Another One Bites the Dust

Well, this is it. The final post of 2010. It was a good year.

Friday night, I promised the other English teachers at my main school that I would go drinking with them at an izakaya in Numata, so I did. Drank a good amount, ate some good food, and then Ryoko picked me up and we chilled at my place for a big and I drank some more.

Saturday I got up around 10:30 and headed out to Tokyo. This weekend was the final 2 Johnny-o cup 2 on 2 qualifiers. Today's Mikado tournament was scheduled to start at 3 as usual. I got there and signed up my team (once again entering with Gaku, the Robo-ky player). I got some good practice games in and the turnout was good with lots of top players showing up.

Our first match of the tournament was against a team of Faust and Slayer. I dont remember their names but I had never heard of them before. Gaku went first against the Faust player and won. Then he lost against the Slayer. I went next and I beat the Slayer player.

For our 2nd match, we had to fight Ain (Ky) and Kishya (FA). This time I went first and my opponent was Ain. I managed to beat him last time so I was feeling pretty good about it. It was a pretty good match and I would have won the 2nd round, but I got impatient when he had like almost no life left, did a sloppy pogo force break that he was waiting for, he counter hit me with crouching HS and I died from the following combo. Up next was Gaku vs Ain. Kishya and I are both Faust players and we both brought a Ky player along, except my Ky player is a Robot Ky, which means hes made of METAL! Gaku rocked that shit out and took out Ain. Unfortunately Kishya's Faust is just too good and Gaku was unable to take him out so that was the end of the road for us today.

Around the time we lost, King Low Tier showed up. He was playing some SSFIV Arcade Edition (which just came out on Thursday). I hadnt even played it yet cuz I was waiting for the GG tournament to finish but now that it was over I wanted to get some games in. Mikado got 2 SSFIV:AE cabs. KLT was rocking his Mokoto. We each played a game and then we decided to get some quick McDonalds cuz they were running the 200 yen bigmac deal all weekend.

We got some food and then came back and played some more. I got my card registered and my username is ElvnShadow (theres a 10 character limit unfortunately). Overall, I started off losing a few but in the end I did really well that day at Mikado with my biggest win streak being like 21 wins, and I didnt even lose, I just beat the game cuz people stopped playing me. We also went to Big Box for a bit and I didnt fare as well over there. I made sure to play plenty of GG in between playing SSFIV and Mikado as well. I ended up staying till about 10:00, so I got a good long day of games in.

After that, I grabbed some more big macs, knocked back a 180 ml flask fo whiskey and headed to Current. Tonight at Current was Emma's birthday party. First I sat with Kyla and a few of her friends for a bit but Kyla had to leave to go to some xmas party. Gradually lots of Current regulars showed up and it was a good turnout. Emma got a nice birthday cake. She also did some pretty sexy dancing on top of the bar (shes a professional dancer, not the stripper kind though). At some point I went outside with this one dude and we split another 180 flask of whiskey. Everyone also got free shots of jagermiester from the bar, and with all the beers I had throughout the night I got pretty smashed.

At some point I got hungry so we ducked out for a sec to walk to McDonalds and get a quick bigmac. On my way back, suddenly like out of nowhere, the bottom of my boot came loose from the rest of it from the front of the shoe to about halfway in the middle and was flopping around when I walked. It was seriously just out of nowhere and really bad, so I went to the conbini and bought some tape and wrapped it around my boot. It looks ghetto as fuck and it looks like I need to get new boots now.

I dont really remember much about the night after a certain point but from what I do remember and looking back at all the pictures I took, it was a good night and went well. I am pretty positive I went to PSY after the party with some people as well. LOL

I woke up in the manga kissa and forgot to set my alarm. Fortunately it was only like 1:30. I didnt need to be at the tournament today until 3 (thats when it starts), but it was in Kawagoe (part of Saitama) and would take a bit of time to get there so I had to leave ASAP. I got some more bigmacs for the road and headed out.

I was cutting things really close but in the end I pretty much made it to the arcade like at 3 pm exactly. They hadnt started yet so I was on time. Gaku already signed us up. The thing I was shocked to see was that this time, only 6 teams showed up. All the people there were good though such as Inoue/Nage team. Melon/Ina team, and a few other people.

Our first match was vs this one Robo-ky and a Millia player. I forget their names but they are around all the time. The Millia player I usually can beat. I went first this time vs the Millia player. It started out pretty well but then once I got put in the corner I was just blocking the mixups really badly. He kept using standing dust. I probably got hit by it like 3 fucking times! No one ever uses that shit lol, but its my fault for not blocking it. It was pretty much just a big brain fart on my part and since I didnt get any practice matches in I wasnt feeling very warmed up but oh well, I have no one to blame but myself on that one. So.... I lost. Up next, Gaku went, and he beat the Millia player. Next was a Robo-ky mirror match. Honestly Gaku is way better than the other guy IMO (based on my personal experience fighting both of them several times), but since mirror matches can sometimes be random as hell, Gaku lost....

I was pretty bummed cuz it was only a 6 team tournament and we only had to get top 2 to qualify, but somehow we still fucked it up heh. It was also the last chance so I wont be in the 2 on 2 at Johnny-o cup. The singles tournament quals will start when I get back from Chicago (actually they will have already started and I will miss the first week of it, but oh well) so im gonna try for that as well.

Since I was already out that way and had no real reason to go back to Tokyo, I just stayed at Magmax game center all day where I was already at. They got 2 SSFIV cabs and had 2 GG cabs set up and lots of people were playing both games so it was fun. I played more SSFIV but the wait to play was long cuz lots of people were there. Inoue was playing SSFIV as well. He just bought a card for it and was playing Yun. I fought him in his very first match and I beat him, too. Unfortunately, he seemed to learn fast (or he had already played before) cuz he didnt lose another single match the entire day. The only loss on his card was the one he took from me. I played him like 2 or 3 more times, and they were close games, but I lost. In general I was doing fairly well though. By the end of the day, I had about a total of 60 something matches on my card. 40 something of those matches were wins and 20 something were losses, so I guess I didnt do too bad. The game is a lot more fun to play in arcades than at home online. I guess its just the environment but thats pretty much the case with any fighting game.

Overall Rose feels exactly the same except Ultra 2 is nerfed. It still seems useful but there were lots of times it got stuffed by shit. My biggest problem with it now is that before, Rose could safely use Ultra 2 against Zangief to get him away from her and jump away after the ultra if Gief tried to SPD. NOW.... if I do ultra 2 within grab range of Gief, he can do an SPD on reaction and just straight up throw me out of it before I even can jump away after ultra. It sucks... I got ultrad by Gief a few times as a result of that scenario. I guess I just need to get used to playing with the ultra modified. I guess I could also try to use Ultra 1 more but I am just so used to Ultra 2. We will see though.

Anyway, after I left the arcade and was heading home, I suddenly noticed that my vision seemed to be a little off. Actually, i never mentioned it last week but my eyes have sorta been hurting lately. It started when I fell asleep with my contacts in after passing out as soon as I got to the manga kissa last weekend without taking them out. I woke up and it hurt pretty bad, espessially my left eye. Sometimes my left eye is like that and my left eye is pretty shitty anyway so I dont really care, but my right eye never had problems like this and its starting to worry me. I was just wearing my right lens only for the past week but even so my right eye was starting to feel agitated. Now, I suddenly feel like my vision in that eye is getting weaker. Stuff is just blurrier in general and it almost seems like its more sensitive to bright light. I really hope it ends up being ok... kinda has me worried a bit.

Anyway, tomorrow, I leave for Chicago and will be gone for 3 weeks. Ill be doing lots of chilling with my friends and family and drinking and other stuff and I cant wait to eat some good burritos again. Also, Frosty Faustings III will be going down so that should be fun. I wont bother updating my blog while im back in the US but I may type some stuff about it when I get back. I hope everyone has good holidays and good new years. Make sure to get wasted and play lots of fighting games. Peace!