Potemkin Busters and "Everlongs"

Ryoko had Saturday off so she came with me to Tokyo Friday night. We played some DS Mario Kart on the train on the way there. After arriving in Shinjuku, she wanted to stop at Donkihote (a big store that sells tons of various stuff). We picked up a few things there and looked around a bit. Matt told me that he was meeting up with Akiko and would meet us in Shinjuku soon. Rod also said he would be on his way and that Tomoko would meet up with us later. Everyone decided to just meet at Vegas so I went there with Ryoko. I played a few games of GG. She watched me play a few and then went to wander around the arcade. After a little while, Matt and Akiko showed up. At first I couldn’t find Ryoko but she went to a nearby arcade to go use the bathroom cuz the one at Vegas is still out of order (and has been for over like 2 or 3 months now). Akiko and Ryoko went off on their own for a few minutes while Matt and I played a few more games of GG. It wasn’t very packed at all and the comp was pretty weak in general, I was winning like all my matches. Eventually I played Matt in a series of games, I don’t remember how many games we played, maybe like 6 or 7, and Matt got 2 wins on me. Sometime around here, Rod showed up. He gave Ryoko and I this big box of cakes from Cozy Corner as a thank you gift for having him over at my place. Really nice of him. FAB was there and I asked him to play cuz he was just standing around and he said he was probly gonna leave soon. Then after waiting a bit I guess he decided to play afterall while I was playing someone else and Matt fought him and lost to him but managed to get a perfect one round. Then eventually I played him in one game and it went down to the last round and was very close but I lost. HH was also there and I lost a game to him as well. Since it was dead and we also didn’t wanna make the girls sit and wait for us for too long, we decided to go get some food and start drinking.

The 5 of us headed to this great yakiniku place and got like 2 of these giant mixed meat platters plus some rice and beer and all just stuffed ourselves. It was a damn good meal. After that we headed to Current. It was pretty packed for a Friday night actually. Lots of regulars showed up. Eventually Tomoko arrived as well. There was this one white dude there, I forgot his name, but I could have sworn he was the same guy that passed out that one time where everyone started balancing shit on his head and carried him outside on a bench. He denied that it was him but honestly he probably just either forgot or was embarrassed to admit it LOL. He sat and talked with us for a bit and seemed like a nice enough guy. At some point he sprained his ankle dancing. There was also this really big fucking oafish guy there who was part of the Cirque de Soleil crew. This guy was a fucking giant! He was just picking up like every single girl pretty much that was in the bar and just basically Potemkin bustering their asses. He was just straight up like man handling them. Fortunately he never got a hold of Ryoko but he got Tomoko several times. He was mostly just fooling around and didn’t do anything really bad or anything so it was all good. I got a picture of him doing it to Rod as well lol! There was also this group of foreigners there that I thought was part of the Cirque de Soleil group too but after they left the bar, someone told me that they were the rock band Hanoi Rocks. They are gonna be in the Tokyo area for like the next week or so playing some shows and they always come to Current to drink whenever they are around.

We all enjoyed drinking there and stuff for a long time and it was all good. Once it was near closing time we headed out. Rod and Tomoko went home but Matt, Akiko, Ryoko, and I went to do some Karaoke. We bought some booze and snacks and snuck them in and paid for the rate where you don’t get booze but its cheaper. While we were in there, a dude came in to give us water and saw Akiko’s chu-hi and told her we cant bring stuff in. We said sorry we didn’t know. We spent about 2 hours there. I kept requesting songs and it told me that they went through on the machine but then they never got played and as a result I only got to do like 4 songs the whole time so I was kinda annoyed by that. As we were leaving and checking out, the guys at the desk brought up the fact that we arnt supposed to bring our own stuff in. It seemed like they were gonna try to charge us extra but then Ryoko fucking kicked some ass and argued our way out of it, telling them “well you saw us holding Family Mart bags when we came in so why didn’t you say anything then?” and they were just all like “…uhh well.. umm.. don’t do it again.. you have been warned..” LOL. So we got away with it and probably just wont go back to that place cuz theres like 200 other karaoke places in Shinjuku.

After that, we walked and went to the same love hotel that we stayed at last time Ryoko came with me to Tokyo. They raised the prices since last time but whatever. Matt and Akiko got a room and so did Ryoko and I.

Fast forwarding to the next morning, I got a lot of sleep and it felt really refreshing. Fast forward some more and eventually it was near checkout time (5 pm) and Matt and Akiko were getting ready so Ryoko and I just flipped through what was on TV a bit. They had some crappy censored porn on one channel and typical Japanese crap TV on the rest. Eventually Matt and Akiko came to our room so then all 4 of us went to go check out.

After that, we went to a Thai resturaunt. It was pretty dead there but the food turned out pretty good. People kept coming in there but none of them were customers, they would just talk with the owner and leave. I wonder if the place was some sorta front for some shady business lol. I got this coconut seafood curry and it was really good but a bit expensive and small portion. Even with the rice side order I got with it, I was still kinda hungry. Ryoko got this pineapple rice stuff which was served in a hollowed out pineapple. Everyone enjoyed their meal and then we headed out.

We didn’t really know what we wanted to do next. We walked around a bit and we tried to go bowling but the wait was too long. We thought about seeing a movie but everyone was like kinda 50/50 on seeing one so in the end we just ended up going to an izakaya for some drinks and snacks and talked some more for like 2 hours or something. Once it got near the time the girls had to go home, Matt and I walked them to Shinjuku station and said goodbye to them. From there, it was time for some Guilty Gear at Vegas!

Once again it wasn’t very packed for whatever reason. Rod met up with us there. I played a lot of games and did generally well, even getting a win vs Hase’s Slayer, but then at some point Rod and Matt kept trying to beat HHs Dizzy and couldn’t so then after they gave up and went to play other people, I tried and I ended up losing like 10 games in a row to his Dizzy. Most of them were pretty close and I don’t feel like I really played bad, HH was just in the zone really. I didn’t get pissed but it kinda made me feel like not playing anymore for the night and I sorta just wanted to go drinking, plus it was already getting late.

We headed to Current after that. It was a party hard night and a decent amount of people were there again. Hanoi Rocks was there again as well and were sitting at a table in the back with lots of girls heh. This one girl, Waka, that we sometimes see there was also there. She was pretty drunk and was flirting with Rod a bit. Rod was just talking with her and she kinda got a little touchy feely and was hugging him a little but it didn’t seem like anything that was a huge deal or anything. However, at some point, Matt, Rod, and I are sitting at the bar. All of a sudden Sushi comes up to Rod and starts like saying all this crap to him about not to touch that girl or something, but he was smiling when he said it and it looked like he was just acting and messing around. We weren’t sure if he was actually serious and didn’t even really know wtf he was talking about at first. I told him he was funny and then he whispered in my ear “funny huh?” in a tone that from what I could tell seemed like he was joking around. Then all of a sudden while Rod and Matt were talking, I look over and noticed Sushi just starts slapping the shit out of Waka! Im like holy shit! Some people started to try to hold him back and then all of a sudden, Sushi comes up to Rod, starts yelling a bunch of shit at him and straight up slaps him across the face! I tried to calm Sushi down and told him Rod didn’t do anything and didn’t know anything either. None of us knew that Waka was supposedly his girlfriend and last I talked to Sushi about that subject, he told me he had no girlfriend. In any case, he was pretty wasted drunk and so was she. After he slapped Rod, Rod handled himself well, didn’t get upset, just maintained his composure and kept his cool. Sushi then went back to slapping Waka around and a bunch of people held him back and then eventually both of them ran outside for a while. At this point we weren’t really sure we wanted to be there anymore. We figured we would wait till the stuff outside in front settled down. After that happened, about half the bar cleared out and a big group of people left with Hanoi Rocks. Eventually, Sushi came back inside and seemed to have calmed down and apologized to Rod. I didn’t hear exactly what he said but he said something along the lines of that he was very drunk and shouldn’t have hit Rod and some stuff like that. Honestly, I don’t know if I could ever look at Sushi the same again and the whole experience really left a sour taste in my mouth. He obviously over reacted and hitting women isn’t something that a guy should ever be doing like that. Chip and Kunko showed up and we said hi to them and they had no idea what just happened and we didn’t bring it up. Shortly after, we decided to just leave and go to PSY cuz it was the owner of the bar’s birthday.

It was still pretty early when we left, only maybe like 1:30. We spent the rest of the night just drinking at PSY which was fun. It was packed pretty full. Natsume (the owner of PSY, not the Dizzy player) was already wasted when we got there. While we were there I probably saw him down like at least 6 or more rounds of shots and he was still fucking hanging in there so he gets props for that. There was this random drunken Japanese dude who was sorta being an ass, and started screaming “NO JAPANESE!” anytime a foreigner started speaking Japanese, and the guy could barely stand on his own 2 feet. Eventually he left and other than him being mildly annoying, the rest of the night was cool. I think I ended up falling asleep for a little towards the end and woke up at 6:30 am. Rod was gone, and then Matt and I got some McDonalds breakfast and went to sleep at the manga kissa.

The next day we pretty much just played GG all day. We left Vegas at some point once Rod showed up to go to Shinjuku station to buy our overnight bus tickets for spring break. I will once again return to Kansai just like last year but this time Rod and Matt will go with me, so it should be some epic shit. After getting the tickets, we returned to Vegas. It was pretty dead most of the day, but for the last few hours lots of big names showed up. Hot Zappa and HZB were there, as well as Natsume and Baim. Also, Hase, Udei, and Takare came. Inoue and Basara were there too. Even Imo showed up towards the end. It was some good times. I had these gummy bears that I bought with Ryoko on Friday but we forgot to eat them, so I busted them out and shared them with a bunch of people. At some point I was fighting this one Axl player and I hit him with this one loop combo where you do command throw into stand p, crouching, slash jump, kick, air dust, into pogo force break, and then you can loop him over and over doing pogo p head, ground flower ground flower, repeat over and over. At some point I threw an item and got meteors while still comboing him, the meteors combod and then I kept going with the loop and the whole thing probably did something like 50 hits or something. The damage gets pretty scaled after a while but it looked cool and I heard Baim and Hot Zappa behind me cuz they were watching my match and they were all impressed and shit lol. I also asked Hot Zappa and HZB if they were gonna enter SBO but they said no. I said they should enter together. Rod ended up getting a 5 win streak with I-no and even beat Takuya for the first time. At some point I beat Takare’s Eddie which felt nice. Then Hase played me and I lost to him twice and after that it was pretty much time for me to go. Rod already had left at that point to meet with some friends. I said bye to some people and then Matt and I left and walked to the station.

On the train platform I was walking towards the train and suddenly I hear a voice say “hey!”. I turn around and The Snus Man is there! He said he was just getting back from the Hanoi Rocks concert at Studio Coast. Some Japanese metal head dude from Current was with him too. He immediately busts out his snus pack and gives me a snus lol! Hes such a cool guy. He invited me to go drinking with him at Current but I told him I had a 3 hour train ride home and had to work tomorrow so he understood. I said bye to him and flashed the other guy the metal horns and got on my train.

Overall it was a fun weekend aside from that drama. I think its gonna be pretty awkward the next time I go to Current but at the same time I still want to drink with all my other friends and still love the place. Alcohol makes people do stupid things sometimes. I guess I can just say im glad that im not an angry drunk.