Revenge of the Mutant Zombie Salaryman!

There once was a salaryman who worked very hard every day. He would come in on weekends, and be forced to work extremely long and unreasonable work hours. This man would sometimes even miss the last train home, working well into the night. He hardly ever saw his family, was suffering from lack of sleep, and his mental and physical health was beginning to take a turn for the worse. Section Chief Tanaka would always force this man to push himself even harder; doing anything less would be lazy, pathetic, and a disgrace to the company! The salaryman would sometimes ask Section Chief Tanaka for a break or some time off, but the section chief didnt take very kindly to such a lazy attitude. The salaryman should not expect overtime for doing his duties, he should just "ganbaru" his way through every long work day. He did his best to try and get through this, but he couldnt help but hate Section Chief Tanaka. Well, eventually one day, the salaryman was stuck pulling another all nighter at his desk, but the mental and physical stress, combined with too much medication, health problems, and lack of sleep got the best of him. His corpse was found the next morning, spread out over his desk, his face smashed against the keyboard, his computer screen displaying a long string of the same character. The salaryman's body was sent to be creamated in preparations for the funeral, but it never quite reached its destination... While his body was dead, his extreme hatred for Section Chief Tanaka had manifested into a seperate living entity that had once again entered his cold, lifeless, body... causing it to become reanimated once more! His skin turned green, and the neckties he was forced to wear everyday had began to literally grow out of his body! He was now no longer a salaryman... he was a MUTANT ZOMBIE SALARYMAN!!!.... and he hungered for the brains of the section chief! Section Chief Tanaka was ambushed and caught off guard as he was at home, firing one out to some good ol censored Japanese fetish porn. Upon having fulfilled his quest and quenching his unstopptable hunger for Tanaka's brains, the Mutant Zombie Salary man decided to go to Rock Inn Current to party down, get drunk, and listen to heavy metal!!!

The above story is fiction (probably), but is based on some fact unfortunately. It is often the case that salarymen (office/company employees paid on salary) in Japan are forced to work extremely long hours and dont often get compensated for this extra work. Not all companies are like this, but many of them are, and sometimes these employees do suffer from physical and mental illness as a result of the stress of their jobs. It is also sometimes the case that they do die as a result these conditions. Every weekend when I ride the train to Tokyo, I see all these poor guys in suits and ties looking exhausted as hell. I often think that some of these guys look miserable as hell and must hate their jobs and their bosses. I was thinking of what to be for Halloween and I decided that some sort of costume that had lots of ties would be kinda... unique. Earlier in the week, I went to the 100 yen store and picked up 17 neckties, ripped up an old collared shirt and pants, and decided to just try to make a costume that people would look at and be like "...wtf!?". I know it sounds rediculous, and quite frankly it is... and thats why I did it! Plenty of pictures will be posted on my pictures page.

On Friday, I had an enkai for school so I went to that and just slept at my apartment (this enkai was more or less just like all the others, but the food was top tier as hell and they had Kirin instead of Asahi which was pretty awsome). I also did lots of classic rock karaoke as I often do.

Saturday I went to have lunch with my girlfriend in Takasaki and then from there, I took the train to Tokyo. She was gonna come with me but she had to work the next day so she just went back home. After I arrived in Shinjuku, I headed to Donkyhote (a big store in Japan that sells all kindsa randome shit) where they had lots of stuff for Halloween costumes. Earlier, I tried looking for some face paint to make myself look undead in my town, but it was no where to be found. Donkyhote was packed as hell today since everyone was there scrambling to find a Halloween costume. After searching Donkyhote for like what was probly over a half hour, I finally was able to find a small rack of face paint. Unfortunately for me, they only had green and yellow, and there was only one green one left. I wanted some fake blood too but they didnt have any. I mailed Matt and he said he still had access to his apartment in Nakano since he didnt finish moving out yet. He said I could go there to put the costume on. He met me in front of the Donkyhote and was with a girl. He said she was his new girlfriend and is actually one of his private ekaiwa students. Shes like, in her early 30s and participates in Pokemon tournaments or something like that haha. She had to go so we said goodbye to her as we headed to the train station.

When we got to Matt's I began try to put my costume on. It ended up being a lot more trouble that I thought. I wrapped the ties around my head, arms, torso, and leg, and we had to try to pin them down so they wouldnt fall off. Some of them kept falling off, but we eventually got them to stay well enough. I also painted my skin green but that paint crayon thingy I bought didnt nearly last as long as I had hoped it would, so I had to use some water to make the paint thin out and stretch a bit farther. I was able to cover most of my skin showing but parts of my arm were unfortunately still pretty white. There wasnt really anything else I could do about it, so I figured it was as good as it was gonna get and we headed out. Matt was originally thinking of going to the party dressed as Mogi but ultimately decided against the idea, figuring Mogi's reaction was too dangerously unpredictable and opted to just wear a sorta suit outfit with a white tie and was supposed to be like an 80's gangster.

As we walked from Matt's apartment to the train station, I was already getting a ton of crazy looks and reactions... and I was loving it! People tried their hardest to not stare at me, but as soon as I passed by, they all turned around to gawk at how rediculous I looked lol! Some people who didnt notice me at first literally would leap out of the way as I came near them! When we got on the train, a group of young girls literally were like cowering back as I entered the train! LOLOL Once they realized it was Halloween weekend they were like.. ooh Halloween, Haloween! Ok!

Upon arriving back in Shinjuku, we stopped at the cigar shop near Wendys to get a cigar each for the party. The lady working in the back was like "you like necktie!" After that, we went to get some Wendys. The crazy stares certainly didnt stop here, and from there we decided to play some Guilty Gear at Vegas before heading to the Current Halloween party. Going to Vegas and playing Guilty Gear dressed as a Mutant Zombie Salaryman was a pretty unique experience. Mekemeke and Inoue had a good laugh at my costume after I explained it to them. Also, MIU was there and when he first saw me, he thought some homeless crazy guy was playing Accent Core! When he realized it was me, he had a good laugh too. He also told us that the next day he would be running a 5 on 5 tournament at Shinjuku Club Sega which is pretty sweet. After playing for a bit, we decided it was time to hit up that party!

When we arrived, most people didnt even recognize me at first haha! Most people seemed to think my costume was pretty awsome though and had a good laugh. Current was pretty fucking packed and there were a ton of people wearing some really nice costumes! I took plenty of pictures, so you can check the costumes out for yourself, but a few examples were, a witch, cops, nurse, Alice in wonderland, the dude from Detroit Metal City, Admiral Ackbar, a 70's rock star, sexy Chinese dresses, little red riding hood, cat girl, anime waitress, and other stuff. Yago was dressed up in full drag lol! Also, Rod (Honnou) showed up dressed as Jack Skelington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. He had the whole suit and mask and everything and it looked cool, but he didnt wear the mask most of the night due to it being difficult to drink beer (which is why I would never dress as Faust for something like that).

Everyone was pretty much there that goes regularly. Antti hooked us up with some new snus packages. It was pretty much what is to be expected at any huge event at Current with tons of wastedness, dancing, and good times. Ayano got way too drunk again and was constantly falling over. I found out she has some sorta medical thing going on and her doctor tells her not to drink but she does it anyway. Her sister was gonna help her get home but she told her she was fine on her own and there was some drama over that but I wasnt really involved in it so I dont know all the exact details. I was hoping Chip would have showed up as some game character but he was just plain old Chip. I didnt get to do any DJing cuz they already had lots of DJs lined up. Some of them played some good stuff and some of them were playing some crap but it was still a good night anyway. All in all it was more fun than last year's Halloween party even.

After it closed and after saying goodbye to everyone, I headed to PSY with Rod, Mi Seon and Matt. Most people changed out of their costumes before leaving Current but since I was already paintd green and it took a while to put on, I just kept mine on. People were telling me to watch out for the cops LOL, but cops are hardly ever around Kabukicho, and I wasnt technically doing anything wrong so whatever. A couple of people were there at PSY including this one French chick who was talking with me and Matt for a while. We stayed till about 6, got some food, and Matt and I headed back to his old apartment to sleep since he still had access to it. I went to sleep still wearing green paint all over my body.

I woke up the next day and took a nice long shower. It was kinda a bitch getting all the paint off my skin and I missed a few spots here and there, but it was good enough. We headed right over to Club Sega Shinjuku to sign up for the tournament since it was schedule to start in about a half hour. The place was fucking packed as hell when we got there. They had 6 AC cabs and a #reload cab there for fun set up. You could hardly even walk around the GG cab area because of all the people. In the end, 120 people signed up for this tournament! I signed myself, Matt, and Rod (who said he would be coming) up on the same team. As it got closer to the tournament starting, Rod wasnt there yet so I tried to call him like twice but his phone was off. I told MIU to take him off since he probly wasnt gonna show up. They formed teams with the left overs through RPS and we were paired with Gin (Slayer), this one Axl player who I know but forgot his name (he uses red and black Axl, and hes also the same Axl player I teamed up with along with Masutani at the Alpha Station SBO qual), and this really scrubby Millia player who did random shit like throw into that ride the hair slide move LOL! Most of all the big name top players were there. Eventually Rod showed up all late but the tournament was running late anyway so he was still able to enter, but since they already formed most of the teams, he was put on a seperate team than ours. He was originally gonna use Johnny but one of his team mates was already using Johnny, and while multiples of the same character are allowed, he opted to go with I-no for the sake of team variety.

The tournament worked just like regular 3 on 3 SBO style team tournaments but it was teams of 5 instead. Our first match, we had to fight a team of Haken(PO)/Basara(SL)/Zero(HOS)/En(SL)/Kishitaka(SO)... lucky us. Haken went first for their team and Matt went first on ours. Matt actually almost won both rounds but ended up losing. Matt didnt know it was Haken and afterwords said to me, "This guys not that good!" LOL! I went next and won the first round. The next 2 rounds were fairly close but I ended up getting cheesed by buster mixup crap and lost. Up next was Axl, who I figured would probably do well, but he lost both rounds and got perfected round 2. The Millia player was next and got beat down pretty hard, and Gin went last but also lost both rounds. I was the only one on the team who even took a single round. It was pretty devistating... getting OCVed in a 5 man team tournament... ouch. Haken is like a top 3 Potemkin player in the world though so I guess its not anything to be extremely ashamed of. Fortunately for Rod's team, they had better luck than us. They ended up winning 2 of their matches, one of which was against a team of 5 Anjis! LOL! The team included Limekey and Domi. Rod managed to beat one of the unknown Anjis, but then lost to another one. It was looking grim for them, but their was this red Ky player on their team who ended up beating all of the rest of the Anji's single handedly as their last player on the team. Eventually Rod's team lost to the same team we lost to. I saw Rod fight Kishitaka and almost beat him actually. I think in the end, Rod's team got 4th place which is pretty good. The winning team ended up being Haken's team, which isnt too surprising. During the tournament I played various casuals and I even played a game of #reload for the first time in years.... and my opponent was Ogawa's Eddie LOL! I was reminded of the true meaning of pain. Ogawa just showed up to watch and didnt enter the tournament. Though if he could somehow use #reload Eddie im sure he would OCV the entire 5 on5 alone haha.

When it was over, Rod, Matt, and I went to get some food, and then we headed over to Vegas to play casuals. Most of the people who were at the tournament had made their way over to Vegas as well, so it was pretty fuckin packed. I honestly dont remember too many specific noteworthy details. Just lots of really good games and we played for several hours.

After playing, we stopped by Mi Seon's resturaunt to eat but it was already near closing time. We made plans to have her meet us at PSY later. We got some food at this awsome izakaya where everything was like 300 yen, and they had these GIANT beers for like 400 yen which were totally worth it. I got some okonomiyaki and some takoyaki too.

Since this was a Sunday night (Monday being a national holiday, none of us had work/school) we figured Current might not be too packed, and we decided to just go bar hopping tonight. We started off at PSY so that we could meet up with Mi Seon, and had a few beers there. It was a bit early and pretty dead. Only ones there were some random dude, this wasted guy who was passed out on the bar, and a chick who was bar tending.

After PSY we decided to check out Mother. Mother is right accross the street from PSY and is the bar that Yoshi worked at before he opened Zin. I had never been there before so this was my first time. The place was extremely small! Probably the smallest bar I have ever been to. I would say it had a max capacity of maybe like 9 people LOL. There were like these 4 random foreigners sitting at the bar, and then there was like this little sitting booth area in the back where the 4 of us were just able to squeeze into. All the lights in the place were red, and the walls were covered in various band posters and mirrors. In addition to being one of the smallest bars ive ever been to, it was also maybe the loudest (which very well could be related). They had a sub woofer right next to where we were sitting and it was falling apart. We could barely hear eachother talk and they were playing this really ear peircing screetchy guitar sound music that im not familar with. I decided to mix it up and got some red wine. They had a list of the bands they had in the menu, and (I think it was Rod's idea) we requested Rock Lobster by the B-52s which I found hilarious because I never had heard the song before aside from the parody they did on Family Guy. We were surprised how long the song seemed to go for. We enjoyed dancing like idiots in our small cubicle-like corner of the bar for a bit. When the song was over and our drinks were finished, we were in unanimous decision to go to the next bar. On the way out, Matt realized that the chick who was bar tending has been to Zin before and said something to her, but it was so loud I couldnt hear a word they were saying.

Up next was GODZ! It had been a while since I went to GODZ so I wanted to check it out. There was actually a good size crowd there tonight, though aside from the guys that work there I didnt know any of them. We got a table towards the back. We had several drinks while we were there. We also requested like 4 different songs and they played all of em for us. They were on a roll playing good shit all night so it was good times there. There was also this one dude there for some reason, just sitting by himself and he was listening to his i-pod! Who the fuck goes to a heavy metal bar where the music is blasting loud as hell and listens to their i-pod?! ...and its not like maybe they played a song he didnt like so he just put it on for a bit (which would still be odd)... this guy was listening to his i-pod for like the entire almost 2 hours that we were there! Fucking strange.

After GODZ, we headed over to Zin. When we walked in, there were only 2 people there aside from Yoshi, but they left right as we got there. Yoshi was also cool about requests and I asked him to play some of the songs off the new Alice Cooper album called Along Came a Spider (which is fucking awsome, btw. You should check it out, its a concept album about a serial killer who saws off his victims legs and eats them and wraps them in silk... until one day he falls in love LOL). We had a few drinks and talked with Yoshi for a bit, but it was completely dead so we didnt stay for all that long. It was already almost 4 am so we figured we should head to Current.

When we got to Current it was already almost 4:30. The only one there working was Mogi, and Saeko, Miki, and Yago were at the bar but that was it. The 3 of them were about to leave cuz Mogi was already planning on closing up a bit early cuz he wanted to go drinking somewhere else I guess. The rest of them were just gonna go home. So we just sat at a table for about 10 minutes and didnt order anything and then we just left. Rod and Mi Seon were tired so they just ended up going home, but Matt and I figured we could go back to PSY again for a little more drinking.

As is usually the case with PSY in the later hours, the place was now actually alive. I think maybe about 5 or 6 people were there besides us. The chick who was bartending earlier was now drinking at the bar and was completely wasted. The owner was bartending this time. The French chick was there again and she bought everyone a round of Jager shots. Matt was gonna give me his shot but I told him to stop being a pussy and man up and he took the shot and held it down. Good shit. Eventually the female bartender stumbled out of the bar and left but she came back shortly after, sat back down at the bar, and threw up on herself... yummy. Good thing she didnt do that shit when she was working earlier. We stayed till about 6 am and then headed back to Matts old apartment in Nakano one more time. Im pretty sure this is the last time ill stay there ever since by next weekend he should have all his shit moved out.

I woke up and Matt was gone. He had a date with his new girlfriend so he just let me sleep there as long as I wanted and left the key and said he would meet me later at the arcade and pick it up. My bass guitar and amp were still at his place and since he was moving out, I had to take them home. I was originally planning on doing some shopping for my girlfriends birthday on this day (her birthday is coming up on the 12th of this month) but since I had to lug all that shit with me I didnt really wanna go into any crammed stores. I took a shower and headed out to Vegas.

It was dead as hell for Guilty Gear. There was one random scrub fighting the computer and then these 2 other guys who obviously were fighting eachother for a while cuz one of them had 21 wins. I was watching them play and they were pretty crappy but I decided to try to fight the 21 win guy who was using Testament anyway and I slaughtered him for free twice and then they just left. After fighting the computer for about 5 minutes, I realized no one was gonna play me so I played a little SFIV since a few people were playing it. This one Sagat player beat me like 4 times in a row and I just said fuck it and decided to go play at Akihabara.

Club Sega Akiba actually had a good ammount of people playing there. I started off playing against a green Zappa who I assumed was Mitsurugi (and it was), and lost in a close game, but then played him again and won. He moved to another cab and I got a small win streak until finally a May player showed up and beat me. I went to the other side of the cabs and played some more which lead to a 19 win streak that eventually ended by a Millia player who I already beat like a ton of times but managed to squeeze in a lucky win. Ogawa was sitting next to me for most of the time. After I lost he was trying to give me all sorts of advice but Ogawa is always hard to understand when he talks cuz he uses lots of vocabulary and slang I dont know. Eventually Matt showed up with his girl and I gave him his key. He only stuck around for one game and then left. I played a bit longer and eventually I got a call from Rod who was asking if I wanted to meet him in Shinjuku. I told him that Vegas was dead earlier but if he wants to check it out and let me know how it is ill go. He eventually told me there were people there now, and Akiba was actually starting to clear out a bit, so I said goodbye to Ogawa and headed back to Shinjuku.

When I got there though, it was already getting pretty close to the time when I have to catch my train to go home. I told Rod I was just gonna get some Wendys instead. After eating, I had about another 25 minutes to kill so I decided to just walk over to Vegas afterall and see what was up. Rod was fighting against Inoue who was using Faust for some reason and Inoue had 11 wins. Rod said they were all against him and he was clearly getting pretty frusterated losing to Inoue so many times. I know the feeling. Inoue can be really annoying to fight against because sometimes he doesnt do things that are extremely spectacular but he just ends up winning anyway. Hes a really smart player and can use so many characters. When you watch him play its not always so impressive but he is just solid. I only had time for a few games. I played against some a few players like a Ky and a Zappa and won all 4 games and then I told the dude who was about to put another credit in that I had to go. I said bye to Rod and headed out.

I was gonna leave at 8:25 but the Zappa played me and I ended up leaving at about 8:28. When I got to the station, I ran up to the train platform and the train began to pull away JUST as I got up there. Had I not fought Zappa, I would have made the train. As a result of missing it, I had to take a limited express train which costs 900 yen extra, which kinda sucks, but its better than sleeping on a bench at Takasaki station all night and being late for work.

Overall it was a fun weekend. I was pretty hungry to play some more gear and didnt really want to leave heh. Next weekend I have a PTA sports tournament event that I have to go to. They had the same thing last year and I have to play in a ping pong tournament. I like ping pong but would much rather be able to go to Tokyo on Friday night than play ping pong in a freezing cold gym on Saturday morning. After the tournament ends at about 12 ill be heading to Tokyo as usual, though I dont know whats going on as far as tournaments since I havnt picked up the latest Arcadia yet.