The Tokyo 23

Friday after work I headed down to Tokyo with Emmet. I was feeling slightly stressed due to some work stuff that theres no point in getting into so I had a little extra beer than usual on the train. When we got to Tokyo, I still wanted to play fighting games for a bit but didnt really feel like going to Mikado cuz I was a bit drunk, so we went to Shinjuku Sportsland. I wasnt playing at the top of my game but still won a few GG matches but lost some that I shouldnt have. I also played some SSFIV and beat some Akuma player once who rematched me and beat me by a hair.

We didnt stay very long and decided to just go knock back some drinks outside and then hit up Current a little before 10 pm. For a Friday, I guess it wasnt decent but still not very packed. A group of people in the back consisting of Johan and some other people he knows were sitting at a table. We joined them for like an hour or 2. Some girl that Emmet met last weekend came to drink as well. Eventually they wanted to go to karaoke so we decided to join them.

We grabbed some whiskey to sneak in and got the 2 hour package. It was a pretty standard karaoke session and for some reason the songs I was requesting took forever to show up. I think people were just going nuts with requesting songs. Either way, I got pretty smashed and I think I fell asleep for just a little bit towards the end but woke up and sang more. It ended at around 4 and by this point I was already pretty smashed and tired so I just decided to go to the manga kissa and sleep so that I could get a lot of rest for tomorrows tournament.

So I woke up Saturday at around noon or something, grabbed some quick food and headed to Mikado. I got there pretty early with plenty of time to get some practice in. I was doing so-so in casuals. Today would be the very final Johnny-o cup singles ranbat to qualify for the 23 on 23 Tokyo team at Mikado. Going into the tournament, I had the highest amount of points among allt he Faust players who were trying out for the Tokyo team, so basically, even if I didnt place at all, I would still make the team as long as another Faust didnt win first place today, which would have allowed him to take the lead by one point. The only noteworthy Faust player who entered today was Nage, so as long as he didnt win first place I would be on the team.

I checked the brackets after they posted them and unfortunately my first match was against my old team mate, Gaku, the Robo-Ky player. I asked him if he checked the bracket yet and he said no. He went to go look and then after seeing it he turned around and gave me this WTF kinda laugh sorta face palm combo thingy cuz we didnt want to have to fight eachother since were friends. I just told him to do his best and wished him luck. Gaku usually beats me a bit more than I beat him in casuals. It could go either way but I didnt have a good feeling about.

So eventually they called our match and we battled it out. Gaku ended up winning. It wasnt increadibly one sided or anything but I made some stupid mistakes. I wasnt really upset or anything though. At this point, all I could do was just wait and watching, hoping that Nage wouldnt clinch the win.

Nage ended up winning his first match. I cant remember who it was against cuz I didnt see it, but I looked on the bracket and he had advanced. His 2nd match was against Satou's Johnny (the guy who fucked me up at the last qual and ended up getting 1st place). Now, I am pretty sure that Nage and Satou are friends and sometimes I get the impression that Satou might not like me very much, so I was a bit nervous that Satou might throw the match and let Nage win since Satou already has lots of points. The match ended up being really close and went down to the 3rd round. Satou was dropping some stuff and just didnt seem like he was on point with his game a little bit. In the final round, Nage had a big lead but then Satou made this really crazy comeback and won with a sick combo, eliminating Nage from the tournament. With that, I had officially qualified for the Tokyo 23 on 23 team! I am unsure exactly who else is on the final team at this time. They have a list on the Johnny-o cup website but it isnt updated yet to reflect the results of this current weekend's results. In any case, some really good players like FAB, Mitrurugi, Satou and others will be on the team, so its cool that I get to team with those guys.

After that, I pretty much just played some various casuals. I got some fun games in with Roy and Basara and beat his Testament. Had some other good matches with this one really good I-no and some good fights vs Melon's SL and ED. At some point, Johnny-o came by while I was in between matches and asked to confirm if I could make it for the Final 23 on 23 tournament on the weekend of the 19th. I told him I would be there so he checked me off the list.

I stayed and played for a bit longer but I had other plans for the rest of tonight. Normally I dont care too much about going to international parties unless I have a good reason and today was one of those days. Today, Phil, Bloodbath, and 2 other guys I know would be coming down from Gunma to go to the same international party with Emmet so I said I would go to hang out with everyone as well. The only problem was this one was at Tokyo Loose. I didnt really wanna go back there cuz I dont like the place but since the international parties are completely different than what its like normally, and I felt like drinking, I decided to go.

I grabbed a quick kebab for the road and then headed to Shinjuku. I met up with those dudes in front of Tokyo Loose and soon we went inside. We were some of the first to arrive but the place filled up pretty fast. I was the very first one to order a drink at the bar once they started serving a few minutes after we entered, lol. Normally Tokyo Loose is full of skanks and shady people blasting crappy top 40s club music but this time they kept the music lower and the people there seemed pretty cool generally. We talked to several girls (for me its just for fun), and I also ended up talking to a few pretty cool dudes there. This one guy was a pretty big metal head so we had a good chat about bands and live shows and shit.

The people at the party were cool but the thing that sucked about it was that the drink line was WAYYYYY to fucking long! First of all, they wernt serving beer for free (you had to pay 500 yen), but since they had full open bar of spirits, I didnt mind, and mostly just drank tequila cokes. The thing that sucked though was that the cups were really fucking tiny. They only had ONE guy mixing drinks at once, so the line would que up like 20 fucking people and the guy took forever to mix drinks, and it ended up being like a 15 minute wait in line every time you wanted a drink. This doesnt sound that bad but when the drink only takes like 10-15 minutes to finish when you are sipping it slowly it makes it a pain in the ass. The other thing that sucked is they didnt have all you can eat... just a few random plates of some crappy chips and stuff, but I knew this before hand (which is why I ate the kebab) so it wasnt really a big deal for me.

There was this one girl in particular who really seemed to take a liking to me. She was pretty hot, too. At the end of the night she wanted to exchange numbers with me to maybe drink somewhere else with us later (she was working as a voulenteer at the check in desk by the door for like the last hour of the party and had to stay and clean up so she couldnt leave with us). She seemed like a nice girl, and while I had no intention of actually trying to sleep with her or anything, I figured there was no harm in exchanging cellphone email.

After exchanging info I headed outside in front where a bunch of people were gathering. Emmet was with these 2 girls that wanted to go with us to Current. We were still waiting on a few other people to come out. Some of them were getting some last minute phone numbers and it was taking a while. Emmet and the girls were getting a bit impatient so I told them to just go on ahead without me and that I would wait up for Phil and whoever else wanted to come with us. Bloodbath and the other guys we were chilling with ended up going somewhere else with different girls. Eventually Phil came out and suddenly like this big crew of like 10 people (a mix of Japanese girls and some guys) decided to all go with me to Current so I lead the way and took everyone there.

Current ended up getting pretty packed, espessially with all the people we brought in. I talked with this one girl I know there named Chiho for a bit at the bar and then just mingled with various people who came with us from the party. Chris and Sachiko came later as well and I drank with them for a bit, too. We drank for several hours like this but over time, the people we all came with all eventually cleared out and left before the last train. The girl that Emmet was trying to get with had to get up early but otherwise would have stayed out.

Once it got dead, we decided to just go head to Shibuya and go to Camelot since the trains were still running and Current wasnt looking very promising. On the way to the station, we met up with Bloodbath and Li (one of the other guys we came with), as well as this one Japanese dude who was at the party. They had no girls with them saying all the girls had to go home.

When we got to Shibuya, I asked one of the staff if trains were still running when we got there since it was pretty late and some of the guys didnt believe they still were. He told me it was. Then I went to buy a ticket and went through the gates but the other guys were already like way ahead of me (they just didnt bother waiting I guess). I ran up the steps to the train and the doors were just about to close. I didnt see any of them but assumed they got on the train so I just piled in the packed train right in the knick of time.

I contacted Emmet soon after and he said they were all on the train so I told him Id just meet them outside the Hachiko exit.

I got out first and no one was around. I waited for a few minutes and then eventually a few of them came out. I asked where the rest of them were and they said that Bloodbath was like in this mode where he just decided to start hitting on like every good looking girl he passed by right ont he station platform just cuz he was drunk and didnt give a fuck lol. He eventually came outside but unfortunately his plan didnt work for the moment. From there, we all headed to Camelot. We stopped at Family Mart first to grab some whiskey to sneak in though.

We got inside and I put my stuff in a locker and split it with Bloodbath. Not long after, we all sorta get split up a bit but some of us ran into one another periodically through the night. I was with Emmet most of the time. We also ran into our friend Leo there. He rocks up to us with a 700 ml bottle of whiskey in his hand! He said that when he ordered his last drink, when the bartender wasnt looking, he just stole the whole fucking bottle from the bar counter! LOL!!! That takes some fucking BALLS! For a while we were chilling by a small table near the bar with no seats and Leo was sorta holding the bottle slightly under the table. Eventually he got a little sloppy and a staff member came by and saw the bottle. He got questioned about it but just lied and said he found it here on the table and he just gave it to the staff guy. The guy actually believed him (or at least decided not to do anything about), took the bottle, and just left us alone, lol! He got lucky as fuck, but it was still hilarious. Emmet and I were a bit smarter about our snuck in whiskey and we knocked it back in the bathroom without notice.

I also ran into that Italian chick who used to go to Current with Fracheska all the time, too. I guess she comes here all the time now. Also, Phil and Bloodbath decided to leave a bit early so I had to get his stuff out of the locker.

Other than that it was just a standard night at a club with crappy music and me dancing badly but not caring cuz I was pretty drunk. I guess overall I had fun, but I wish Current was as consistantly good as it was back in the day. Lately its just been kinda dull. My biggest regret actually was that Heidi mailed me at some point during the night asking if I was coming to PSY cuz it was Natsume's (the owners) birthday party tonight! I didnt know about it or else I would have much rather went there but I was already stuck in Shibuya so oh well.

At the point when I left the club, I had no idea where anyone I was with went so I just left alone and slept at the manga kissa. They were out of flat rooms but they had a double room with a couch that they said I could have for the same regular price so I got to sleep on a couch lol. It was fine.

The next morning I woke up at around 12:30, grabbed some quick Sbarro pizza for the ride home, and got on the train. I told Ryoko I would spend the rest of the day with her. There was no reason to go to the Saitama team qual since I had already made the Tokyo team.

So thats about it. In 2 weeks from now is the Johnny-o cup final tournament. It will be a 3 day event since its a 3 day weekend in Japan with that Monday being a national holiday. There will be a 23 on 23 just like in the past at other G3 events with one team each representing Saitama, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Tokyo. I will be the Faust player for the Tokyo team. Hopefully I can get some good wins in for my team! Im looking foward to it. There will also be a 2 on 2 which I didnt qualify for. Also, there will be other events which anyone can enter the day of the event without having to qualify for, so I will enter those as well. And of course, Mikado will be packed with all of the best players in East Japan, so there will be plenty of awsome casuals to be played on Mikados 12 GG cabs (and they probably will even have more for the event setup).

As far as next weekend goes, I have no particular plans and will probably just lay low around Gunma and try to save some money. I doubt whatever happens next weekend will be interesting enough to warrent a blog write-up, so the next one will probably be in 2 weeks. Peace.