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.