Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Birthday Drinking with Matt Johnson

On Friday, I had to monitor some students take a standardized English test until 5:30 so we didnt end up making it out to Tokyo until about 10. Matt, Emmet, and I had a few beers on the train. We went to Mikado anyway though and played some GG. Some players such as Udei, Tanabata ("seta"), NOB, Hot Zappa, and HZB. I played HZB's Robo-Ky a few good matches. There was also this pink Faust whose good but I dont remember his name. Played him in a few mirror matches and he also used PO and ZA on me. The time there went by fast and before we knew it the closing music came on. We said bye to Hot Zappa and her boyfriend and left.

We went to go check out Children of Baba, that ramen place with signs modeled after the Children of Bodom logo, but it was closed again. Ive never seen this place open. Maybe its out of business. We grabbed some quick kababs instead at some place. They had a hookah in there but I have no idea if its able to be smoked by customers. It was pretty good food though.

Then we headed to Shinjuku for drinking at Current. There was a good crowd in there for a Friday with a few regulars and a few random people. Chibi Testament was there and she was drinking with us for a bit but she was already way too wasted and was getting a bit overly emotional and was having trouble standing up straight. We sorta needed a break from that so we headed over to PSY a bit early.

PSY was dead when we got there but it gradually got a little more packed towards the end of the night. At first they were playing a movie with the sound off and Japanese subtitles on called "Burn After Reading" that I never saw before. It was pretty amusing I guess. Then they played this crazy movie about some post opp tranny guy who grew up in Germany and likes gummy bears and there was like some male character in the movie who was played by a girl and it was totally hard to tell it was a chick. In any case, it was a really fucked up movie and I didnt pay that much attention to it.

Eventually Chibi Testament came to PSY cuz Emmet told her we were there and she was pissed at us for leaving her there. Shes a nice girl and all but she needs to be a little more sober and less emotional sometimes.

The rest of the night was just drinking and talking with people and they stayed open till about 7. After leaving there, we got another kabob and some small little cart parked nearby that I never saw around there before. Then, it was off the the manga kissa for 6 hours of sleep.

The next day we got up, had some mediocre mexican food, and then headed to Mikado. It was sorta dead at first with just a few scrubs there. I played my 2ndaries against them cuz using Faust would have been too free. Then Kunihiro showed up to save the day and we ended up playing eachother for like the next several hours straight. We started off with Fuast vs Anji. I won the first game, but then he broke away and won like the next 5. Then I won a few and we went back and forth and started to even out but he had a few games lead. Then he went through like all his secondaries playing ED, SO, JO, VE, TE, KY, SL, and I beat all of them so he just went back to Anji. Then for a while we were going pretty even and I got cought up to even wins or maybe even a slight lead. Then at some point near the end he broke away and got 9 wins in a row on me. Most of them were extremely close too, but I was starting to get pissed off and it was affecting my execution a lot. I finally beat him and then it was pretty much time for us to go. We had plans to go to an izakaya. Kunihiro also was asking me about if I was going to EVO again this year and when it is. I told him due to it being a week earlier I cant go and that there probably wont be an official GG tournament. He seemed to be considering the idea of going cuz some friend who lives in Cali invited him to go out there or something. Not sure if he will go or not though. Also, by this time, Sam and Andy had arrived at Mikado. After I finally beat Kunihiro after that long losing streak, Sams PO fought me but I didnt realize it was Sam. Andy was like giving me shit for beasting so hard and getting a little riled up and hes like "dude its just Sam, chill out") but I didnt see him get on the cab so... lol! After that match, we all went to go to the izakaya.

The plan was to meet up with Eriko and Mari, 2 of Matts friends from back in the day who I met before. Sam and Andy went with us. Emmet had already went off on his own to meet up with his new girlfriend who I have yet to meet. We went to this awsome izakaya in Shibuya called The Cantina. We got the nomihodai (all you can drink) for 2 hours and it was only 1500 yen per person. They also had really good food and we got stuff like tacos, nachos, chicken wings, cob salad, steak, and some of the most giant onion rings ive ever had. We knocked back more than enough beers to get our moneys worth. Also, the girls ordered Matt a birthday ice cream sundae thing with lots of fruit in it, so the place turned off the lights and everyone sang happy birthday and he blew out the candles and all that. Then they took a picture for us and printed out copies for everyone. There were also 2 other birthdays at the place that day apparently. Also, for some reason they just played Beatles music the entire time we were there which I found a bit odd and slightly redundant. Also, the toilet flusher in the bathroom was a foot pedal which was totally awsome.

After the izakaya, we parted ways with the girls and then headed to Shinjuku Sportsland for a few last minute games. We knew that since we would be drinking hard to celebrate Matt's birthday and that we were already pretty drunk, it would be smart to sober up a little before going to Current. Female Zombie Sol was there and she beat up Matt a few times in GG. Sam wanted to play me in SFIV so I played him. I beat his Chun his Claw and I think I went even with his Dictator or he had one win over me or something. Then Sam went to mess around on Arcana 3 vs the computer to try it out and Andy was like giving him tips on stuff. Sam wasnt gonna go with us to Current cuz he was broke but changed his mind last minute so we all headed to Current.

Once again, there was a good size crowd in there with lots of regulars. Emmet was there as well by the time we got there but he didnt bring his girlfriend. This time we stayed at Current until closing. Sawa came this time and brought a friend of hers. We sat with them most of the time. There were also random foreigners that were dancing like a ton and were going snus man style trying to get everyone to get up and dance. They left after a while though. At some point, Sam suddenly just vanished and I didnt see him for the rest of the night.

After closing, a huge group of us went to PSY and a bunch of other people that were at Current eventually showed up there too, so it got pretty packed in there since there were already people in there when we arrived. Natsume gave Matt a free birthday shot of tequila but he was too much of a pussy to finish it so he gave it to Emmet lol. We did drink a TON of beers and long islands and all kinds of stuff at Current though so we were already reasonably trashed, not to mentioned doubling up on extra strong snus. This time PSY closed around the normal 6 am time but we rallied up a big group of people to go do Karaoke.

The group was like... me, Matt, Andy, Emmet, Sawa, her friend, Chibi Testament, some white guy, and some other Japanese girl who we didnt really know but they were nice enough. Most of the good karaoke staples were sung. The room we got was huge which was nice, but the mics sucked and kept going out and one of them had the volume too low while the other one had it too high and we had problems adjusting it. We did more drinking there and did 2 hours of karaoke. It was a little after 8 when we finally ended. Surprisingly no one threw up which amazes me. Matt and I got some quick McDonalds breakfast and then went to the manga kissa. Emmet was already there when we arrived.

We woke up the next day after 8 hours of sleeping there. Emmet was already gone when we got up and had gone home ahead of us. It was already like after 5 pm. When we went outside it was already dark out too. We ended up going to Burger King cuz they reduced the prices of their 6 piece chicken nuggets, fries, and onion rings to only 150 yen so it made it worth it. After eating there, we pretty much just decided we should head home. We were on our way to catch the perfect train that basically is an express train and in addition we minimize our transfer time at Takasaki. Well, for whatever reason, Matt and I were having an in depth conversation about the intricacies of if you were to make an attempt to take a dump outside the window of a moving train, and youd only get why we came to this conversation I had explained a lot of stuff I dont want to get into right now... but suffice to say, as a result of this conversation I wasnt even paying attention to where we were going and we got on the Chuo line instad of the Saikyo line, which resulted in us missing our train by like 15 minutes, which meant we got on the absolute WORST train to take home... being a local train with over a 45 minute transfer time.... ugh. So we just played DS/PSP (at least until the batteries on BOTH of mine died which didnt take long...) and I enjoyed some snus. Matt was like watching porn on his cellphone too lol. He didnt tell me until after we were already off the train though hah.

We finally got back to my apartment at like 10:30. We watched the Daily Show and then hit the sack.

I went to work on Monday and it was just a ski tournament for one of my schools so I got paid to ski all day which was awsome, yet somehow I got sunburned cuz im one of the pastiest white boys ever.

Then after work it was Matt's actual birthday so we played some SFIV and then Ryoko came over and surprised us with like a whole giant cardboard box full of yakiniku! She also invited over her friend Eli cuz it was just too much meat for us to all finish. We had an absolute FEAST and theres still like at least 5 big whole packs of meat left over! We even went through over like 10 packs of meat already. Matt and I also pounded a ton of beers and did tons of snus. Then at the end of the night we played 4 player Mario and Eli had never played a Mario game before in her entire life which shocked me pretty hard. Ryoko brought Matt a birthday cake from where she works too but we didnt have any room left to eat it so we just lit the candles and sang happy birthday and we will just save that for later. After that, the girls went home, we went to sleep and somehow im not even hungover right now.

Infact, despite all the drinking this weekend and eating a lot of stuff I probably shouldnt be, somehow my ulcer hasnt really been bothering me all weekend. Maybe its actually starting to heal... but only time will tell.

Next weekend there will be more Tokyo shenanigans.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Back In Business Again

Winter break was fun times. I went home to Chicago for a few weeks and pretty much just got fucked up every day with friends and family. Frosty Faustings went smoothly and I won both GG singles and teams which was good. Full results for all tournaments can be found here and here in these threads on dustloop and SRK.

Matt is now back in Japan for a few weeks. He will be staying at my apartment for most of the time while he is here visiting. He has been in Japan for a few days staying with some other friend.

On Friday after work, Matt came to my apartment. His friend is a Japanese dude who was studying abroad in Oregon and lives in Maebashi. According to Matt, he is a good SFIV player. His friend dropped him off at my place and then we headed to Tokyo together on the train. Emmet got on at Numata and rode out there with us too.

We headed right to Mikado. There was a good amount of people there playing GG and other stuff too. I pretty much stuck to GG the whole time we were there, doing pretty well for the most part but my execution felt just a little rusty. Matt was mostly playing BB since GG is kinda dead where he lives now so he sorta has to play BB if he wants any comp.

We stayed at Mikado till a little after 10. We probably would have played longer, but Liz wanted to join us at Current for a few drinks and wasn’t gonna stay out past the last train, so we left to go drink with her there. We got some road McDonalds on the way. They have this new Texas burger which has like onion ring bits, BBQ sauce, bacon, cheese, and this really awesome mustard on it. Its pretty tasty stuff. Appearently they are going to release a California, New York, and Hawaii burger sometime soon as well.

When we got to Current all the seats at the bar were full and it was like all people I didn’t know and probly half of them were foreigners. Sushi, Mogi, and Mame were working the bar. Masami was there and he had broken his arm. He had a cast on it. I asked him how it happened and he said he doesn’t remember cuz he was too drunk lol… I hope he gets better soon though. I cant say I never injured myself while drunk hah…

Soon after, Liz arrived and joined us at our table, and Shuji came and sat with us as well. He was pretty happy to see Matt. SPG Chris was also there and sat with us for a good while until he eventually went to go to GODZ. He was telling me about how his band is playing a live show in Okubo next Saturday so we might go to that next weekend.

I briefly mentioned before that Emmet often randomly just starts singing song lyrics and he substitutes out random words for “Andy.” Andy doesn’t particularly care for it but hes a trooper and just sorta deals with it and sometimes even cant help but to laugh. Well Emmet got Matt hooked on this and we were busting out Andy lyrics for a good while hah… Matt never even met Andy yet before so it made it even sorta more funny. One of the best ones is “Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are Andy!”

Bosch came later on and was spinning all kinds of weird random shit. After Liz left and we decided we wanted to switch up venues at about 2 am, we headed to PSY.

PSY had a good amount of people there. The PSY staff was pretty surprised to see Matt as well. For whatever reason, they had Coyote Ugly playing on the big screen in there with Japanese subtitles on and the sound off. We requested a ton of songs and they even played The Count of Tuscany in all of its 19ish minutes entirety.

I have this new kind of snus called Elixyr that has caffeine and tourine in it, in addition to being extra strong as well. Matt and I were buzzing hardcore off this shit and we were so wide awake. By the time PSY closed at 6 we were still wide awake and feeling great, so we wanted to drink some more. Emmet, on the other hand, was barely staying awake. Probably because he slammed like 2 whole small bottles of whisky at the conbini. SPG Chris showed up too and I was talking to him for quite a while. He was pretty hammered.

I decided I would take Matt to Tokyo Loose. I knew it was guaranteed to sorta suck, but its open late and they have fair prices on beer and it’s a place to drink. Plus he at least should see it once lol. SPG Chris went with us too but he left like right away cuz I guess he wasn’t digging the place at all, which I don’t blame him. It wasn’t too packed in there and as usual the guys to girl ratio was heavily in favor of guys with like a good amount of them being the Nigerian dudes.

There were these 3 girls from somewhere in Europe, I don’t remember where. When we first walked in, they were like asking us to save them cuz they thought the place sucked too and apparently they were here on vacation and just found the place somehow. We talked with them for a little while, mostly Matt. Then at some point, one of them who was kind of a chubby girl got all pissed off cuz one of the Nigerian guys like grabbed her arm sorta hard when she tried to wake up some guy who was passed out in the corner. So, eventually after arguing with her friends a bit, all 3 of them just stormed off and left… lol. There was also some passed out Japanese girl sitting down near the corner and some desperate Japanese guy was like trying to hit on her still. It was pretty sad. There was also another desperate Japanese guy totally macking on some old chick who wasn’t very good looking. Tokyo Loose is like the epitome of desperation. Its hilarious to go there and just see what kind of losers try so hard to pick up the skankiest and nastiest of hoes. We ended up drinking there until like 8 am cuz we were still buzzing pretty hard and watching all these people amused us. Eventually we decided that it was enough though so we left.

Matt wanted to get some spicy Indian curry before bed. I didn’t really want any but Emmet was all about it too so I just went anyway and got like the cheapest thing on the menu which ended up being like rice with some beans and really spicy curry. I only ate like half of it and then we went to the manga kissa to sleep.

The next day my stomach was hurting like hell! My ulcer continues to bother me, and eating that spicy curry before bed was a huge mistake. Never doing that again…

We headed out and went back to Mikado. It was pretty dead and not a single person was playing GG, so we went to Bix Box for some SFIV action.

There was this HUGE SFIV nationals tournament going on. I didn’t know any details about it but there was like Capcom staff there and stuff. They had tons of cabs going and tons of spectators. We watched a few matches and then eventually I realized that some of the cabs were for casuals so I played a few games. My first match was vs a Dhalsim player who had like over 100,000 bp or something named PPN. He was really good and was like wrecking tons of people. I did ok the first round getting him to about 25% life left but around 2 was brutal and he almost perfected me. Blanka vs Sim is a pretty bad matchup for me and I don’t know it nearly as well as I would like. I played a few more people like a Viper who I came extremely close to beating, and a boxer who I also did surprisingly well against but didn’t beat. Then suddenly Daigo gets on the cab and starts beasting with his Ryu. He wins like 5 in a row and then some other random Ryu who had like WAYYY less BP gets on and beats him in a mirror match! I think the guy wasn’t even Japanese, he was like Chinese or something. I was pretty surprised but the dude played really well. There were tons of people crowded around watching but then as soon as Daigo lost they all just cleared out lol! I was kinda bummed cuz I was up next to play and wanted to have Daigo kick my ass but that’s ok. Hes at Big Box all the time so Ill play him another day.

BTW, the finals of the tournament were

Mahou Shojo Zangitan no Chousen ~ Zenkoku Taikai Hen ~ (Mahou Shojo Zangitan's Challenge! Chapter - National Tournament!)
Mahou Shojo Zangitan (ZA)
TUC (DI)
Moruda (HO)

vs

Lettuce Sandwich
Shiro (AB)
Oji-san Boy (SG)
Kyabetsu (VI)

Final match was Ojisanboi vs Mahou Shojo Zangitan and Ojisanboi took the win. I didnt see the rest of it or most matches for that matter. We showed up late in the tournament and I didnt even know what was going on since I didnt know about the event till we just showed up for it. Id like to go to the next one though and know about it in advance so I can actually watch it and stuff. Mahou Shojo Zangitan did well and even beat another good Sagat earlier in the tournament and people were pretty hype about it.

After it was all over and we played enough casuals we decided to get some food. We got some quick McDonalds again and then headed back to Mikado. There were lots of people there playing now. Lots of big name GG players were there like Osaka B, Inoue, En-Slayer, Taku, Tanabata (aka “Seta”), and some others too. At first I played various people and was getting some mini win streaks of like 5 or 6 games and was playing against a blue May who I went about even with after 6 games. Then Taku played me and beat me a bunch of times. Osaka B played him a few times too but with no success. Then another pink Faust (whos name escapes me at the moment) eventually beat him after a few tries. Taku had like maybe almost 20 wins when he finally lost. I also played Tanabata’s Slayer a few times but couldn’t beat him as well. Those guys were both on fire. Matt played Tanabata once and did really well but didn’t win.

Andy showed up at around 6 pm. We played a little longer and then at around 6:30 we left. We had plans to meet up with Megu, Ayano, and some other people at an Izakaya at Shinjuku for drinks and food.

We met up with Megu and a friend of hers who I met for the first time and then went to the Izakaya, which happened to be located in the basement floor of the same building as the manga kissa we sleep at all the time LOL! The place was really nice though. It had like a pirate theme with pirate pictures on the wall and the walls looked like a ship and stuff. They also had these red light bulbs above each table that you turn on when you want to order something instead of the “pin pon!” sound buttons. It was pretty cool.

Eventually Ayano and her friend from Sweden showed up as well. Also, Liz called and wanted to join us so I met up with her at Donki Hote cuz its close by and showed her out to get to the place. So there was 10 of us total. We drank and ate there for about 2 hours. It was a pretty nice place and I would go there again for sure. We talked about lots of random stuff like how Emmet likes to have sex with Sheep.

After our time there was up, we left and just ended up going to Current. It was only like a little after 9 so it was pretty early, and since we started drinking at 7 I knew that this was going to be a long and very intoxicating night. From 7 pm to 6 am… that’s 11 hours of drinking. I knew it was gonna be a wild ride.

Tonight at Current there was a metal event. It gradually got more and more packed in there and eventually it was just like CRAZY packed! Even for a metal event there were a lot more people than usual for whatever reason. A good amount of regulars showed up too like Antti, his girlfriend Miho, and Snus Man… Kana, Chip, and some others. Antti seemed very happy to see Matt there. All the people in my group were sitting at the small table near the front and crowded tons of chairs around it and people kept being all cutthroat and jacking other peoples chairs when they went to buy beer or pee cuz there weren’t enough seats lol!

Chip brought a girl with him there from Sweden who he met a few nights ago or something at Current. Her name is Jasmine. She plays games and said she is even (or at least used to be) a Guilty Gear player and used Anji. She asked if we knew Marn cuz when him and Flash went to Sweden for that SBO tournament she met them there. She also asked if I knew Shinjn and I told her how we teamed up at the SBO last chance qual and hes a cool guy and a good player. I asked her if she ever heard of ElvenShadow and she said she did, and I said it was me, so she thought that was cool. Pretty random how that turned out.

They were playing good music throughout the night, and they even played a HUGE set of back to back ACDC songs. Probably like at least 10 in a row. I was kinda surprised cuz they usually play a bit heavier stuff but I love ACDC so I had no problem with it.

Later on at around 2, Antti and Matt wanted to do Karaoke so Matt, Emmet, Andy, Miho, Antti, and I went to the Karaoke place down the street for 2 hours. We sang lots of good stuff and drank a ton of beers. Emmet once again decided to substitute Andy’s name for the lyrics a bunch… much to Andy’s amusement… Near the end, we still had like half a pitcher of beer so we had to chug it before our time was up. This sorta pushed me over the edge and I was now officially wasted!

Once we stumbled back to Current I was just sloshed! I rocked out with the metal event crowd for a while and we stayed till closing time. Near the end of the night I like bumped into the table and knocked over my beer which was like a quarter full. Party foul on me. I was really fucking wasted though. At closing we said bye to everyone and then headed to PSY.

Matt, Andy, and I went ahead. Emmet eventually showed up with some girl he was hitting on at Current. At PSY I don’t remember much other than passing out for a little while and Hibiki showing up and talking with us a little bit. I finished my beer but I was just fucking wasted! At least I didn’t throw up or anything.

After PSY closed at 6, Andy went home back to Takasaki. Emmet was macking on that girl the whole time and ended up taking her to a love hotel. Matt and I went to the manga kissa for sleep.

The next day, I woke up extremely hungover. I could have used some more sleep for sure. Matt and I went to Akihabara cuz I needed to buy a few things. I accidently brought my brother’s PS3 power cable with me back to Japan instead of mine. His is 3 prong with the ground and Japanese power outlets are all only 2 prong so I couldn’t use it. I had to buy a 3 to 2 prong converter. I found one pretty easily for like 700 yen which was pretty cool so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Matt was looking to buy Final Fantasy 13 and the new Kingdom Hearts for PSP for his girlfriend (hes dating a Japanese girl studying abroad in American right now back home). I also promised Jessie, another ALT, that I would try to find her an R4 card for her DS.

Matt and I walked around a bit, I took a huge dump that was like tar black… like blacker than the blackest bowels of hell. It was pretty black. I know you all wanted to know that.

Eventually Emmet contacted me and he arrived so we met him at the station. We went to a few different stores cuz Matt was trying to find the best deal. Eventually we went to Gamers and they had the best prices so he got his games there and I also picked up the new Arcadia that has the SBO dvds for GG and Arcana. Sweet! I also was able to find Jessie her R4 at a little shady looking table with 2 people just selling them off of it on a side street.

Also, Emmet bought a remote control toy helicopter from a sex shop. Yea… I have no idea why they were selling it either but he bought it and was pretty excited about it cuz now he has 2 of them and can have them battle or something.

We stopped and ate at this one place and I cant remember the name, but it had 150 yen 5 piece nuggets and fries and onion rings so I got like 15 nuggets and some fries and rings and only could eat like half of them cuz I still had a really bad headache. It was fairly tasty though.

After eating, we did a little more shopping and pretty much went home at around 4 pm. Everyone got everything they wanted to buy so it worked out well.

I was tired as hell though on the way back and we had to wait 45 mins to transfer at Takasaki. Matt and I played some SFIV and some New Super Mario Bros. Wii at my apartment (Ryoko bought me a Wii for xmas).

Next week we will most likely be back in Tokyo again. It felt good to go back there after being away for a few weeks.