I skipped writing my blog last weekend so I will just summarize what I did then before getting into this most recent weekend. On Friday night (2/19), Jessie (one of the other ALTs near me) had a ski party at her apartment. Lots of ALTs went (about maybe 12, including Andy, and Emmet) and we drank, watched some Olympic stuff, and played some multiplayer Wii games.
The next day we all headed to Kawaba ski park. This was my first time going there. Its really big actually and was pretty nice. As we were going out to head to the lift, the zipper on my snow pants broke. They are too small on me and they were already in my apartment when I moved in, left over from the last guy who lived there so I just use them. I was able to rig the zipper into working again but I had to be careful. The zipper went the full length of my leg down on the side.
Jessie is a pretty serious snow boarder and so she was all about going on this really hard course and asked me to go with her on it and a few other pretty advanced people. Im a pretty intermediate skier but she said I could handle it so I believed her. Her and a bunch of the other guys went off trail into a forested area and were snowboarding between trees. Pretty dangerous shit. I figured it would be best to just stick to the trail so we agreed to meet at the lift later. So I went down with this one other guy and it turned out that the course was like way advanced and difficult. I was hanging in there ok at first but then I ran into a really steep part with tons of moguls (huge bumps all over the side of the mountain) and had to go slow as hell and I wiped out at some point and my snow pants completely ripped open. There was really no easy way to fix them at this point, and my skis also fell off when I wiped out. I wasn’t at all injured but the slope was now too steep to be able to get my skis back on so I had no choice but to ride like halfway down the hill on my ass while holding my skis lol! I made it down fine and was eventually able to put my skis back on when it got less steep and skied down the rest of the way with no problem. When I got to the bottom I decided theres no way im going on that specific trail again hah. There were tons of other ones though so there wasn’t much of a problem. Also, I went inside the gift shop and asked the cashier if he had any strong tape. He busted out this role of green duct tape and wrapped a bunch of tape around my snow pants so that I could still ski without having it split open again. I looked ghetto as hell but I was able to ski just fine for the rest of the day.
Since Andy is still injured, instead of going skiing he just chilled in the lounge studying, and playing some DS. After we finished skiing, everyone headed out and we stopped at Jessies to get my stuff. At this point I originally wasn’t planning on trying to go to Tokyo cuz I thought we were gonna be skiing later but the slope closed after 4 pm so Emmet and I decided to go catch the train. Andy came with us so that he could go back home to Takasaki. We ended up missing the train and saw it leaving just as we arrived at the station. The next train wasn’t for another hour so we got some ramen.
We caught the next train and made it there with no problem. Andy parted ways with us at Takasaki and Emmet and I went to Shinjuku. We played a few casuals at sportsland. Female zombie Sol was there as well as her Jam playing boyfriend. I beat her, then some random Faust played me and we went 3 to 2 in my favor. Then FZS’s boyfriend played me with his Jam and I won like 5 in a row and eventually then we left to head to Current.
Current was pretty cool. There were lots of girls there who I didn’t know. Also, Rob (the guy who works for Square-enix) showed up so I talked with him for a while. I don’t remember much else about the night but it was good times. We went to PSY afterwords. I stayed at the manga kissa but I didn’t end up really sticking around long the next day on Sunday. I headed back home and saw Ryoko.
Now… finally getting to this past weekend…
On Friday (2/26), I had an enkai for work in Numata. The train got me there early so I stopped by Emmet’s apartment for a few beers before heading there. It was a small enkai with only about 9 teachers but they had all you can drink Yebisu and the food was awesome so it was pretty cool. It ended at around 9 pm, which meant we could still catch the very last train to Tokyo.
We got to Tokyo at like 12 something. Since it was already so late we just headed right for Current. Ryan (Letbloodrun) was now back in Japan starting this weekend so he met up with us at Current. Sam also met us there. There was a decent crowd in there so we had fun just chilling and drinking. Nothing extremely note worthy happened at Current. At some point Sam just vanished without saying anything. I think he had too much to drink. We stayed till closing and headed to PSY, which was also fun but once again nothing extremely out of the ordinary happened.
Then we decided, for whatever reason, to go to Tokyo Loose. Mainly cuz Ryan wanted to go. When we got there, it wasn’t very packed but there were a few girls there. Emmet wasted no time trying talk to this one girl who totally just blew him off. Then that same girl started like getting a straight up lap dance from this one other girl! Then that same lap dance girl and this one other girl started like dancing and trying to get us to get up and dance with them. The lap dance girl grabbed my and Ryan’s hands, pulled us off our seats, and we started dancing with them. Within 10 seconds, they suddenly just push us away and blow us off… wtf. I didn’t even give a fuck cuz I didn’t wanna dance anyway, but then they start dancing in from of us AGAIN after we sit down. These chicks were being a bunch of cock teasing hoes. Then the lap dance girl starts practically giving Ryan a lap dance and even touched his crotch. But once again, she would just ignore us if we actually got up so we didn’t even bother with that shit. It was really confusing but pretty hilarious at the same time. Some girl from New Zealand was there and I asked her what the deal with these girls was cuz I thought they were prostitutes and she says they are like hostesses or something. Im pretty sure none of them were Japanese. Anyway, we stayed till like 9 am which is pretty fucking late, so we then left to go sleep. Ryan went home and Emmet and I went to the manga kissa.
Saturday, we woke, had some Sukiya, and headed to Mikado. Sam met us there and said he was tired as fuck cuz he ended up falling asleep on the Keihin-tohoku line all night and just slept there the entire night and came right back to Mikado without going home lol. Throughout most of the day, it was actually pretty dead at Mikado. I still ended up playing a bunch though. There weren’t many people but I still got lots of matches in. There actually were a few other well known GG players there like FAB, HH, Yume, and some others but they were only playing BB all day which was sorta lame. I was beating most of the people I played in GG pretty consistently and getting small win streaks, but there was this one default color Millia player there who I have played before who is really good. I lost my first game vs him, but then beat him on my 2nd try. Then he won like 7 in a row on me till I finally beat him again. After that someone else fought me and I didn’t get a chance to fight him again. I was talking to Mitsurugi and he said he is teaming with that Millia player for SBO this year.
...and getting to the meaning of this blog title. I asked Mitsurugi if people have been playing somewhere else lately and he says that everyone still plays at Mikado mostly and its just a slow day for GG casuals. HOWEVER... he mentioned that there was a tournament last weekend for the Johnny-o cup G3 ranbats... and it was the last one!!!! Originally someone had posted on dustloop that there was no Guilty Gear G3 this year and that BB replaced it when INFACT its a completely separate event! This years G3 ranbats have been going on since late December and there were 5 total, the last one ending last weekend... the weekend I was skiing. I was visiting the US during the first 2, but I could have EASILY gone to the other 3 since all 3 of those days I wasnt doing anything in particular that I couldnt have easily done some other time. I researched all about this G3 on the internet after Mitsurugi told me about what I had missed and I feel like I am just so out of the loop what is going on. I even ASKED Osaka B a few weeks ago if there have been any tournaments going on lately and he didnt mention this at all! I just really dont know how to find out about this stuff without going so far as to just start checking all the Japanese arcade websites and hoping I get lucky and find something. I just wish there was a good Japanese GG forum where I could easily get this information. I feel like I really missed out and have been totally fiending for some tournaments lately so this really kinda pisses me off. It turns out that the grand finals is happening the weekend of March 27th and 28th. I ALREADY MADE PLANS for the 27th which totally sucks and I am not sure I can back out of them now. I could probably make it to the one on the 28th though. The website for G3 Johnny-o cup is here. Theres a schedule on there. If I can, I want to go to both days but if I can only go Sunday I pretty much would be only able to enter the random team 5 on 5 and the accident core tournament (double damage setting). Id much rather be able to go to both days, even though I already cant enter most of the stuff on the Saturday one since I have never entered any ranbats. Ugh... im kicking myself so hard for missing those ranbats... I just wish I had some better way of knowing about wtf is going on. Anyway, enough of my bitching... nothing I can do about it now anyway...
By the way, I don’t know why I never bothered posting this before but every week they have a GG tournament at Mikado on like Tuesday or Thursday night. Obviously I cant go, but the brackets are always up on the wall. Im sure people are interested so I will try to post the winner every week. This week, Inoue won, and I think last week I remember seeing FAB win. I will try to remember to post the winner every week.
Later on when I ended up beating the game cuz no one played me for so long, we headed to Big Box for a bit. I played about an hour or so of SFIV and did pretty decent, winning a few and losing a few. Sam says that Big Box is sorta not really the hot spot for SFIV anymore. Everyone now plays at the Taito Station by the South East exit of Shinjuku station.
We went back to Mikado for a bit after Big Box and I played some more GG. Emmet left to go to another international party but Sam and I stayed to play games. Also, Andy showed up and joined us. After playing at Mikado for a while, we headed to Shinjuku. We got some quick food and then Andy went to Shinjuku station to meet up with some other ALTs that were gonna come to Current later. Sam and I went to the Taito Station.
Sam was indeed right, and the place was packed with Grand Master SFIV players. The top Akuma player, Yuu, was there among many others. They have 6 cabs and its 100 yen for 2 credits, 2/3 rounds. It took a while to get a turn in because there were so many people crowded around the cabs. I played against a Grand Master Boxer player and got owned pretty bad (its like one of Blanka’s worst matchups… plus he’s a Grand Master lol). Then I played another match vs an A rank Viper player and took a round both matches and almost beat him, but I don’t know the matchup well so I did stuff that I thought was safe and ended up not being safe, oh well. It was fun and I will probably try playing there again sometime.
After that, Sam went home cuz he was tired and broke, and I headed to Current for a Metal Event night! It was pretty packed and hot in there when I arrived. Andy was there with Mary-Beth and Mika (the 2 other ALTs), and Emmet was there with 2 girls he brought from the international party. He said he also went there with Chibi Testament. In addition, some girl that Emmet had taken back to a love hotel from the last metal event we went to, was there too. So now Emmet was faced with choosing which girl he wanted to get with tonight, it was kind of a funny situation. He eventually chose the one from the last metal event cuz she was the best looking and then some other foreigner dude didn’t waste any time scooping up the leftover chick lol.
It was a pretty typical metal event but I talked to a bunch of cool people. The music selection was not as good as some past set lists but they still played some quality stuff. Mary-Beth and Mika didn’t stay long. Andy left about an hour early to go to PSY. Emmet left with the girl about a half hour before closing. I rounded up a group of people and we all went to PSY.
When I got to PSY, Andy was already gone. He said he decided to take an earlier train. PSY soon filled up with people from Current and other people too. Hibiki showed up too and sat next to me so I got to talk with her a bit.
After PSY closed, a big group of people were talking about going to another bar. I was totally down. So we went to go find this other bar but then when we got to the main street, the guy who I thought was leading the way crossed it and I followed. I didn’t realize that no one else was going that way till after I crossed and the light turned red. Then everyone didn’t notice I was gone or something and they kept walking. I lost sight of them in a big crowd and by the time I got back to the other side of the street they were gone. I tried mailing Chibi Testament a few times but she didn’t reply. I waited about 10 minutes and then just said fuck it and went to go sleep at the manga kissa. I would have liked to drink more but at least this way I had more time to play games the next day.
I woke up at the manga kissa and saw that Emmet had mailed me, asking where I was at. I changed clothes, and then went outside and replied to his mail saying I was in front of the manga kissa. I asked where he was and he said he was in the manga kissa still. I was sorta like wtf… cuz he went to the love hotel with that girl. Anyway, he came out of the manga kissa and told me that when they were looking for the love hotel last night, he got lost and went down the wrong street and they ended up just walking around aimlessly until they just gave up and passed out at some restaurant or something lol. I guess after that the girl went home and Emmet came to the manga kissa.
Anyway, after that, we tried to buy bus tickets to Osaka for spring break but they wouldn’t sell it to us yet because it cant be more than a month away from the current date, and we were early by like 3 days, so it looks like we gotta buy tickets next weekend. No big deal I guess.
After that we went to Mikado and met up with Sam. There were only 2 GG players there. I ended up jumping in on their session and got like 2 10 win streaks in a row vs both of them. They weren’t that bad but they were having a hard time finishing a match vs me. I kept making these good comebacks even when it looked like they might win.
Eventually we got some kabobs at a restaurant, went back to Mikado and played for a bit longer, and then Emmet and I headed back. Nothing too noteworthy to mention happened, I just played a few more people and won most of the matches I played.
After that, Emmet and I headed back to Gunma at around 5:30. I got home and spent the rest of the night with Ryoko.
Next weekend is Gods Garden 2, one of the biggest SFIV tournaments in Japan. I already bought my ticket and will be going there with Sam. Im not that hardcore into SFIV but it sounds like it will be fun, and theres nothing else really going on so why not? Ill make sure to have a detailed report about the event. Im still kicking myself so fucking hard for completely missing G3 ranbats though...
Monday, March 1, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Heaven or Hell, Duel 1, Let's Get Married!
Its been a while since I updated my blog. To summarize, the weekend I didnt post anything, I drank in Takasaki with Ryoko, Andy, and Emmet. We crashed at Andy's place and then the next day I went ice skating with Ryoko and Andy. It was pretty fun and the first time I had ice skated in years. After that, I went back to Numata and drank with Emmet at a bar all night, but it was pretty uneventful.
Later in the week, we had a holiday on Thursday, so I threw a big ski party at my apartment. I had about 12 people over at my place, which is kind of a lot considering how small it is. Mostly ALTs from around the area, plus some of Ryoko's friends, and Kei. I made a ton of food like a bunch of curry and we had yakiniku, salad, and other stuff. Everyone got pretty smashed and we stayed up till like 5 am playing 4 player wii games like Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, and Bomberman. Everyone was getting pretty hype about Bomberman and it was really fun. Kei was mostly dominating everyone. Also Jesse brought over her hookah so we got to smoke some tasty stuff.
The next day we went skiing and Ryoko's sister Reiko, Ayano from Current, and her friend Karl, came to join us as well. We had quite a large group go skiing at Norn. It went well for the most part except that it was snowing really bad so Ryoko was getting worried about driving home and left a bit early. Also, unfortunately Andy fell and injured his shoulder. I dont know the extent fo the injury but something is broken I think. He had to sit in the lodge and wait for us for the last hour or 2 so I felt bad for him. I hope it heals soon.
And now moving on to this past weekend...
Everyone was pretty much busy with stuff so I went out to Tokyo by myself. I decided to just skip the TRF SFIV tourny cuz I didnt wanna go alone and id rather play GG casuals anyway. I went to Mikado and it was a fun night of casuals with good players there. I beat Sadou's JO (the one who was on the 2nd place SBO team) the only match I fought it. Then he played Slayer on me 3 times and I won the first 2 and lost the last one. I also played Osaka B in a couple mirror matches and lost and then someone else got on the cab so I couldnt play him again. Also, I played a ton vs Udei's Testament. I asked him if he dropped Axl completely and he said yes, and that Testament is his main now. We were going fairly even but near the end of the night I was pulling ahead getting more wins. Sadou and a couple other guys were staying behind to watch our matches before the place closed. It was fun times. I told them good games and headed out.
From then, I went to Shinjuku, got some quick Sukiya, and then headed to Current by myself. It was a small crowd in there with only a few people I know and some random foreigners (there seriously has been TONS of random foreigners lately... I dont really want Current to turn into an all out gaijin bar). The whole staff was there bartending, and Bosch was DJing. He played AWSOME music all night long. Like just tons of awsome metal, one after another. Dream Theater, Symphony X, Helloween, Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, GnR, ACDC, Bodom, Nightwish, Sonata Arctica, and tons tons more. It was just straight metal all night long. I talked a lot with the Current staff and some other dudes at the bar and it was one of the most fun nights I had there in a while. Masami was also telling me funny stuff about how when Japanese people hear certain English songs they think it sounds like something else in Japanese. For example, in Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue, the part where they say "Oh! Yea! Kickstart my heart, give it a start!" sounds like KINTAMA HARU HODO NEBATTA which means "somethings wrong with my balls." also the chorus of I Got The Time by Anthrax sounds like CHINCHIN CHIGIREMAHEN, which means "penis never split" or something like that, according to Masami. LOL!
Anyway it was good times and I went to PSY as always after it closed. On the way there I got a kabob and the guy totally had it already made for me when I got there which was weird. I only went there once before so I have no idea how he recognized me but I think someone else ordered it and he just gave me it first. Kinda fishy but it was still warm and tasted fine, and I didnt get sick so oh well.
I stayed at PSY till closing. The dominatrix chick was there again as well as some other regulars and Masami showed up later too, good times. Went to sleep at the manga kissa as usual.
The next day I went shopping to buy a box of chocolates for Ryoko for Valentines day. I looked around in some stores in Shinjuku and finally found some places in Lunine est by the station. It was kinda pricey but oh well.
After that, it was off to Mikado for a full day of Guilty Gear casuals! There was a good crowd in there all day. They had some weird time reserve free play thing going on where I guess you pay a fixed amount and it was somewhat organized but it wasnt a tournament. When I got there, there was only like an hour left of it so I just played on the other cabs that were not being used by the timeshare thingy (there was 4 for the thing and 3 were just open cabs for whoever so I played on those). I did generally well throughout the day. Kei was supposed to meet me in Takadanobaba and it turns out he just went to Big Box to play SFIV and then left to meet up with other friends so I never ran into him. Andy showed up later though and chilled for a bit. His shoulder now had some sorta brace on it but you couldnt really tell with his clothes over it. He couldnt move his shoulder but was still able to play fighting games. Near the time we were ready to leave, we played one random game of TvC for the hell of it just cuz neither of us play the game at all. Then we left to meet up with Liz in front of the station.
Liz, Andy, and I headed back to Shinjuku and got some dinner at Pepper Lunch. Then we went to Current. There was supposed to be a Valentines Day party tonight but it was kinda dead for a party. It had more people than just a random night but not as many as most Current holiday themed parties. Not to mention that most of the people there were once again random foreigners and most of the old regulars didnt even come. Pretty lame, but the Snus Man was at a table in the back with a few people so Liz and I sat with him. Then Andy came over and suddenly told me he decided he was going to leave and go back home. At this point it was about 11:00 and he had only been in Tokyo for about 4 hours so I was pretty shocked he was leaving so suddenly but I guess his shoulder injury was bothering him. I hope he gets better soon.
Liz and I pretty much sat in the back with the Snus Man and some other people most of the night. Snus Man's brother was there too visiting from Finland. They all kept buying pitchers and sharing with everyone at the table so I bought one as well to share. As the night went on, more people eventually showed up and lots of them were dancing which was kinda fun. Emmet showed up at some point with his new girlfriend Hiromi. This was my first time meeting her, she seems nice. They were drinking at a nearby izakaya till about 2 am or something like that. The rest of the night was pretty much just drinking and dancing.
When the bar closed, Emmet left with Hiromi and Liz went back to the station to go home to Takadanobaba. I decided I might as well get one last beer at PSY. On the way I got another kabab and the guy was surprised to see me show up again at the exact same time. That shit smells so good and im always so hungry at 5 am after lots of beers I cant resist.
PSY was OK I guess, a few regulars were there, and Hibiki showed up. I just had one beer and then left, cuz I wanted to get back to Gunma.
Since it was now officially Valentines day, I had plans to spend it with Ryoko. However, she had to work until 5 pm so I could still go to Tokyo, and then take the last train back and get home and sleep for a bit and then go meet her later.
I ended up falling asleep on the Saikyo line and it was like 7:45 and I was near Urawa. At this point my ulcer was hurting REALLY bad! When I got that kabab, the guy put really hot sauce on it even though I asked for mild. I ate it anyway cuz I was drunk and hungry and it tasted good but I knew it was gonna fuck me up. Espesially since I forgot my ulcer medicine at home all weekend. I think I must have ridden the train back and forth the whole way at least once. In any case, I got up and got to Omiya where I transfered to the Takasaki line and slept the whole way. Then I had like a 40 minute transfer at Takasaki station and I slept there the whole time too but I set an alarm this time so I woke up and got on my final train back home. I finally arrived at home at about 12:00. This only gave me like 4 hours of real sleep in my bed till I needed to wake up at 4 to get ready to see Ryoko, but it was enough I guess. After waking up, the ulcer hurt a bit less but still didnt feel great.
I took a shower and changed and put on a suit and cologne and all that good stuff. Ryoko didnt know it but today I had a surprise for her.
Ryoko and I had already talked about it and we already decided we want to get married. We have been together for 2 and a half years (I met her 2 weeks after I moved to Japan). However, I never officially proposed or gave her a ring. This summer when I visited Chicago I bought her an engagement ring. I figured Valentines day would be a decent time to give it to her. So I opened the box of chocolates I got her and put the ring inside of the center chocolate in the box and re-sealed it.
I drove to her place and picked her up and took her to a restaurant where we got our own private table. We ordered a bunch of food like Steak, cheese potatoes, spring rolls, salad, nabe, and stuff. Then she gave me a box of candy and this awsome Super Mario bros 3 frog suite Mario shirt like out of no where. Pretty awsome (in Japan, girls are supposed to give presents to guys on Valentines day, since they have White day one month later which is like the same thing but for the guys to give to girls, but im an American so I just do it western style). So then I gave her the chocolates and she opened it and was pretty shocked and I proposed and she thought it was like some sorta dream or something. At first she just kept saying "どうしよう!" over and over again which basically in this case was just like an expression of being shocked as fuck, but then I reminded her that she didnt actually even answer me yet LOL, even though I knew the answer already. She said "ぜひ” which basically means absolutely or certainly. After that her heart was beating too hard and she wasnt even hungry for the food when it came lol. I probably should have waited till after we ate but eventually she calmed down a bit and ate some of it.
I aint gonna write about what went down with the rest of the night. You can figure it out yourself lol.
We already decided that we wont actually get married for a few more years, like till im done with JET. I just thought she deserved the ring to make official what was pretty much already the case.
So yea that was a pretty good past week or so. Next weekend I might not go to Tokyo but I dont have 100% solid plans for the whole weekend yet.
Later in the week, we had a holiday on Thursday, so I threw a big ski party at my apartment. I had about 12 people over at my place, which is kind of a lot considering how small it is. Mostly ALTs from around the area, plus some of Ryoko's friends, and Kei. I made a ton of food like a bunch of curry and we had yakiniku, salad, and other stuff. Everyone got pretty smashed and we stayed up till like 5 am playing 4 player wii games like Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, and Bomberman. Everyone was getting pretty hype about Bomberman and it was really fun. Kei was mostly dominating everyone. Also Jesse brought over her hookah so we got to smoke some tasty stuff.
The next day we went skiing and Ryoko's sister Reiko, Ayano from Current, and her friend Karl, came to join us as well. We had quite a large group go skiing at Norn. It went well for the most part except that it was snowing really bad so Ryoko was getting worried about driving home and left a bit early. Also, unfortunately Andy fell and injured his shoulder. I dont know the extent fo the injury but something is broken I think. He had to sit in the lodge and wait for us for the last hour or 2 so I felt bad for him. I hope it heals soon.
And now moving on to this past weekend...
Everyone was pretty much busy with stuff so I went out to Tokyo by myself. I decided to just skip the TRF SFIV tourny cuz I didnt wanna go alone and id rather play GG casuals anyway. I went to Mikado and it was a fun night of casuals with good players there. I beat Sadou's JO (the one who was on the 2nd place SBO team) the only match I fought it. Then he played Slayer on me 3 times and I won the first 2 and lost the last one. I also played Osaka B in a couple mirror matches and lost and then someone else got on the cab so I couldnt play him again. Also, I played a ton vs Udei's Testament. I asked him if he dropped Axl completely and he said yes, and that Testament is his main now. We were going fairly even but near the end of the night I was pulling ahead getting more wins. Sadou and a couple other guys were staying behind to watch our matches before the place closed. It was fun times. I told them good games and headed out.
From then, I went to Shinjuku, got some quick Sukiya, and then headed to Current by myself. It was a small crowd in there with only a few people I know and some random foreigners (there seriously has been TONS of random foreigners lately... I dont really want Current to turn into an all out gaijin bar). The whole staff was there bartending, and Bosch was DJing. He played AWSOME music all night long. Like just tons of awsome metal, one after another. Dream Theater, Symphony X, Helloween, Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, GnR, ACDC, Bodom, Nightwish, Sonata Arctica, and tons tons more. It was just straight metal all night long. I talked a lot with the Current staff and some other dudes at the bar and it was one of the most fun nights I had there in a while. Masami was also telling me funny stuff about how when Japanese people hear certain English songs they think it sounds like something else in Japanese. For example, in Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue, the part where they say "Oh! Yea! Kickstart my heart, give it a start!" sounds like KINTAMA HARU HODO NEBATTA which means "somethings wrong with my balls." also the chorus of I Got The Time by Anthrax sounds like CHINCHIN CHIGIREMAHEN, which means "penis never split" or something like that, according to Masami. LOL!
Anyway it was good times and I went to PSY as always after it closed. On the way there I got a kabob and the guy totally had it already made for me when I got there which was weird. I only went there once before so I have no idea how he recognized me but I think someone else ordered it and he just gave me it first. Kinda fishy but it was still warm and tasted fine, and I didnt get sick so oh well.
I stayed at PSY till closing. The dominatrix chick was there again as well as some other regulars and Masami showed up later too, good times. Went to sleep at the manga kissa as usual.
The next day I went shopping to buy a box of chocolates for Ryoko for Valentines day. I looked around in some stores in Shinjuku and finally found some places in Lunine est by the station. It was kinda pricey but oh well.
After that, it was off to Mikado for a full day of Guilty Gear casuals! There was a good crowd in there all day. They had some weird time reserve free play thing going on where I guess you pay a fixed amount and it was somewhat organized but it wasnt a tournament. When I got there, there was only like an hour left of it so I just played on the other cabs that were not being used by the timeshare thingy (there was 4 for the thing and 3 were just open cabs for whoever so I played on those). I did generally well throughout the day. Kei was supposed to meet me in Takadanobaba and it turns out he just went to Big Box to play SFIV and then left to meet up with other friends so I never ran into him. Andy showed up later though and chilled for a bit. His shoulder now had some sorta brace on it but you couldnt really tell with his clothes over it. He couldnt move his shoulder but was still able to play fighting games. Near the time we were ready to leave, we played one random game of TvC for the hell of it just cuz neither of us play the game at all. Then we left to meet up with Liz in front of the station.
Liz, Andy, and I headed back to Shinjuku and got some dinner at Pepper Lunch. Then we went to Current. There was supposed to be a Valentines Day party tonight but it was kinda dead for a party. It had more people than just a random night but not as many as most Current holiday themed parties. Not to mention that most of the people there were once again random foreigners and most of the old regulars didnt even come. Pretty lame, but the Snus Man was at a table in the back with a few people so Liz and I sat with him. Then Andy came over and suddenly told me he decided he was going to leave and go back home. At this point it was about 11:00 and he had only been in Tokyo for about 4 hours so I was pretty shocked he was leaving so suddenly but I guess his shoulder injury was bothering him. I hope he gets better soon.
Liz and I pretty much sat in the back with the Snus Man and some other people most of the night. Snus Man's brother was there too visiting from Finland. They all kept buying pitchers and sharing with everyone at the table so I bought one as well to share. As the night went on, more people eventually showed up and lots of them were dancing which was kinda fun. Emmet showed up at some point with his new girlfriend Hiromi. This was my first time meeting her, she seems nice. They were drinking at a nearby izakaya till about 2 am or something like that. The rest of the night was pretty much just drinking and dancing.
When the bar closed, Emmet left with Hiromi and Liz went back to the station to go home to Takadanobaba. I decided I might as well get one last beer at PSY. On the way I got another kabab and the guy was surprised to see me show up again at the exact same time. That shit smells so good and im always so hungry at 5 am after lots of beers I cant resist.
PSY was OK I guess, a few regulars were there, and Hibiki showed up. I just had one beer and then left, cuz I wanted to get back to Gunma.
Since it was now officially Valentines day, I had plans to spend it with Ryoko. However, she had to work until 5 pm so I could still go to Tokyo, and then take the last train back and get home and sleep for a bit and then go meet her later.
I ended up falling asleep on the Saikyo line and it was like 7:45 and I was near Urawa. At this point my ulcer was hurting REALLY bad! When I got that kabab, the guy put really hot sauce on it even though I asked for mild. I ate it anyway cuz I was drunk and hungry and it tasted good but I knew it was gonna fuck me up. Espesially since I forgot my ulcer medicine at home all weekend. I think I must have ridden the train back and forth the whole way at least once. In any case, I got up and got to Omiya where I transfered to the Takasaki line and slept the whole way. Then I had like a 40 minute transfer at Takasaki station and I slept there the whole time too but I set an alarm this time so I woke up and got on my final train back home. I finally arrived at home at about 12:00. This only gave me like 4 hours of real sleep in my bed till I needed to wake up at 4 to get ready to see Ryoko, but it was enough I guess. After waking up, the ulcer hurt a bit less but still didnt feel great.
I took a shower and changed and put on a suit and cologne and all that good stuff. Ryoko didnt know it but today I had a surprise for her.
Ryoko and I had already talked about it and we already decided we want to get married. We have been together for 2 and a half years (I met her 2 weeks after I moved to Japan). However, I never officially proposed or gave her a ring. This summer when I visited Chicago I bought her an engagement ring. I figured Valentines day would be a decent time to give it to her. So I opened the box of chocolates I got her and put the ring inside of the center chocolate in the box and re-sealed it.
I drove to her place and picked her up and took her to a restaurant where we got our own private table. We ordered a bunch of food like Steak, cheese potatoes, spring rolls, salad, nabe, and stuff. Then she gave me a box of candy and this awsome Super Mario bros 3 frog suite Mario shirt like out of no where. Pretty awsome (in Japan, girls are supposed to give presents to guys on Valentines day, since they have White day one month later which is like the same thing but for the guys to give to girls, but im an American so I just do it western style). So then I gave her the chocolates and she opened it and was pretty shocked and I proposed and she thought it was like some sorta dream or something. At first she just kept saying "どうしよう!" over and over again which basically in this case was just like an expression of being shocked as fuck, but then I reminded her that she didnt actually even answer me yet LOL, even though I knew the answer already. She said "ぜひ” which basically means absolutely or certainly. After that her heart was beating too hard and she wasnt even hungry for the food when it came lol. I probably should have waited till after we ate but eventually she calmed down a bit and ate some of it.
I aint gonna write about what went down with the rest of the night. You can figure it out yourself lol.
We already decided that we wont actually get married for a few more years, like till im done with JET. I just thought she deserved the ring to make official what was pretty much already the case.
So yea that was a pretty good past week or so. Next weekend I might not go to Tokyo but I dont have 100% solid plans for the whole weekend yet.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Snus Overload and a Trip to Yokohama
After a week of mostly playing lots of SFIV with Matt (cuz I cant find my copy of GG anywhere), doing lots of snus and drinking lots of beer, we headed out to Tokyo after work on Friday. Emmet met up with us on the way.
From the moment we got on the train to pretty much throughout the entire weekend, I was getting down on the snus pretty heavily! Just assume that while you are reading about anything I am doing, I am probably snusing (except for a bit of the time I was playing casuals, and while I was eating)...
Anyway...
We headed right for TRF in Nakano and met up with Sam. The weekly TRF SFIV tournament was going on and was going to start very soon after we arrived. All 4 of us signed up. We played a few casuals before it started. I came very close to beating one guy but lost.
The tournament had about maybe a bit less than 30 people. Basically we all lost first round lol. I lost to a Ryu player basically because I wasnt being patient enough. I had a life lead on him and then I tried to get a bit more damage in and the announcer was like saying in Japanese "I dont understand, why is Blanka moving forward?" lol. Yea, I should have just turtled but I had a brain fart. Matt lost with his Akuma, Sam lost with his Dictator, and Emmet lost with his Guile. None of us really were surprised or cared lol. There were some pretty high profile players there.
After we lost, we headed to Shinjuku Sportsland to play a bit more casuals. I played a bunch of GG there and was beating most people pretty well. There was this one Robo-ky who was super gimicky but he had a solid I-no and I was going about even with him. We stayed there till about midnight and then it was time for drinking! Sam went home though.
We headed to Current and it was just packed with random gaijin. There were like 2 Japanese people in the whole place aside from the staff, which is pretty unusual. At some point, there were these 2 People from France talking with us for a bit who were pretty nice. Then these 3 girls from Sweden came and were sitting in the corner. We were talking with them for a bit but then Emmet started calling the blonde chick Courtney Love, which offended her enough to the point where they moved to another table hah. Not long after that, we decided to just go to PSY.
PSY was pretty awsome and we requested tons of stuff, including The Count of Tuscany, and they played the entire 19 whatever minutes of the song and Matt and I drunkenly sang along. We were also doing TONS of snus... like... Matt was quadruple snusing the extra strong stuff, which is like the same as having 8 regular snus in your mouth at once. His mouth was just like dripping brown goo. Kinda nasty, but it must have rocked him pretty hard.
There was also this girl there who was pretty cute, and she was telling me how she works at an S&M place. I was just talked to her casually for a bit cuz she was nice. I asked her how much she charges out of curiosity and she said its nice and cheap and I should come sometime LOL. I told her I have a girlfriend and dont need to and she told me theres no harm in a little playing hah. I didnt bother getting any of her info but it was an amusing conversation.
After we left there we got some McDonalds breakfast and then it was time for the manga kissa.
After sleeping for 6 hours, we woke up and headed right for Mikado. There werent all that many people playing there at first. We played a little bit and then decided to get food.
We figured we would give Children of Baba another try (the ramen place that has the Children of Bodom ripoff logo) and it was actually open this time! We went inside and the place wasnt as crazy as I would expect but they were playing some rock and they had a bunch of pictures on the wall and some band posters and stuff. The place was run by some old man and I just happened to be wearing my Children of Bodom shirt that day, so I showed him it and asked him if he was a fan and he said he was. Then he played a CD from this Japanese power metal band that they had a poster for on the wall. I cant remember what their name was but he says the come there a lot. They were pretty good actually. The ramen itself was also pretty tasty and the prices were pretty standard for decent ramen (about 700-800 yen a bowl). The owner was nice and we chatted a bit and he gave us a free Children of Baba sticker. I told him I would probably come back again sometime.
After that we headed back to Mikado for more games. Lots of big names were there today. I played like a zillion matches in a row against Taku's Slayer. The funny thing was, at first I was fighting some other Slayer guy who I beat a few times. Then all of a sudden the guy just got like SUPER AMAZING and it turns out that Taku like picked up the guys game or something lol. I was so confused how that one guy just leveled up instantly like that but it all made sense when we realized Taku was now playing. Tanabata (aka Seta) was playing Slayer on the cab next to him and raping people too. I never beat Taku this time but I was like a pixel away from doing it and he came back, it sucked...
I played Udei a bit and he seems to be maining Testament now and was playing a bit of Slayer as well which is basically just a slightly worse version of Hase's Slayer cuz those guys play together a lot. I got some wins on him but his Testament seems like its coming along pretty good.
Mike was playing his Jam a lot too vs En-Slayer. Matt was pointing out that Mike was looking a little rusty and was dropping lots of stuff but he still seems pretty solid. I guess GG players are gonna get serious again now that GG is in SBO once more.
I also played a bunch of mirror match games vs Osaka B and lost like 10 in a row till I finally beat him. Like so many of them were super close too but he just wouldnt let me get that last hit in lots of the time. Hes always known the mirror match better than me anyway but it was still fun and he told me he enjoyed our set of games after I beat him.
Emmet went off to another international party at some point, and later on Andy showed up. Aside from that, I guess theres not much else to mention but it was a solid day of casuals.
Now that GG has been announced again for SBO I am extra hype about playing it a lot again! I still pretty much dont have much interest in learning BB and if anything my 2ndary game right now is SFIV but I dont think I will bother trying to get into it for SBO. I will probably play more of those TRF tournaments though for fun.
Anyway, after games, we got some Suikiya and then met Emmet at Takadanobaba station. From there we left and headed back to Shinjuku. We stopped in at Current first, which once again turned out to be pretty packed with Gaijin. Sushi was cooking takoyaki for practice cuz there was going to be some food event going on on Sunday.
We sat at a table and drank a bit, and SPG Chris joined us. We decided after a few beers to check out GODZ since Matt didnt go there yet since he has been back in Japan.
GODZ was pretty packed and they played tons of great music. It had been a while since I was there too so I enjoyed it. Nothing extremely noteworthy to mention there but they played my request of Symphony X - The Walls of Babylon and it was epic as hell. Chris left at some point saying he was going home.
Then we left GODZ at around 3 am, got some awsome kababs at the little stand parked outside in Kabuki-cho, and when we got back to Current, Chris was there LOL. He said it was on his way home so he stopped there for another beer hah. I dont remember anything extremely worth mentioned during the rest of the time there other than lots of people dancing a whole lot and me getting really drunk and dancing too. A few more people we knew were there at this point which was cool too.
Also, at some point, I dont remember exactly when, but Emmet told us this fucked up story about how back in New Zealand, this one time, he was fingering some chick and pulled a used condom from several days ago out of her, and the condom was not from Emmet either. He said it smelled foul as hell and is easily one of the grossest stories I have ever heard LOL!!!
Once Current closed at 5, I was already plastered as hell. I didnt even need to go to PSY but we went anyway.
When we got there, I ordered a beer and passed out after like 15 minutes. I woke up at like 6:30 and my beer was gone cuz Matt said he asked me if he could drink it but I have no recollection of it at all. I didnt need it anyway I guess.
After that, we just headed right to sleep. We got the 6 hour package again. This time Andy went with us to the manga kissa instead of going home.
We woke up the next day and the plan was go to go Yokohama to meet up with some of Matt's friends. First, we headed over to Takadanobaba to meet up with Matt's friend, Kei, who is a SFIV player. Kei is also good friends with the well known Sagat player Oji-san Boy, who won the SFIV tournament at Big Box we saw 2 weekends ago.
Kei was at Big Box playing casuals. We first went and got some McDonalds and then went into Big Box. Kei was there playing casuals. I played a few matches of SFIV casuals and was doing pretty well, probably winning slightly over half the games I played. I fought against Kei twice (he uses Boxer) and lost both times but I still did ok I guess. I also beat up some Ryu, a Gief, and won in a close match vs a Dictator.
Eventually we left to head to Yokohama. We got there and met up with a girl named Marie. Marie, Kei, and Matt all studied together for a while in Oregon at the same university. Kei and Marie were there studying abroad so they both speak very good English. The 6 of us went to an Italian resturant and got some food and bunch of beers and had fun talking about various stuff. Marie is actually pretty interested in video games which is cool, in addition to being quite attractive. Kei is also a really chill guy too so it was fun hanging with them.
The whole time while we were in Yokohama I did some snus again too and since Matt has been over the last 2 weeks I have been using snus like a ton every day. I usually only use snus on weekends but since he was over and we were drinking I used a lot, and quite frankly my tolerance is going way too high up on this shit. I used the regular stuff and dont even get a buzz, and the extra strong stuff hardly effects me either. I think its time to take a break for a bit to get my tolerance back low, cuz if I dont get a buzz from it, theres not much other point in using it hah.
After eating, we walked around a bit, got more beers at the conbini and eventually we watched this one street performer who was juggling rods that were set on fire and was also doing fire eating tricks. After his performance was over, tons of people were dropping big bills into his hat. Dude got paid for sure!
After that we walked around a bit more and just kinda looked at some of the rides by the harbor area there. They had like ferris wheels and a rollercoaster and stuff. We didnt really have time to ride them though.
Eventually it was getting really late. Matt decided he was going to stay with Marie and do more drinking while the rest of us had to go back to Gunma. We said goodbye at the station and then got on the train. It turns out that we JUST MISSED the train that would get us to Takasaki in time to catch the 2nd to last train back to Minakami. This meant we had to go back home on the last train (which arrives in Minakami at midnight) AND we had to wait to transfer like 45 minutes at the station. This only effected Emmet and I though since Kei lives in Maebashi and Andy lives in Takasaki. We pretty much just all slept on the train on the way home and then we parted ways with Kei and Andy at Takasaki.
Emmet and I got on the last train from Takasaki and ran into John, another ALT. I was really tired so I just slept the rest of the time. Emmet and John got off near Numata at Iwamoto station and then I rode the rest of the way and made it home and went to bed after a nice shower.
This was Matt's last weekend in Tokyo. He will be coming back to my house Tuesday after work to stay till Thursday, at which time he will go back to the US. It was cool having him around again though and im sure he enjoyed his visit back to Japan.
Next weekends plans are undecided but I may stay in Minakami to do some skiing, but if I do end up doing something worth writing about, I will update my blog again.
Until next time...
From the moment we got on the train to pretty much throughout the entire weekend, I was getting down on the snus pretty heavily! Just assume that while you are reading about anything I am doing, I am probably snusing (except for a bit of the time I was playing casuals, and while I was eating)...
Anyway...
We headed right for TRF in Nakano and met up with Sam. The weekly TRF SFIV tournament was going on and was going to start very soon after we arrived. All 4 of us signed up. We played a few casuals before it started. I came very close to beating one guy but lost.
The tournament had about maybe a bit less than 30 people. Basically we all lost first round lol. I lost to a Ryu player basically because I wasnt being patient enough. I had a life lead on him and then I tried to get a bit more damage in and the announcer was like saying in Japanese "I dont understand, why is Blanka moving forward?" lol. Yea, I should have just turtled but I had a brain fart. Matt lost with his Akuma, Sam lost with his Dictator, and Emmet lost with his Guile. None of us really were surprised or cared lol. There were some pretty high profile players there.
After we lost, we headed to Shinjuku Sportsland to play a bit more casuals. I played a bunch of GG there and was beating most people pretty well. There was this one Robo-ky who was super gimicky but he had a solid I-no and I was going about even with him. We stayed there till about midnight and then it was time for drinking! Sam went home though.
We headed to Current and it was just packed with random gaijin. There were like 2 Japanese people in the whole place aside from the staff, which is pretty unusual. At some point, there were these 2 People from France talking with us for a bit who were pretty nice. Then these 3 girls from Sweden came and were sitting in the corner. We were talking with them for a bit but then Emmet started calling the blonde chick Courtney Love, which offended her enough to the point where they moved to another table hah. Not long after that, we decided to just go to PSY.
PSY was pretty awsome and we requested tons of stuff, including The Count of Tuscany, and they played the entire 19 whatever minutes of the song and Matt and I drunkenly sang along. We were also doing TONS of snus... like... Matt was quadruple snusing the extra strong stuff, which is like the same as having 8 regular snus in your mouth at once. His mouth was just like dripping brown goo. Kinda nasty, but it must have rocked him pretty hard.
There was also this girl there who was pretty cute, and she was telling me how she works at an S&M place. I was just talked to her casually for a bit cuz she was nice. I asked her how much she charges out of curiosity and she said its nice and cheap and I should come sometime LOL. I told her I have a girlfriend and dont need to and she told me theres no harm in a little playing hah. I didnt bother getting any of her info but it was an amusing conversation.
After we left there we got some McDonalds breakfast and then it was time for the manga kissa.
After sleeping for 6 hours, we woke up and headed right for Mikado. There werent all that many people playing there at first. We played a little bit and then decided to get food.
We figured we would give Children of Baba another try (the ramen place that has the Children of Bodom ripoff logo) and it was actually open this time! We went inside and the place wasnt as crazy as I would expect but they were playing some rock and they had a bunch of pictures on the wall and some band posters and stuff. The place was run by some old man and I just happened to be wearing my Children of Bodom shirt that day, so I showed him it and asked him if he was a fan and he said he was. Then he played a CD from this Japanese power metal band that they had a poster for on the wall. I cant remember what their name was but he says the come there a lot. They were pretty good actually. The ramen itself was also pretty tasty and the prices were pretty standard for decent ramen (about 700-800 yen a bowl). The owner was nice and we chatted a bit and he gave us a free Children of Baba sticker. I told him I would probably come back again sometime.
After that we headed back to Mikado for more games. Lots of big names were there today. I played like a zillion matches in a row against Taku's Slayer. The funny thing was, at first I was fighting some other Slayer guy who I beat a few times. Then all of a sudden the guy just got like SUPER AMAZING and it turns out that Taku like picked up the guys game or something lol. I was so confused how that one guy just leveled up instantly like that but it all made sense when we realized Taku was now playing. Tanabata (aka Seta) was playing Slayer on the cab next to him and raping people too. I never beat Taku this time but I was like a pixel away from doing it and he came back, it sucked...
I played Udei a bit and he seems to be maining Testament now and was playing a bit of Slayer as well which is basically just a slightly worse version of Hase's Slayer cuz those guys play together a lot. I got some wins on him but his Testament seems like its coming along pretty good.
Mike was playing his Jam a lot too vs En-Slayer. Matt was pointing out that Mike was looking a little rusty and was dropping lots of stuff but he still seems pretty solid. I guess GG players are gonna get serious again now that GG is in SBO once more.
I also played a bunch of mirror match games vs Osaka B and lost like 10 in a row till I finally beat him. Like so many of them were super close too but he just wouldnt let me get that last hit in lots of the time. Hes always known the mirror match better than me anyway but it was still fun and he told me he enjoyed our set of games after I beat him.
Emmet went off to another international party at some point, and later on Andy showed up. Aside from that, I guess theres not much else to mention but it was a solid day of casuals.
Now that GG has been announced again for SBO I am extra hype about playing it a lot again! I still pretty much dont have much interest in learning BB and if anything my 2ndary game right now is SFIV but I dont think I will bother trying to get into it for SBO. I will probably play more of those TRF tournaments though for fun.
Anyway, after games, we got some Suikiya and then met Emmet at Takadanobaba station. From there we left and headed back to Shinjuku. We stopped in at Current first, which once again turned out to be pretty packed with Gaijin. Sushi was cooking takoyaki for practice cuz there was going to be some food event going on on Sunday.
We sat at a table and drank a bit, and SPG Chris joined us. We decided after a few beers to check out GODZ since Matt didnt go there yet since he has been back in Japan.
GODZ was pretty packed and they played tons of great music. It had been a while since I was there too so I enjoyed it. Nothing extremely noteworthy to mention there but they played my request of Symphony X - The Walls of Babylon and it was epic as hell. Chris left at some point saying he was going home.
Then we left GODZ at around 3 am, got some awsome kababs at the little stand parked outside in Kabuki-cho, and when we got back to Current, Chris was there LOL. He said it was on his way home so he stopped there for another beer hah. I dont remember anything extremely worth mentioned during the rest of the time there other than lots of people dancing a whole lot and me getting really drunk and dancing too. A few more people we knew were there at this point which was cool too.
Also, at some point, I dont remember exactly when, but Emmet told us this fucked up story about how back in New Zealand, this one time, he was fingering some chick and pulled a used condom from several days ago out of her, and the condom was not from Emmet either. He said it smelled foul as hell and is easily one of the grossest stories I have ever heard LOL!!!
Once Current closed at 5, I was already plastered as hell. I didnt even need to go to PSY but we went anyway.
When we got there, I ordered a beer and passed out after like 15 minutes. I woke up at like 6:30 and my beer was gone cuz Matt said he asked me if he could drink it but I have no recollection of it at all. I didnt need it anyway I guess.
After that, we just headed right to sleep. We got the 6 hour package again. This time Andy went with us to the manga kissa instead of going home.
We woke up the next day and the plan was go to go Yokohama to meet up with some of Matt's friends. First, we headed over to Takadanobaba to meet up with Matt's friend, Kei, who is a SFIV player. Kei is also good friends with the well known Sagat player Oji-san Boy, who won the SFIV tournament at Big Box we saw 2 weekends ago.
Kei was at Big Box playing casuals. We first went and got some McDonalds and then went into Big Box. Kei was there playing casuals. I played a few matches of SFIV casuals and was doing pretty well, probably winning slightly over half the games I played. I fought against Kei twice (he uses Boxer) and lost both times but I still did ok I guess. I also beat up some Ryu, a Gief, and won in a close match vs a Dictator.
Eventually we left to head to Yokohama. We got there and met up with a girl named Marie. Marie, Kei, and Matt all studied together for a while in Oregon at the same university. Kei and Marie were there studying abroad so they both speak very good English. The 6 of us went to an Italian resturant and got some food and bunch of beers and had fun talking about various stuff. Marie is actually pretty interested in video games which is cool, in addition to being quite attractive. Kei is also a really chill guy too so it was fun hanging with them.
The whole time while we were in Yokohama I did some snus again too and since Matt has been over the last 2 weeks I have been using snus like a ton every day. I usually only use snus on weekends but since he was over and we were drinking I used a lot, and quite frankly my tolerance is going way too high up on this shit. I used the regular stuff and dont even get a buzz, and the extra strong stuff hardly effects me either. I think its time to take a break for a bit to get my tolerance back low, cuz if I dont get a buzz from it, theres not much other point in using it hah.
After eating, we walked around a bit, got more beers at the conbini and eventually we watched this one street performer who was juggling rods that were set on fire and was also doing fire eating tricks. After his performance was over, tons of people were dropping big bills into his hat. Dude got paid for sure!
After that we walked around a bit more and just kinda looked at some of the rides by the harbor area there. They had like ferris wheels and a rollercoaster and stuff. We didnt really have time to ride them though.
Eventually it was getting really late. Matt decided he was going to stay with Marie and do more drinking while the rest of us had to go back to Gunma. We said goodbye at the station and then got on the train. It turns out that we JUST MISSED the train that would get us to Takasaki in time to catch the 2nd to last train back to Minakami. This meant we had to go back home on the last train (which arrives in Minakami at midnight) AND we had to wait to transfer like 45 minutes at the station. This only effected Emmet and I though since Kei lives in Maebashi and Andy lives in Takasaki. We pretty much just all slept on the train on the way home and then we parted ways with Kei and Andy at Takasaki.
Emmet and I got on the last train from Takasaki and ran into John, another ALT. I was really tired so I just slept the rest of the time. Emmet and John got off near Numata at Iwamoto station and then I rode the rest of the way and made it home and went to bed after a nice shower.
This was Matt's last weekend in Tokyo. He will be coming back to my house Tuesday after work to stay till Thursday, at which time he will go back to the US. It was cool having him around again though and im sure he enjoyed his visit back to Japan.
Next weekends plans are undecided but I may stay in Minakami to do some skiing, but if I do end up doing something worth writing about, I will update my blog again.
Until next time...
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
No Love for Dave Thomas
I headed out to Tokyo on Friday as usual after work. Cynthia caught the same train as me. Emmet decided to show up later cuz he wanted to check out some Jujitsu dojo in Maebashi.
When we got to Tokyo, Cynthia went to Liz's place cuz she was going to stay there and would be heading to Thailand on Saturday. I headed to Mikado for some casuals.
The plan was for us to all get some Wendy's, since this would pretty much be our last chance to do so in Japan. At the end of this month, All 70 something Wendy's locations in Japan would be closing down for good. I did a little checking on the internets and Japanese Wendy's is owned by the same company that owns Sukiya (my favorite beef bowl/curry chain). I guess they just cant compete with McDonalds and would rather focus on opening more Sukiya's. Since Sukiya rocks hard, I wouldnt mind seeing more locations pop up, but at the same time, having the option to eat at Wendy's was pretty nice.
While I waited for the girls to get ready, I played exactly 12 matches of Guilty Gear. Heres the results.
PO win
SL win
MA lose x2
MA win
SL lose
changed cabs and saw my old team mate Honyo who plays Baiken. He was playing as Anji though for whatever reason. Made a little small talk and then...
ZA lose
ZA win
TE win x4
Then the girls called and said they were waiting at the station so I went out there to meet them. Some other Japanese girl that Cynthia knows was with us too. I figured Emmet would be on his way soon but he told us to go ahead cuz he was still in Maebashi.
We got to Wendys and I tried some sorta new Chicken sandwich with a white mushroom sauce on it. I was ok but kinda small and my fries were cold.
After getting Wendy's, the Japanese girl went home and the 3 of us headed to Shibuya cuz some former ALT who is friends with Cynthia was going to be DJing at a rock bar there for like a half hour.
We found the bar and it was mostly a punk rock bar. Not many seats, and not so big but a decent crowd was there. We talked to some random Japanese girl for a bit and talked a little with Cynthia's friend. Overall it was kinda boring there though. They had Heineken on tap just like Current does except they charged 600 yen while Current charges 5. I got a Bass ale after the first Heineken to mix it up. The bar had some signatures of bands that visited there and I saw Opeth had been there. Most likely, they were there just within the last month or so cuz they recently played a show in Shibuya that I couldnt go to cuz it was on a Tuesday. Would have been cool to go but oh well.
After the guy finished DJing we headed out. Liz and Cynthia werent planning to stay out all night and it was pretty much time for the last train. We got on the sardine can Yamanote line train and I got off at Shinjuku. I said bye to the girls who would be going back to Takadanobaba. From there, I headed to Current.
It was a decent size crowd for a Friday night but I didnt know who most of the people were. I talked a bit to Meeri, and a few other people. Emmet eventually rolled in there sorta late. He ended up having his train get delayed on the Takasaki line for like probably over an hour and the cops showed up and stuff. He says he doesnt know exactly why it was delayed but he ended up only making it as far as Ikebukuro and had to take a cab the rest of the way from there and it was like 3000 something yen. Ouch. But better than getting stuck I suppose.
I was also talking to this one guy named Rob. He was telling me that Guns n Roses would be playing at the Tokyo Dome tomorrow! He said that tickets were not yet sold out and that last night in Osaka, they played a 3 hour show! Since the only old members still in the band are Axl and Dizzy, I was reluctant to go and I didnt even know there was a show tomorrow, but if they were gonna play that long of a set, I was down! He really wanted me to go cuz he is a huge GnR fan. I pretty much decided that I would since I had no other major plans for tomorrow except playing casuals. Rob told me about how he met Axl Rose before at an after party when he saw GnR before. He also met one of the new guitar players and showed me a pic of them together. Rob said Axl was a totally nice guy actually which is pretty cool.
The dude Rob (who I will now officially call GnR Rob), was also telling me how he was a former JET who used to work for Fuji TV and now works for Square Enix. He was telling me all about how rough it was back when he worked for Fuji TV, and how he got like 3 hours of sleep a night on average and the place had a bunch of beds to sleep in for the employees because they over worked them so much. He kept this up for 3 years till he couldnt take it anymore. Theres no way I would be able to do something like that, and if thats what it means to stay in Japan and work here after JET, count me out! Im sure I can find something a little less demanding than that though. He said his hours for Square are ok though and mostly works like 11 to 8 on weekdays and gets weekends off so thats pretty reasonable. I forgot exactly what he does but he works on graphic design. He worked on some RPG that I cant remember the name of for the life of me, but he said it flopped pretty bad. The game was rushed and had really bad loading times and slow down. Anyway, it was cool to get some insight on a similar situation as what I might be facing in the future.
The rest of the night was pretty much just drinking and chilling. We headed to PSY after Current as usual and GnR Rob came with us.
GnR Rob bought us a round of shots, so I did the same, and then so did Emmet. We got good and drunk. There were a bunch of annoying Japanese dudes there giving us the whole "WOW! Its a foreigner and im gonna ask him a bunch of stupid questions cuz hes a foreigner!" Kinda guys that were there with Jackie. I dont mind when people ask me stuff but when they are like rushing you down and interupting your conversation and doing it in an almost racist way like theyve never seen a fucking white guy before, its kinda annoying.
After PSY we headed to some random bar that GnR Rob knew about. I dont even remember how to get there but it was sorta near the Hub thats like by Zin. It was just some regular bar but it had really good beers but they were expensive. GnR Rob bought us a round and I got a Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale. Pretty tasty, but I was drunk and passed out halfway through the beer with my hand still around the glass lol. I guess Emmet and GnR Rob talked for a while. Emmet says I was passed out for over an hour but who knows.
After we left, Emmet and I headed to McDonalds. I was making fun of his New Zealand accent cuz I was all wasted and shit. Emmet always talks with really funny slang they use in New Zealand. Like when he has to take a piss, hes like "I'm gonna go take a slash." I find it hilarious cuz every time Emmet goes to pee, I just think of someone winning around of Guilty Gear, "SLASH!" LOL! They have nothing to do with eachother but now I will forever think of peeing and winning rounds of GG as having to do with one another. I guess they both feel pretty good so why not, right? He also says something is "Hard out!" when something is like cool or interesting. Like ill be like "Yo, Emmet theres a party at Current tonight" and he will be like "Hard out!" or something like that. Also, when something is funny, he will just say "Crack up!". Something like "Yo, Emmet, I just beat some scrub like 10 matches in a row", and he would just say like "Crack up!". Its pretty funny with the New Zealand accent. So I was like mimicking his catch phrases and shit and he was like taping it on his phone for whatever reason. He put it on youtube and you can see it here lol! I didnt even remember him taping it until he showed me the video later on.
Anyway, after eating we went to the manga kissa for sleep.
The next day I headed right to Lawson to see if I could buy one of those GnR tickets. Unfortunately they were now sold out, so it looks like I wouldnt be seeing GnR. I was disapointed I couldnt go, but at the same time its good to save money cuz I spent a lot on xmas gifts and the year end enkai for my school next week is like 17,500 yen or something which is a lot of money! Plus I could get more practice in for Frosty Faustings so I did just that, and headed for the arcade.
First I played at Mikado. There were hardly anyone there. I won a few and then ended up beating the game. Then Emmet and I got some Wendy's cuz he didnt get his last chance fix in yet. I got this bacon demigrass double cheeseburger. It was ok. They screwed up my order though and forgot to put the extra patty of beef on there so I had to go back and ask for it. Then later, I found a little hair in my burger that looked like a pube. Pretty nasty. I guess they employees dont give a shit since they will be losing their jobs in a few weeks anyway.
After eating there, we went back to Mikado. Emmet eventually left to go to an international party but I would rather play casuals so I stayed behind. Andy showed up after a while. He played a little GG. There was actually some huge Melty Blood 5 on 5 team tournament going on at the time. I had no idea about it and neither did Andy. There were tons of people there for it and they had the big screen going and stuff.
The GG comp never really picked up for the day and stayed pretty bad. Andy and I decided to go check out Big Box and play some SFIV. I hadnt touched the game in over a month, even online at home.
Daigo was there playing as Akuma. There were lots of other people too. They had 8 full setups going for SFIV. I actually did surprisingly well! I didnt fight Daigo at all, but I fought a bunch of players like a couple Ryu players, a Chun, a Guile, a Sim, and a Gief. I beat the Gief, and I lost my first match against the Sim (who was a master status Sim) but then beat him on my 2nd try which is pretty good cuz its a sucky match for Blanka. I was going even with the Chun and mostly beating the Ryu players. I couldnt beat the Guile though. I just have trouble with that matchup for whatever reason, and he was a master Guile too. Sam showed up and met us there after a little bit. He played some matches with his Dictator and said he got 2 rounds on Daigo's Akuma. I didnt see it and he said Daigo was playing very unorthadox and trying out strange things but then switched to textbook Akuma and it was just all over after that. But I guess getting 2 rounds is still pretty good.
I also recieved a mail from GnR Rob who told me that Guns n Roses played like a near 3 hour and 40 minute set. This is the longest set in the bands history. Would have been nice to be a part of it...
For those of you who are interested, I looked online and the set was as follows...
01. Chinese Democracy
02. Welcome to the Jungle
03. It's So Easy
04. Mr. Brownstone
05. Catcher in the Rye
06. Sorry
07. Band Jam (I Want You Back, Jackson 5)
08. If the World
09. Richard Fortus Solo (James Bond Theme)
10. Live and Let Die
11. Dizzy Reed Solo (Ziggy Stardust)
12. Street of Dreams
13. Band Jam
14. You Could Be Mine
15. Rocket Queen
16. My Michelle
17. DJ Ashba Solo
18. Sweet Child O' Mine
19. Shackler's Revenge
20. I.R.S.
21. Band Jam
22. Axl Rose piano solo
23. November Rain
24. Band Jam
25. Whole Lotta Rosie
26. Knockin' on Heaven's Door
27. Scraped
28. Prostitute
29. Jam
30. This I Love
31. Frank Ferrer Solo (We Will Rock You)
32. Out Ta Get Me
33. Ron Thal solo (Pink Panther Theme/Don't Cry)
34. Don't Cry (Axl, Ron and DJ)
35. Nightrain
Encore:
36. Madagascar
37. There Was a Time
38. My Generation
39. Better
40. Patience
41. Nice Boys
42. Paradise City
I certainly wouldnt have minded seeing a set that long!
After playing for a while, we went to Shibuya to go meet up with Emmet at an Izakaya. He said he had some girls with him from the International party. We waited out in front of the dog statue by the famous intersection in front of the station for a really long time. Some girl was there and she put a PS3 box in front of the statue and just left it there. I think it was some kinda social experiment or something to see what people would do. Some guy checked the box and it was empty. Some people took some pics of it. Not sure what the point was but it was kinda funny to watch. We waited for a long time so I went to go find some beers to kill time. After lots of walking I got them at a Family Mart and then while I was on my way back, Emmet and his party showed up. With Emmet was 2 girls, both of which were pretty cute, and this one random Japanese guy who just sorta followed them.
We walked around a bit and Emmet tried to find the izakaya but couldnt, so we ended up going to another izakaya but it worked out ok. One of the girls had to leave so she went home. The rest of us headed in and had some drinks and food. It was ok but the portions on some of the menu items were pretty small, espesially the pizza which was like bread with a bunch of cheese and sauce lazily thrown on top of it. I guess when everything on the menu is 270 yen you cant really complain. Also, some asshole threw up in the sink in the mens bathroom and I took a picture of it.
After eating, we headed back to Shinjuku and got a beer for the road and went to Current. Current was pretty packed actually. There was some party that Sam was at earlier in the evening and after it was over, he like directed a huge group of people to Current for a 2nd party there. Many of them were actually still there when we arrived which was pretty funny. Emmet spent most of the night dancing with that girl and then left at around 3 am to go to a love hotel. I talked to various people like Chip and this one girl he was sitting by, and Sam and some other regulars. Maybe from about 3:30 to 4:30, Mogi let me DJ behind the bar. It was pretty fun and I hadnt done it in a while. I dont remember all the stuff I played but I played a good mix of some good classic rock and metal and some more obscure progressive stuff that I like too. While I was DJing, Emmet called my phone like 7 times cuz he couldnt find the love hotel but I was too busy DJing to answer. After I finished, everyone said they enjoyed my set which was cool.
After Current closed, we headed to PSY. It was me, Andy, Sam, glasses girl, the random izakaya dude, some other random European guy who wanted to come along, another Japanese guy Sam was talking with, and Jya. On the way there, I noticed Jya and the izakaya guy were talking a bit.
We got to PSY and it was actually more packed than usual. Lots of PSY regulars there and other people. I was standing next to Jya drinking my beer and asked her why she didnt have a drink. She said she only had 200 yen left and needed it to get home. Shes my friend so I decided to be nice and buy her a beer. Then like 5 minutes later, the random izakaya guy was leaving and Jya decided to leave with him! Then I look at her beer on the bar counter and she had already chugged it! I dont care if she wants to hook up with the dude. She is single after all. But I if I knew she was gonna leave so soon instead of staying and hanging out I wouldnt have bought her a beer heh. Oh well.
There was also another one of those annoyoing Japanese guys who wants to talk to foreigners like an idiot like the previous night. This guy tries to get me to sit next to him and then comes and sits by me and says to me in broken English, "Are you Marine-corps? What is meaning of Marine-corps? 1, 2, 3, 4 we are Marine-corps!" then he was like "Do you like tsuyoi America!? Tsuyoi America is best!" I chugged my beer and went to buy another one just so he would stop talking to me. Like I said, I dont mind talking to people at all, but this guy was just being ignorant as hell! The rest of the night was all good.
After leaving PSY we headed to McDonalds with a few other people. After eating, Andy went back to Gunma, everyone else went home, and I went to the manga kissa.
I woke up and met Emmet out on the stairs. He said last night was good times. We got some Mexican food at this one restaurant in Shinjuku I had never been to. It was decent I guess and affordable but I dont know how often id wanna go back there. The Quasadillas from the Takadanobaba one is better than the tacos and nachos I got at this one.
After eating, we headed to Mikado for more games. Today it was extremely dead. I played against Mitsurugi's Slayer like a bunch of times and just couldnt beat him. He was totally in the zone. Eventually I won and he switched to Zappa and I lost. We went back to Big Box for a bit cuz Emmet had never been there and wanted to see Daigo. Unfortunately Daigo wasnt there but a few other people were playing. I played a few matches and once again did fairly well, winning about half of them.
Each time we walked around to go to a new location, there were a ton of people handing out free tissues. I must have stocked up on like about 15 packs! Score!
We then went to look for this place Liz mentioned to me. She said in one of the side streets around the area she saw a bunch of Children of Bodom posters. Emmet and I found a bunch of posters plastered on the sides of some vending machines in front of some place that appeared to be a ramen shop. The place used the COB logo from their 2nd live album and changed it to their name and instead of the reaper it was like some chef guy with a big spoon or something! It was pretty hilarious. I will post pictures of it on my pics page. The place was closed but it had information about some kinda party there. I wonder if its just a regular ramen shop or actually plays metal or something. In any case, I wanna eat there someday just cuz they are Bodom fans lol!
We went back to Mikado and it was still pretty dead. I beat the same Dizzy player 14 times in a row and was like slashbacking tons of his stuff. I even almost slashbacked the full giant gunflame super. Then I beat some JO player and then I beat a Robo-ky like 6 times in a row till he finally beat me by like a pixel! I had a 21 win streak. Emmet wanted to get going, and the comp was pretty dead so we just headed out to go back to Gunma.
And that concludes my weekend Tokyo adventures for this year! It was a good year and I look forward to going home for a few weeks. I have the year end Enkai Tuesday night and its an all nighter at a really nice hotel in Niigata. My flight leaves Thursday night and I will be on the same plane going home as Andy. I have no plans Wednesday so I may end up going to Tokyo on Wednesday, staying the night, and then catching my plane the next day. I plan to get really drunk before I get on the plane so that I can get a lot of sleep. Jet lag sucks.
I hope everyone has a great holiday season. May your days be filled with, games, metal, and beer! I know mine will! Also, I hope to see many of you at Frosty Faustings!
Until next time!
When we got to Tokyo, Cynthia went to Liz's place cuz she was going to stay there and would be heading to Thailand on Saturday. I headed to Mikado for some casuals.
The plan was for us to all get some Wendy's, since this would pretty much be our last chance to do so in Japan. At the end of this month, All 70 something Wendy's locations in Japan would be closing down for good. I did a little checking on the internets and Japanese Wendy's is owned by the same company that owns Sukiya (my favorite beef bowl/curry chain). I guess they just cant compete with McDonalds and would rather focus on opening more Sukiya's. Since Sukiya rocks hard, I wouldnt mind seeing more locations pop up, but at the same time, having the option to eat at Wendy's was pretty nice.
While I waited for the girls to get ready, I played exactly 12 matches of Guilty Gear. Heres the results.
PO win
SL win
MA lose x2
MA win
SL lose
changed cabs and saw my old team mate Honyo who plays Baiken. He was playing as Anji though for whatever reason. Made a little small talk and then...
ZA lose
ZA win
TE win x4
Then the girls called and said they were waiting at the station so I went out there to meet them. Some other Japanese girl that Cynthia knows was with us too. I figured Emmet would be on his way soon but he told us to go ahead cuz he was still in Maebashi.
We got to Wendys and I tried some sorta new Chicken sandwich with a white mushroom sauce on it. I was ok but kinda small and my fries were cold.
After getting Wendy's, the Japanese girl went home and the 3 of us headed to Shibuya cuz some former ALT who is friends with Cynthia was going to be DJing at a rock bar there for like a half hour.
We found the bar and it was mostly a punk rock bar. Not many seats, and not so big but a decent crowd was there. We talked to some random Japanese girl for a bit and talked a little with Cynthia's friend. Overall it was kinda boring there though. They had Heineken on tap just like Current does except they charged 600 yen while Current charges 5. I got a Bass ale after the first Heineken to mix it up. The bar had some signatures of bands that visited there and I saw Opeth had been there. Most likely, they were there just within the last month or so cuz they recently played a show in Shibuya that I couldnt go to cuz it was on a Tuesday. Would have been cool to go but oh well.
After the guy finished DJing we headed out. Liz and Cynthia werent planning to stay out all night and it was pretty much time for the last train. We got on the sardine can Yamanote line train and I got off at Shinjuku. I said bye to the girls who would be going back to Takadanobaba. From there, I headed to Current.
It was a decent size crowd for a Friday night but I didnt know who most of the people were. I talked a bit to Meeri, and a few other people. Emmet eventually rolled in there sorta late. He ended up having his train get delayed on the Takasaki line for like probably over an hour and the cops showed up and stuff. He says he doesnt know exactly why it was delayed but he ended up only making it as far as Ikebukuro and had to take a cab the rest of the way from there and it was like 3000 something yen. Ouch. But better than getting stuck I suppose.
I was also talking to this one guy named Rob. He was telling me that Guns n Roses would be playing at the Tokyo Dome tomorrow! He said that tickets were not yet sold out and that last night in Osaka, they played a 3 hour show! Since the only old members still in the band are Axl and Dizzy, I was reluctant to go and I didnt even know there was a show tomorrow, but if they were gonna play that long of a set, I was down! He really wanted me to go cuz he is a huge GnR fan. I pretty much decided that I would since I had no other major plans for tomorrow except playing casuals. Rob told me about how he met Axl Rose before at an after party when he saw GnR before. He also met one of the new guitar players and showed me a pic of them together. Rob said Axl was a totally nice guy actually which is pretty cool.
The dude Rob (who I will now officially call GnR Rob), was also telling me how he was a former JET who used to work for Fuji TV and now works for Square Enix. He was telling me all about how rough it was back when he worked for Fuji TV, and how he got like 3 hours of sleep a night on average and the place had a bunch of beds to sleep in for the employees because they over worked them so much. He kept this up for 3 years till he couldnt take it anymore. Theres no way I would be able to do something like that, and if thats what it means to stay in Japan and work here after JET, count me out! Im sure I can find something a little less demanding than that though. He said his hours for Square are ok though and mostly works like 11 to 8 on weekdays and gets weekends off so thats pretty reasonable. I forgot exactly what he does but he works on graphic design. He worked on some RPG that I cant remember the name of for the life of me, but he said it flopped pretty bad. The game was rushed and had really bad loading times and slow down. Anyway, it was cool to get some insight on a similar situation as what I might be facing in the future.
The rest of the night was pretty much just drinking and chilling. We headed to PSY after Current as usual and GnR Rob came with us.
GnR Rob bought us a round of shots, so I did the same, and then so did Emmet. We got good and drunk. There were a bunch of annoying Japanese dudes there giving us the whole "WOW! Its a foreigner and im gonna ask him a bunch of stupid questions cuz hes a foreigner!" Kinda guys that were there with Jackie. I dont mind when people ask me stuff but when they are like rushing you down and interupting your conversation and doing it in an almost racist way like theyve never seen a fucking white guy before, its kinda annoying.
After PSY we headed to some random bar that GnR Rob knew about. I dont even remember how to get there but it was sorta near the Hub thats like by Zin. It was just some regular bar but it had really good beers but they were expensive. GnR Rob bought us a round and I got a Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale. Pretty tasty, but I was drunk and passed out halfway through the beer with my hand still around the glass lol. I guess Emmet and GnR Rob talked for a while. Emmet says I was passed out for over an hour but who knows.
After we left, Emmet and I headed to McDonalds. I was making fun of his New Zealand accent cuz I was all wasted and shit. Emmet always talks with really funny slang they use in New Zealand. Like when he has to take a piss, hes like "I'm gonna go take a slash." I find it hilarious cuz every time Emmet goes to pee, I just think of someone winning around of Guilty Gear, "SLASH!" LOL! They have nothing to do with eachother but now I will forever think of peeing and winning rounds of GG as having to do with one another. I guess they both feel pretty good so why not, right? He also says something is "Hard out!" when something is like cool or interesting. Like ill be like "Yo, Emmet theres a party at Current tonight" and he will be like "Hard out!" or something like that. Also, when something is funny, he will just say "Crack up!". Something like "Yo, Emmet, I just beat some scrub like 10 matches in a row", and he would just say like "Crack up!". Its pretty funny with the New Zealand accent. So I was like mimicking his catch phrases and shit and he was like taping it on his phone for whatever reason. He put it on youtube and you can see it here lol! I didnt even remember him taping it until he showed me the video later on.
Anyway, after eating we went to the manga kissa for sleep.
The next day I headed right to Lawson to see if I could buy one of those GnR tickets. Unfortunately they were now sold out, so it looks like I wouldnt be seeing GnR. I was disapointed I couldnt go, but at the same time its good to save money cuz I spent a lot on xmas gifts and the year end enkai for my school next week is like 17,500 yen or something which is a lot of money! Plus I could get more practice in for Frosty Faustings so I did just that, and headed for the arcade.
First I played at Mikado. There were hardly anyone there. I won a few and then ended up beating the game. Then Emmet and I got some Wendy's cuz he didnt get his last chance fix in yet. I got this bacon demigrass double cheeseburger. It was ok. They screwed up my order though and forgot to put the extra patty of beef on there so I had to go back and ask for it. Then later, I found a little hair in my burger that looked like a pube. Pretty nasty. I guess they employees dont give a shit since they will be losing their jobs in a few weeks anyway.
After eating there, we went back to Mikado. Emmet eventually left to go to an international party but I would rather play casuals so I stayed behind. Andy showed up after a while. He played a little GG. There was actually some huge Melty Blood 5 on 5 team tournament going on at the time. I had no idea about it and neither did Andy. There were tons of people there for it and they had the big screen going and stuff.
The GG comp never really picked up for the day and stayed pretty bad. Andy and I decided to go check out Big Box and play some SFIV. I hadnt touched the game in over a month, even online at home.
Daigo was there playing as Akuma. There were lots of other people too. They had 8 full setups going for SFIV. I actually did surprisingly well! I didnt fight Daigo at all, but I fought a bunch of players like a couple Ryu players, a Chun, a Guile, a Sim, and a Gief. I beat the Gief, and I lost my first match against the Sim (who was a master status Sim) but then beat him on my 2nd try which is pretty good cuz its a sucky match for Blanka. I was going even with the Chun and mostly beating the Ryu players. I couldnt beat the Guile though. I just have trouble with that matchup for whatever reason, and he was a master Guile too. Sam showed up and met us there after a little bit. He played some matches with his Dictator and said he got 2 rounds on Daigo's Akuma. I didnt see it and he said Daigo was playing very unorthadox and trying out strange things but then switched to textbook Akuma and it was just all over after that. But I guess getting 2 rounds is still pretty good.
I also recieved a mail from GnR Rob who told me that Guns n Roses played like a near 3 hour and 40 minute set. This is the longest set in the bands history. Would have been nice to be a part of it...
For those of you who are interested, I looked online and the set was as follows...
01. Chinese Democracy
02. Welcome to the Jungle
03. It's So Easy
04. Mr. Brownstone
05. Catcher in the Rye
06. Sorry
07. Band Jam (I Want You Back, Jackson 5)
08. If the World
09. Richard Fortus Solo (James Bond Theme)
10. Live and Let Die
11. Dizzy Reed Solo (Ziggy Stardust)
12. Street of Dreams
13. Band Jam
14. You Could Be Mine
15. Rocket Queen
16. My Michelle
17. DJ Ashba Solo
18. Sweet Child O' Mine
19. Shackler's Revenge
20. I.R.S.
21. Band Jam
22. Axl Rose piano solo
23. November Rain
24. Band Jam
25. Whole Lotta Rosie
26. Knockin' on Heaven's Door
27. Scraped
28. Prostitute
29. Jam
30. This I Love
31. Frank Ferrer Solo (We Will Rock You)
32. Out Ta Get Me
33. Ron Thal solo (Pink Panther Theme/Don't Cry)
34. Don't Cry (Axl, Ron and DJ)
35. Nightrain
Encore:
36. Madagascar
37. There Was a Time
38. My Generation
39. Better
40. Patience
41. Nice Boys
42. Paradise City
I certainly wouldnt have minded seeing a set that long!
After playing for a while, we went to Shibuya to go meet up with Emmet at an Izakaya. He said he had some girls with him from the International party. We waited out in front of the dog statue by the famous intersection in front of the station for a really long time. Some girl was there and she put a PS3 box in front of the statue and just left it there. I think it was some kinda social experiment or something to see what people would do. Some guy checked the box and it was empty. Some people took some pics of it. Not sure what the point was but it was kinda funny to watch. We waited for a long time so I went to go find some beers to kill time. After lots of walking I got them at a Family Mart and then while I was on my way back, Emmet and his party showed up. With Emmet was 2 girls, both of which were pretty cute, and this one random Japanese guy who just sorta followed them.
We walked around a bit and Emmet tried to find the izakaya but couldnt, so we ended up going to another izakaya but it worked out ok. One of the girls had to leave so she went home. The rest of us headed in and had some drinks and food. It was ok but the portions on some of the menu items were pretty small, espesially the pizza which was like bread with a bunch of cheese and sauce lazily thrown on top of it. I guess when everything on the menu is 270 yen you cant really complain. Also, some asshole threw up in the sink in the mens bathroom and I took a picture of it.
After eating, we headed back to Shinjuku and got a beer for the road and went to Current. Current was pretty packed actually. There was some party that Sam was at earlier in the evening and after it was over, he like directed a huge group of people to Current for a 2nd party there. Many of them were actually still there when we arrived which was pretty funny. Emmet spent most of the night dancing with that girl and then left at around 3 am to go to a love hotel. I talked to various people like Chip and this one girl he was sitting by, and Sam and some other regulars. Maybe from about 3:30 to 4:30, Mogi let me DJ behind the bar. It was pretty fun and I hadnt done it in a while. I dont remember all the stuff I played but I played a good mix of some good classic rock and metal and some more obscure progressive stuff that I like too. While I was DJing, Emmet called my phone like 7 times cuz he couldnt find the love hotel but I was too busy DJing to answer. After I finished, everyone said they enjoyed my set which was cool.
After Current closed, we headed to PSY. It was me, Andy, Sam, glasses girl, the random izakaya dude, some other random European guy who wanted to come along, another Japanese guy Sam was talking with, and Jya. On the way there, I noticed Jya and the izakaya guy were talking a bit.
We got to PSY and it was actually more packed than usual. Lots of PSY regulars there and other people. I was standing next to Jya drinking my beer and asked her why she didnt have a drink. She said she only had 200 yen left and needed it to get home. Shes my friend so I decided to be nice and buy her a beer. Then like 5 minutes later, the random izakaya guy was leaving and Jya decided to leave with him! Then I look at her beer on the bar counter and she had already chugged it! I dont care if she wants to hook up with the dude. She is single after all. But I if I knew she was gonna leave so soon instead of staying and hanging out I wouldnt have bought her a beer heh. Oh well.
There was also another one of those annoyoing Japanese guys who wants to talk to foreigners like an idiot like the previous night. This guy tries to get me to sit next to him and then comes and sits by me and says to me in broken English, "Are you Marine-corps? What is meaning of Marine-corps? 1, 2, 3, 4 we are Marine-corps!" then he was like "Do you like tsuyoi America!? Tsuyoi America is best!" I chugged my beer and went to buy another one just so he would stop talking to me. Like I said, I dont mind talking to people at all, but this guy was just being ignorant as hell! The rest of the night was all good.
After leaving PSY we headed to McDonalds with a few other people. After eating, Andy went back to Gunma, everyone else went home, and I went to the manga kissa.
I woke up and met Emmet out on the stairs. He said last night was good times. We got some Mexican food at this one restaurant in Shinjuku I had never been to. It was decent I guess and affordable but I dont know how often id wanna go back there. The Quasadillas from the Takadanobaba one is better than the tacos and nachos I got at this one.
After eating, we headed to Mikado for more games. Today it was extremely dead. I played against Mitsurugi's Slayer like a bunch of times and just couldnt beat him. He was totally in the zone. Eventually I won and he switched to Zappa and I lost. We went back to Big Box for a bit cuz Emmet had never been there and wanted to see Daigo. Unfortunately Daigo wasnt there but a few other people were playing. I played a few matches and once again did fairly well, winning about half of them.
Each time we walked around to go to a new location, there were a ton of people handing out free tissues. I must have stocked up on like about 15 packs! Score!
We then went to look for this place Liz mentioned to me. She said in one of the side streets around the area she saw a bunch of Children of Bodom posters. Emmet and I found a bunch of posters plastered on the sides of some vending machines in front of some place that appeared to be a ramen shop. The place used the COB logo from their 2nd live album and changed it to their name and instead of the reaper it was like some chef guy with a big spoon or something! It was pretty hilarious. I will post pictures of it on my pics page. The place was closed but it had information about some kinda party there. I wonder if its just a regular ramen shop or actually plays metal or something. In any case, I wanna eat there someday just cuz they are Bodom fans lol!
We went back to Mikado and it was still pretty dead. I beat the same Dizzy player 14 times in a row and was like slashbacking tons of his stuff. I even almost slashbacked the full giant gunflame super. Then I beat some JO player and then I beat a Robo-ky like 6 times in a row till he finally beat me by like a pixel! I had a 21 win streak. Emmet wanted to get going, and the comp was pretty dead so we just headed out to go back to Gunma.
And that concludes my weekend Tokyo adventures for this year! It was a good year and I look forward to going home for a few weeks. I have the year end Enkai Tuesday night and its an all nighter at a really nice hotel in Niigata. My flight leaves Thursday night and I will be on the same plane going home as Andy. I have no plans Wednesday so I may end up going to Tokyo on Wednesday, staying the night, and then catching my plane the next day. I plan to get really drunk before I get on the plane so that I can get a lot of sleep. Jet lag sucks.
I hope everyone has a great holiday season. May your days be filled with, games, metal, and beer! I know mine will! Also, I hope to see many of you at Frosty Faustings!
Until next time!
Monday, December 14, 2009
Xmas Shopping in Asakusa
2 weekends ago, I didn’t go to Tokyo. I just stayed in Numata and drank with some other ALTs to save some money. Nothing really eventful happened. My gaming for the weekend was limited to playing Marvel Super Heroes on a cabinet with no 2nd player roundhouse button, and a little bit of 3rd Strike and CvS2 with Emmet on his PS2.
This past weekend, on Friday, I had an enkai for work to welcome one of the new ALTs. I drank a good amount and the food was pretty good. Afterwords I went to an Izakaya with Cynthia and a few of the people from the BOE and then Cynthia and I did Karaoke.
The next morning I headed to Tokyo. I ran into another ALT on the first train on the way and talked to him a bit, which was good cuz I totally forgot to bring my headphones with me. When I got to Takasaki I met up with Andy. He arrived just in time for us to run to the train and board it just as the doors were closing.
We headed right to Mikado for games. Emmet was already there when we arrived. There were tons of people playing Guilty Gear today and hardly any playing BlazBlue. I went back and forth playing both games but mostly played Guilty Gear. Im still learning Hakumen and havnt really practiced with him much so im just getting the feeling of things. I was able to win a few matches here and there but mostly lost. With GG I was doing pretty well. I played against Imo’s Zappa for like the first time in forever and he totally owned me. I forgot how good he was. Hes totally different than Mitsurugi too but they are both beasts. They were playing against eachother in Zappa mirror matches for a good while. There were also a crap load of May players there today. Counting Andy, there were about 5 or 6 different May players. I got a lot of May practice in. I was actually doing quite well in general but there was this one May player I couldn’t beat. I forgot his name but I always saw him around during SBO quals.
After a while, Emmet left to go to Shibuya to meet up with the girl in the purple hat who we met at the last international party. Andy was playing some Melty Blood and while he was on one of the cabs, some guy sitting next to him found an 80 gb iPod under Andy’s chair. He assumed it was Andy’s so he put it up next to Andy’s stick. Andy sat there and played for like a whole hour and no one came by to claim the iPod so Andy is now the lucky owner of a new iPod. Andy and I decided to get some Mexican food at that place down the street. While we were there, we were looking through the music on the iPod. There was a lot of crap like Brittany Spears and Christina Agulera and Avril Lavigne and stuff like that. Also some Exile and a bunch of random stuff I never heard of. The battery died shortly after we started looking through it. I ordered a quesadilla and Andy got the Taco combo. It was pretty awesome. The quesadilla was really tasty but didn’t quite fill me up. Also, sitting near us were these 2 foreigners, some guy and some girl, most likely college students at Waseda. They were loud as hell and were just talking about the dumbest crap. They sounded like a bunch of high school kids or something.
After eating we returned to Mikado for a bit. Later on, Ryan (LetBloodRun), the 3rd Strike player from Cali showed up. He said this would be his last weekend in Japan before he goes back so he said he was down to go drinking with us later. We stayed at Mikado and played till maybe about 10:30 and then headed out to go drinking at Current. I got a cheeseburger at McDonalds for the road to offset the small size of that quesadilla.
It was a good night at Current and a lot of regulars showed up. Michi was sitting at the bar with Yoshie and Mai when we came in. Also, Glasses girl, Chibi Testament, Jerry, Taka, Rina, Jya, Mogi, Sushi, Masami, and a few others were there. Emmet showed up later. It turns out that today was Michi’s birthday and they busted out a birthday cake for it. She shared it with everyone sitting at the bar and I enjoyed a slice. Chip came later too and Ryan was happy to meet him seeing as how hes a huge 3rd Strike player and Chip worked on the sound for the game.
I drank a ton of beers and was really in a heavy drinking mood. Not cuz of any particular reason, I just wanted to get smashed.
After Current closed at 5, a group of us headed to PSY. A few of the usual people were there and we had one more beer. Same as usual pretty much. They were showing the Adams Family movie on the screen there for whatever reason lol.
After PSY closed, Emmet wanted to keep drinking and suggested we go to Tokyo Loose. The place always sucks but I sorta wanted one more beer so we ended up going there with Ryan. Andy headed to the manga kissa to sleep. Tokyo Loose was pretty packed. It was a typical crowd for that sorta place but there was a higher number of hot chicks there. Too bad that, as always, they were stuck up and didn’t wanna dance or talk with you unless you were some big black dude or something. After finishing our beers and trying to talk to a few girls with no luck, we decided to just go sleep as well. Ryan went home cuz his girl was gonna be pissed if she got home before he did. Emmet and I went to the manga kissa.
I woke up the next day and we all met outside the manga kissa on the stairs. Today’s plan was to go Xmas shopping. I had to buy a bunch of gifts for my family back home, since I will be going to visit Chicago again this year as I have the past 2 years. First we stopped by at the cigar shop I always go to near Shinjuku Station. I picked up a bunch of Cuban cigars for my dad. Seeing as how you cant buy them in the US, he always appreciates when I give him some.
After that, we headed to Asakusa, the same place Emmet and I went to about a month or so ago. It has all the traditional old school stores that sell all kinds of stuff like kimono, statues, katanas, paper lanterns, and various other things.
We ended up getting off 2 stops before to transfer and decided to just walk it cuz it was really nice out. Emmet and I got a beer for the walk. We found what I think may be the main headquarters building for Bandai. They had all these character statues out in front and we took pics of them all. Emmet and I also gave the Doraemon statue our beers and took some pics of the drunken domestic violence version of Doreamon. We found this Ramen restaurant that had the manliest ramen I have ever seen. The picture on the place just had a bowl which looked like strait up meat floating in broth! You couldn’t even see the noodles. We decided to get it. It was just covered in sliced pork! There was indeed ramen under it but I honestly think there was more meat in there than noodles! It filled us up pretty good though and was pretty tasty.
After eating we went shopping. All of us found some pretty good things after a lot of looking around. This was Andy’s first time there so he took a lot of pictures. I found these radio controlled Mario Kart race cars that I got for my little cousins. I got my other little female cousin a plushy Pikachu. For my mom, brothers, and Grandma, I got some more tranditional things like geisha statues, wall scrolls, paper lanterns… that sorta stuff. Andy and Emmet picked up a few things as well.
Once we finished shopping, it was already dark out so we headed back to the station. Andy and Emmet went ahead and headed back to Gunma. I stayed behind to go to Akihabara to play Guilty Gear for a few hours.
At first I played some Venom who was good and lost a few. Then Kunihiro showed up out of nowhere and played him and lost. I tried once more and won. Then I fought against Kunhiro for like over an hour. He played a bunch of different characters on me. I probably won more than he did but then he played his Anji (his main) and won 4 in a row till I finally beat him. Then he had to go so he said goodbye and headed out.
I was getting pretty tired honestly and sorta just wanted to go home. I went to get some Curry before I got on the train. I got this spinach bacon curry that ended up being pretty good. Some random dude started talking to me at the Curry place. He spoke perfect English. He made a comment about my Dream Theater sweatshirt and said he was a big fan so we talked a bit about DT and then he was asking about life in Japan. I asked if he was Japanese and he said he was from Taiwan and was here on business. He was eating with some friends. I told him to check out Current if he is looking for a good rock bar. After I finished eating, I headed out and took the train home.
Nothing too overly eventful happened but I enjoyed the weekend anyway.
Next weekend is the last weekend that I will spend in Tokyo before I end up going home to Chicago for Xmas.
This past weekend, on Friday, I had an enkai for work to welcome one of the new ALTs. I drank a good amount and the food was pretty good. Afterwords I went to an Izakaya with Cynthia and a few of the people from the BOE and then Cynthia and I did Karaoke.
The next morning I headed to Tokyo. I ran into another ALT on the first train on the way and talked to him a bit, which was good cuz I totally forgot to bring my headphones with me. When I got to Takasaki I met up with Andy. He arrived just in time for us to run to the train and board it just as the doors were closing.
We headed right to Mikado for games. Emmet was already there when we arrived. There were tons of people playing Guilty Gear today and hardly any playing BlazBlue. I went back and forth playing both games but mostly played Guilty Gear. Im still learning Hakumen and havnt really practiced with him much so im just getting the feeling of things. I was able to win a few matches here and there but mostly lost. With GG I was doing pretty well. I played against Imo’s Zappa for like the first time in forever and he totally owned me. I forgot how good he was. Hes totally different than Mitsurugi too but they are both beasts. They were playing against eachother in Zappa mirror matches for a good while. There were also a crap load of May players there today. Counting Andy, there were about 5 or 6 different May players. I got a lot of May practice in. I was actually doing quite well in general but there was this one May player I couldn’t beat. I forgot his name but I always saw him around during SBO quals.
After a while, Emmet left to go to Shibuya to meet up with the girl in the purple hat who we met at the last international party. Andy was playing some Melty Blood and while he was on one of the cabs, some guy sitting next to him found an 80 gb iPod under Andy’s chair. He assumed it was Andy’s so he put it up next to Andy’s stick. Andy sat there and played for like a whole hour and no one came by to claim the iPod so Andy is now the lucky owner of a new iPod. Andy and I decided to get some Mexican food at that place down the street. While we were there, we were looking through the music on the iPod. There was a lot of crap like Brittany Spears and Christina Agulera and Avril Lavigne and stuff like that. Also some Exile and a bunch of random stuff I never heard of. The battery died shortly after we started looking through it. I ordered a quesadilla and Andy got the Taco combo. It was pretty awesome. The quesadilla was really tasty but didn’t quite fill me up. Also, sitting near us were these 2 foreigners, some guy and some girl, most likely college students at Waseda. They were loud as hell and were just talking about the dumbest crap. They sounded like a bunch of high school kids or something.
After eating we returned to Mikado for a bit. Later on, Ryan (LetBloodRun), the 3rd Strike player from Cali showed up. He said this would be his last weekend in Japan before he goes back so he said he was down to go drinking with us later. We stayed at Mikado and played till maybe about 10:30 and then headed out to go drinking at Current. I got a cheeseburger at McDonalds for the road to offset the small size of that quesadilla.
It was a good night at Current and a lot of regulars showed up. Michi was sitting at the bar with Yoshie and Mai when we came in. Also, Glasses girl, Chibi Testament, Jerry, Taka, Rina, Jya, Mogi, Sushi, Masami, and a few others were there. Emmet showed up later. It turns out that today was Michi’s birthday and they busted out a birthday cake for it. She shared it with everyone sitting at the bar and I enjoyed a slice. Chip came later too and Ryan was happy to meet him seeing as how hes a huge 3rd Strike player and Chip worked on the sound for the game.
I drank a ton of beers and was really in a heavy drinking mood. Not cuz of any particular reason, I just wanted to get smashed.
After Current closed at 5, a group of us headed to PSY. A few of the usual people were there and we had one more beer. Same as usual pretty much. They were showing the Adams Family movie on the screen there for whatever reason lol.
After PSY closed, Emmet wanted to keep drinking and suggested we go to Tokyo Loose. The place always sucks but I sorta wanted one more beer so we ended up going there with Ryan. Andy headed to the manga kissa to sleep. Tokyo Loose was pretty packed. It was a typical crowd for that sorta place but there was a higher number of hot chicks there. Too bad that, as always, they were stuck up and didn’t wanna dance or talk with you unless you were some big black dude or something. After finishing our beers and trying to talk to a few girls with no luck, we decided to just go sleep as well. Ryan went home cuz his girl was gonna be pissed if she got home before he did. Emmet and I went to the manga kissa.
I woke up the next day and we all met outside the manga kissa on the stairs. Today’s plan was to go Xmas shopping. I had to buy a bunch of gifts for my family back home, since I will be going to visit Chicago again this year as I have the past 2 years. First we stopped by at the cigar shop I always go to near Shinjuku Station. I picked up a bunch of Cuban cigars for my dad. Seeing as how you cant buy them in the US, he always appreciates when I give him some.
After that, we headed to Asakusa, the same place Emmet and I went to about a month or so ago. It has all the traditional old school stores that sell all kinds of stuff like kimono, statues, katanas, paper lanterns, and various other things.
We ended up getting off 2 stops before to transfer and decided to just walk it cuz it was really nice out. Emmet and I got a beer for the walk. We found what I think may be the main headquarters building for Bandai. They had all these character statues out in front and we took pics of them all. Emmet and I also gave the Doraemon statue our beers and took some pics of the drunken domestic violence version of Doreamon. We found this Ramen restaurant that had the manliest ramen I have ever seen. The picture on the place just had a bowl which looked like strait up meat floating in broth! You couldn’t even see the noodles. We decided to get it. It was just covered in sliced pork! There was indeed ramen under it but I honestly think there was more meat in there than noodles! It filled us up pretty good though and was pretty tasty.
After eating we went shopping. All of us found some pretty good things after a lot of looking around. This was Andy’s first time there so he took a lot of pictures. I found these radio controlled Mario Kart race cars that I got for my little cousins. I got my other little female cousin a plushy Pikachu. For my mom, brothers, and Grandma, I got some more tranditional things like geisha statues, wall scrolls, paper lanterns… that sorta stuff. Andy and Emmet picked up a few things as well.
Once we finished shopping, it was already dark out so we headed back to the station. Andy and Emmet went ahead and headed back to Gunma. I stayed behind to go to Akihabara to play Guilty Gear for a few hours.
At first I played some Venom who was good and lost a few. Then Kunihiro showed up out of nowhere and played him and lost. I tried once more and won. Then I fought against Kunhiro for like over an hour. He played a bunch of different characters on me. I probably won more than he did but then he played his Anji (his main) and won 4 in a row till I finally beat him. Then he had to go so he said goodbye and headed out.
I was getting pretty tired honestly and sorta just wanted to go home. I went to get some Curry before I got on the train. I got this spinach bacon curry that ended up being pretty good. Some random dude started talking to me at the Curry place. He spoke perfect English. He made a comment about my Dream Theater sweatshirt and said he was a big fan so we talked a bit about DT and then he was asking about life in Japan. I asked if he was Japanese and he said he was from Taiwan and was here on business. He was eating with some friends. I told him to check out Current if he is looking for a good rock bar. After I finished eating, I headed out and took the train home.
Nothing too overly eventful happened but I enjoyed the weekend anyway.
Next weekend is the last weekend that I will spend in Tokyo before I end up going home to Chicago for Xmas.
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