play HOS as his main but that he played Testament at SBO. He said that he was going back to HOS from now on. I dont know the reason cuz I didnt bother to ask, but im wondering if it has something to do with the fact that so many non top-tier characters beasted at SBO this year. I wonder if we will see a trend of other players who whored out to top tier going back to their old characters (I wish Nemo would play Faust again). After that I decided it was time to go drinking since it was about 10 pm and had been playing Gear all day. I said bye to Inoue and headed over to Zin, but I stopped at the conbini first and bought one of those anti-hangover drinks they sell because I didnt want a repeat of this morning to happen tomorrow.

When I arrived at Zin it was a full house. Lots of people came out for their 1 year anniversary and about half of them were people I knew who often go to Current. However, Dana was not there yet. A little bit after, her friend Richard whom I met the same night I bumped into her before at PSY showed up with some other white chick. He told me that Dana wasnt going to be coming out tonight since she wasnt feeling well. I told him I stored her email wrong so I checked and sure enough for whatever reason I put an extra letter in there that wasnt supposed to be there. After fixing it, I was able to email Dana and she replied pretty quickly. She said she was planning on going to Harajuku tomorrow to go shopping and stuff so we made plans to meet up tomorrow. I was sitting with Rina and Megu there was this other Japanese girl there named Tomy that was friends with them. As soon as I sat down she starting going off on this rant about how cute I was and kept like swooning over me! For like the next 5 minutes she just kept admiring how attractive she said I was. I mean, ive had girls hit on me before but this was like pretty extreme. Not that I minded it, it was kinda flattering but im not a single guy so it doesnt matter. She was saying how she had been single since like last October or something and I said to her that I couldnt understand why because she was really attractive actually. Rina told her that I had a girlfriend and she was like all disapointed. She was asking me if I had any gaijin friends I could introduce her to. I told her she should come to Current with me and meet Antti. Unfortunately she didnt want to stay out all night and planned to take the last train home, but she said she would maybe come next weekend. I stayed at Zin until 12 and drank and talked with some people and then I decided I would go to Current since they were having a metal event tonight. Before leaving Zin, I asked the bartender how late they would be open tonight. He said until noon the next day! I was like wtf! These guys are hardcore! So I told him after Current closes at 5 am I would be back for some more.

When I arrived at Current it was packed as hell, just as I would expect from a metal event. This time the event was organized by different people and it was set up really nice. They had put like a sheet on the wall and they had a projector that was showing videos and stuff. They also had like these fake torches which looked cool. Lots of the regulars who come to metal events were there and I recieved a round of high fives upon arrival. Bosch and this other girl I know were sitting at the bar by Antti and they pulled me up a stool. Basically this metal event was awsome as hell and they played some great stuff and there was just lots of energy and awsome people there. Chip showed up too. I was talking with Antti and he told me he couldnt even remember like the last 3 hours of last night. He said every once and a while he just has little spurts of memory loss after long nights of drinking. I filled him in on what happened and he said he like vaguely remembers something about some girl he didnt want to fuck haha. Just as the last night we kept buying eachother rounds of beer and got nice and fucked up! Towards the end of the event they were giving away these T-shirts from some Wacken metal fest for free. They made everyone in the bar play this epic giant game of RPS and the winner got a shirt. Chip actually won one of them rounds but he didnt want the shirt so he just gave it to me a gift. Chip rocks.

At about 4:45 they closed up Current and the entire Current staff as well as like most of the regulars decided they would all go back to Zin for more drinking! So we all rolled out deep as hell and arrived at Zin, which was even more packed than it was before, and now with the addition of all of us arriving it was just an all out party! I got totally shit faced and dont even remember most of the night after that, but I ended up drinking till about 9 am!

After sleeping at the manga kissa for about 4-5 hours, I got a call from Dana saying she wanted to meet up at Harajuku station at 2:30. I said, how about 3 since I was still tired as hell, but fortunately the anti-hangover drink worked like a charm and my head was fine. I still had my shoes on and didnt even take out my contacts, I must have just passed out as soon as I hit the chair. When 3 rolled around I made my way over to Harajuku and met up with Dana shortly after. We decided to go have lunch at Jonathan's, a family resturaunt. I got this awsome garlic chicken with a baked potato and corn. It was delicous and I was starving. After that we mostly just walked around to various stores and bought some stuff. I got this cute stuffed cat for Ryoko and the big selling point was that if you look under the tail of the cat, the people who designed it actually made an asshole there! Its hilarious! Dana picked up one for her Japanese boyfriend who shes staying with as well, saying she wanted to get him something he wouldnt expect. At some point I also bought a Children of Bodom shirt and Dana got some other clothes too. We had a little more time to kill before I had to go back to Gunma so we went to Shinjuku. I wanted to show her where Current was so that she could go drinking there later this week. She would be returning to Chicago on Wednesday. When we got to Current, it had just opened about 15 minutes ago and there were like 3 guys there drinking, in addition to Mogi and Masami working. They were surprised to see me show up on a Sunday night so early. I introduced them to Dana. Mogi was admiring her tatoos as Mogi is like the tatoo master, having them all over his body. Masami did a double take when he saw her saying he actually saw her earlier shopping at some store, pretty funny. We had a beer and then it was about time to leave. Her boyfriend just got off work and was gonna meet her at Seibu-Shinjuku station. I went with her since I had a bit more time and got to meet her boyfriend. He was a cool guy. I told him that next time Dana visits in the winter that they should both come visit me in Gunma since he likes to snowboard and theres tons of that in my town. He actually had been to my town before to go canyoning. After saying goodbye to them I had to go back to the station and catch the last train. At this point I was fucking tired as hell. I tried to sleep on the way back but I had a hard time getting comfortable. Eventually I made it home, took a shower, and passed out.

Next weekend is Current's 7th Anniversary party and it will be on both Friday and Saturday night! Its gonna be a ton of fun and im sure just about EVERYONE is gonna be there so im totally looking forward to it. I will probably also be playing some casuals. Next weekend is gonna fucking rock... cant wait!