The Heartful Adventures of Rob

Arcana Heart 3

2010-07-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I went to monte 50 sunday night and played arcana heart 3 for a few hours. None of the other games really had people playing them, but there were many people playing AH3. I got a 12 game winstreak, a 14 game winstreak, and a 26 game winstreak with my Petra. I felt kinda bad for the other guys so I decided to try my side characters. I messed around with Maori and Lilica. At first, I had no idea what to do with Lilica, because she's so changed, however, after a few games, I started getting the hang of it. She's more fun than I originally thought, and it's nice to now have another character I can use. Plus I use the love arcana with her, and that's what I started Arcana Heart 1 with (Love Lilica). It's nice to go back to my roots a bit and see how the same thing is so changed, but not necessarily for the worst.

I also played Blazblue at A-cho for a while. That went pretty well for the most part too. I'm getting more used to Noel, despite her flaws. I'm looking forward to Makoto DLC for the 360, but even if I don't use her, I still have Noel no matter what.

Also, I found out that I probably won't be able to attend SBO this year due to work related issues. :(

Celebrity status?

2010-07-11T05:42:00.001-07:00

Sunday, right outside of outback steakhouse, Myself, Dan, Toshi, Alex, and a friend of Alex's, CJ, just got done eating lunch. Alex and CJ came to Osaka to go to a Hanshin Tigers baseball game, and CJ (tall white guy) was wearing a hanshin tigers jersey.

So while we're standing there waiting outside, a bus of people sitting at the stoplight start pointing at us standing there and looking at us. Then, instead of just looking for a bit and turning away, they continued to stare the ENTIRE time until the bus drove away. We waved to them and some of them waved back, but it was extremely bizarre that a bus of people would all be staring at us nonstop.

Our theory is that they probably thought CJ was one of the white guys who plays for the Hanshin Tigers and since all white people look the same to the Japanese eye, they probably thought they spotted a celebrity. No other explanation makes sense as far as I'm concerned, and if you tell me I'm wrong, you're stupid.

The insanity that is Project Diva Arcade

2010-07-05T18:21:00.000-07:00

So for those who don't know, Project Diva is a PSP music game involving the popular vocaloid Hatsune Miku. It was pretty popular, and had pretty good sales. It was so popular, in fact, that they decided to make an arcade version. It just came out a couple weeks ago, June 25th to be precise.

Anyways, I figured "oh, it's out, I guess I'll try the game!" So I went to Sega Avion in denden town, and I walked in the arcade. Near the door, they had a big LCD tv set up showing a direct feed from one of the arcade machines. I walked toward where the setup was, and there were two machines. In between the two machines was another huge LCD screen showing the same thing as the other one. There was also a long line of people waiting to play. There were at least 10 people in line to play the game. Granted, it was release day, but it was way more popular than I thought!

The next day, Dan and I went to a Kyoto arcade and I saw it again. There, there was only one machine, and about 6-7 people waiting in line to play. It's crazy. It's such a long wait for only a couple of songs.

Skip to the following weekend and yet again, there's a long line of people waiting to play no matter where I go. Even at the two arcades in Sannomiya (Kobe) that have it, there were 3-4 people in line both times. I really want to play, but I don't want to have to wait in a line to play.

Then, this past sunday, something amazing happened. I was at Magical Space in Sannomiya, and there was a guy playing, but there was nobody in line behind him. Just as I started watching, he finishes his 2nd song and gets the game over screen. Without even trying, I have a chance to play!

I went and tried it out. It was pretty fun, a little difficult to get used to at first, but the graphics are amazing, and overall, it's just a lot of fun. I dunno how often I'll be able to play thanks to my dislike for waiting in line to play a game, but I'll definitely play it again if I get the chance! Who thought that a music game would be so popular? I look forward to seeing how well the game does ranking-wise.

TGIF

2010-07-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

At TGIF, the American restaurant in Kyoto, I went with Dan and we had an awesome meal. Afterwards, our server, "Purin" (Japanese for pudding), came up and gave us a reciept. I was like "oh it's ok, we don't need one" but apparantly, it was some sort of 10% off coupon that I have to go online and fill out or something. So she was like "wait...this is Lucky...lucky...lucky...lucky..." and she just kinda said "lucky" a few times cause she couldn't quite explain it. I was like "ok then I guess I'll take it, thanks!" Overall it was really cute cause she just didn't really know what to say, so she just repeated herself a bunch with the word "Lucky!"

Change in Style

2010-06-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, so as you can see, I haven't written in a while. Writing the way I was writing takes a while, and lately, I've been kind of busy at work (where I normally write them).

I decided that if I'm gonna keep writing, that I'm going to have to change how I write. Writing a long entry where nothing really happens is just a waste of time, and not all that interesting. I think that I'll instead, just use this place to post little interesting things that happen here. Hopefully it means I'll post more often, but I won't make any promises.

Anyways, here's the start:
This past weekend, in Kyoto at a karaoke place, these two girls walk in as me and Dan are sitting there waiting. The taller of the two looks at Dan and while she's walking, says something along the lines of "Hello sexy!" Dan didn't notice, but I did and then she looked at me, and I just tried not to laugh. She continued along her way and that was about it. Can't tell if she was drunk or not, but it was pretty funny, at least to me.

So this is a start. If i remember any other interesting moments, I'll try to post them, because that's more interesting than "I went to the arcade, I hung out with friends, I ate cheese curry" etc.

The Heartful Adventures of Rob! Blog writing takes a while sometimes, but not today.

2010-05-27T20:29:00.001-07:00

Hey all, the more I put off writing, the harder it becomes to write.

Anyways, I hung out with Alex and Dan over golden week. We played Mahjong and SSFIV. Then I went to another SBO qual in Shiga. Me and my partner lost first round to the same team we lost to at Athena. Oh well. A Cathy/Heart team went onto win the qualifier, and then the area qualifier the following week.

One of the weekends, I went to Kohatsu for this big soul calibur event. They had SC1, SC2, and SC3:AE there. I went there for SC2. I ended up getting 2nd in the tourney, losing miserably to Dekka Cho. So sad. I got a buncha winstreaks and def impressed people there because they didn't think I would be THAT good at SC2. Mich, a singapore Taki player was there too and we hung out. After that, we walked around Denden town, and just hung out, ate Cheese curry, all that jazz. Then we went back home, and I just stayed home on sunday hanging out.

The weekend after, I hung out with Dan, we did our denden town thing, and just had a good time keeping it real.

This weekend, I've got another SBO qual coming up, and then Imma go to Shiga to hang out with Alex and company. That's all! Take care, and check out teamspooky.com for articles that I actually HAVE been writing. Peace!

The Heartful Adventures of Rob! Golden week part 1

2010-05-11T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hey all, I'm back! Golden week is over and everyone is back to work in Japan!

Anyways, last week Monday, I checked out the local game store to see if they got Super Street Fighter IV early. No dice. Tuesday, I had to run to the post office, so I left work early to go do that before they closed. The hours for the post office are M-F9-4, and I work M-F8-4. So without leaving early, it's impossible to go there. Oh well. After I was done at the post office, I checked out the local game store, Wing. This time, they had SSFIV! Since I pre-ordered my copy of the game for the 360 with Andrew, I picked up the PS3 version.

I went back home and played it for a couple hours before I headed out to Sannomiya for the evening. In Sannomiya, I met up with Andrew and his fiancee. We went to eat at this Jamaican restaurant. I got this pork thing, and it was pretty good, but mad dry, as expected. After a bit, the guy who owns the place came out and started singing some songs in Karaoke. He did a Jamaican song, a couple classic rock songs, and the song “Banana Boat”, which I believe was made popular thanks mostly to the Beetlejuice movie starring Michael Keaton. After that, his wife (Japanese) came out and was all “stop singing, if you keep singing, the customers won't come back!” It was pretty funny. After that, we went Karaoke, even though Andrew didn't really want to. I told him to cry moar. We had fun anyways. I had to head back to Ono after that sadly, cause of work the next day.

However, after I got home (which was around 11:30), I decided “well, what's the harm in just playing a few games of SSFIV” I ended up staying up till about 2AM playing. Oops. Oh well. I only had a couple classes the next day and I ended up being able to save my energy for doing those classes, so I was able to get through the day just fine. After work, I went home and played some more SSFIV online. It's pretty addicting. I left at abou 6:30 to get to Andrew's place in Nishinomiya. We planned on spending the night playing Super Street Fighter IV against each other, since the next day was a holiday. We met up, and went back to his place and played for a while. We took a break and played online as well against random people.

The next day, we met up with Jeff, who brought his wife, and the three of us went to play Softball with guys from Andrew's company. We played against a college team for 2 games first. We got owned pretty hard. Then we played against another team that had a bunch of teenagers and a buncha old taxi drivers. We got owned by those guys too. We were doing good at first, and then it just went downhill. Oh well. Maybe next time. It was fun though. I got used to hitting the ball way more by the end, and I made some decent catches. I think I'll end up playing again the next time they have a game.

After that, we were all really hungry so we went to Outback Steakhouse. We got there, and with it being a holiday, it was pretty crowded so we ended up waiting for like, 40 minutes or so before we got seated. Once we got our seats tho, we were good. I had a 1000 yen coupon for outback, so that was good for the bloomin onion for everyone. We got our food, and it was delicious as expected. We stayed there until like, 9:30 PM, and then once we left, I had to head back to Ono. Once I got home, I just went to bed pretty much.

Friday was the last day at work before golden week. After I was done at work, I went to Osaka to meet up with Dan. I showed up and Toshi ended up being with Dan, too! It's been a while since we hung out, so it was good seeing him again. We were in the mood for pizza and there was a new Shakey's pizza that just opened up. We went to check it out but we waited for like, 40 minutes, and we still weren't seated. It was really dumb, because they only had 2 person seats opening up, so the fact that there was 3 of us meant that just about everyone who showed up after us got seated before us. We decided it wasn't worth it, so we left and walked the 10 minutes to the OTHER Shakey's pizza and ate there. It wasn't that crowded, and we got a nice booth with no waiting. We'll just keep that in mind for next time. Anyways, we ate our fill of pizza, and chilled and had fun. After we were done eating, we walked back to Namba and went to the Taito station. We played some Taiko no Tatsujin. After it got to be about 10:30, we headed to the 12 hour manga cafe.

We hoped that the 12 hour place had 2 mat booths, but they were already sold out. It makes sense because it's golden week, but still kind of disappointing. We just walked to the 10 hour place, and it was about 11 by the time we got there. I pretty much gave up drinking soda, but for the first time in a few months, I drank some when I had some CC lemon and 7-up at the manga cafe. I don't think it'll kill me, but I was in the mood for it. Me and Dan got good seats that were away from just about everyone, so I wasn't bothered by other people's snoring and we were able to whisper to each other without people complaining about us whispering this time around. We played some Saki Mahjong, and watched some videos. I went to sleep around 1AM and ended up waking up to my alarm close to 8:30. We headed out of there around 9, and then headed to McDonalds. We got breakfast there and then headed out toward Athena.

On the way, we noticed that the Mr Donuts store was shut down. In it's place, they made a cafe where you can eat donuts and drink coffee. So that place went from being a place where you can eat donuts and drink coffee to a place where you can eat dontus and drink coffee WITH A NEW NAME. Anyways, there was a huge line to get in, at least 50 people waiting before it opened to be the first group of the day to eat at this totally new and innovative place. I seriously think people have mental problems, or they just really really like waiting in line. I personally find waiting in line extremely boring, so I don't understand why people wait in such a long line for like, a donut and a coffee. This did get me thinking that if people will wait in line to eat the same food at the same place, but with a new name, that I could open up a resturant and just change the name every few months if I want to get a huge crowd. I'll purposely make my sign cheap, and when it breaks and I make a new one, I'll just put a new name on it and advertise something like “FREE TOOTHPICKS” and I'll have a ton of crazy people waiting in line to get the same exact food I was selling before. It's the perfect legal crime.

Anyways, we went to Athena because it was still early and nothing was open. I went to see if anyone was playing anything, but of course nobody was. Me and Dan just sat at one of the tables on the gundam pod floor and played Saki Mahjong against each other for a bit. I went and played one credit of blazblue, and when I lost, we headed out to Denden. We looked around Denden town for a bit at some of the game stores. I didn't really have anything I was looking to pick up in particular. After we were done we headed to Andrew's place because we were gonna have an SSFIV gathering there.

We were the first ones to get there. I took a shower at Andrew's place because it's way cheaper than using the manga cafe showers. We played some games and then Jeff and Eddy showed up. We played SSFIV for a few hours, with Jeff pretty much dominating most of the time. After a while, we went out to eat at Coco's, and then walked to this sports place. We did some batting practice there with a softball machine. Then we played some 4 player table tennis with one person sitting out each time. That was a lot of fun. I def want to play Ping Pong again sometime soon.

After we were done there, we went back. Jeff had to head out, and so the rest of us went back and just chilled and took turns playing online. Before the last train, me and Dan went back to Osaka and checked into a capsule hotel. Because I stayed at that particular capsule hotel 10 times, I got a free night there thanks to my point card! We stayed up talking for a bit, but we were both exhausted so we passed out shortly afterwards. I slept really well. Once we were done there, we headed out. Dan wanted to pick up a mahjong mat and set, so we walked to Tokyu Hands, which is a big “has-everything” type store. On the way, we saw yet another gigantic line. It was wrapped around the block, and then some. We were wondering what it was for, and then we saw the guy holding the sign that said “Krispy Kreme”. People are in lines around the block for Krispy Kreme donuts. I mean, I like them and all, but not THAT much. Oh well, that, and people seem to just love waiting in line here, so I unno, that might have something to do with it too. I seriously think that some people wait in line just cause other people are waiting in lines. Like “Well, if there's a gigantic line, it MUST be good” is their mindset. For me, if there's a gigantic line, I usually go “well, it's probably not good enough to warrant such a line”. It's like amusement parks. They're fun, but honestly, a 60 second ride isn't long enough to warrant a 2 hour wait for me. Yeah, hanging out with friends can be fun, but there's a buncha places I would rather hang out with friends than in a line.

So we get to Tokyu Hands a bit early, so we wait for about 10 minutes for the store to open up. We get in, and Dan gets a mahjong mat that comes with a Mahjong kit. The Mahjong tiles are nicer than what I expected considering how much the whole thing cost. After that, I bought a nicer ipod case than the one I had. I got one that actually looks cool and matches one of my bags, as opposed to a cheap cell phone case I bought at the dollar store. After that, we headed to Umeda and met up with Alex. We met at Outback Steakhouse, and got there right when it opened. We got a lunch set, which is always a great deal because it comes with your entree, and a free refill drink for like, 1300 yen. Normally a meal is like, 2000+ yen, plus another 500 yen for the drink. As usual, we got a bloomin onion too. I know I was just there, but Outback Steakhouse is really one of those places I don't mind going back to all the time. After we ate, we headed to Namba, where I had an AH3 tournament, and Alex had some Pokemon card stuff to deal with. I got to the tourney and right when I got there, I saw Guy-girl, who was behind the announcer desk with the mic. Once guy-girl saw me, he went “OH YES!”And like, 3 or 4 people immediately were like “oh, your partner is over here!” I guess people knew. He was playing on the AH1 machine that they had set up. He won his match, and so I played against him using my Time Lilica. It's been a long time since I played AH1, and I couldn't do any time combos at first, but after a couple tries (and some practice mode), I was at least able to get it against the CPU dummy.

After I was done playing AH1, I figured I should play some AH3. I lost some matches, and then I ended up getting a 5 game winstreak. Not too bad. My partner, Archer, introduced me to a godlike dorothy player who he calls “Okayama doushi” or something like that. The stuff he did with that character was insane. Anyways, they started the tournament. There were 4 machines, ABC and D. the A machine was hooked up to the big LCD monitor for most of the people to watch. We were in bracket D. They asked the crowd what bracket they wanted to see on the big screen, and people wanted to see the D bracket. Since we were in a round 0 match, I was the first one playing on the big screen!

Our first match was against a Mei Fang/Catherine team that plays at Athena. I played against the Mei Fang first, and won. Archer played against Catherine, got a round, but didn't take the match. I played against the Catherine and won after that. Sweet. Our next match was against a Liese/Lilica team. Archer beat the Liese, and I handled the Lilica. Next, was the hard matchup. A really good Shar/Maori team. Archer almost got double perfected by the Shar, and I barely lost to the Maori. The dude was really good, and I feel like I played well, so no regrets.

After I lost, me and Dan headed out and met up with Alex. He was still busy, so we went to the 3rd floor of the Cospa store, where they have an area where you can just chill and play card games or psp or whatever for free. So me and Dan played some Saki Mahjong for a bit while waiting for Alex. Once he finished, we did an hour and a half of Karaoke, then played some Taiko drum master. After that, we all headed back home.

Monday, I spent the day doing all my household chores, including laundry, cleaning the apt, dishes etc. I spent a good portion of the day playing Super Street Fighter IV as well.

Rest to be continued in the next entry.

The Heartful Adventures of Rob! A busy, yet relaxing April

2010-04-25T23:29:00.001-07:00

Hey all, I'm at work on a Saturday thanks to this week being a 6 day work week, so what better way to spend it than by writing my blog! (Note, it started on a sat, but didn't get finished until much later)

Last I left off was my crazy weekend in Kansai with the Gunma guys. The following week was pretty uneventful as usual. Friday I was so tired that I just went home and took some medicine and felll asleep for 12 hours. I woke up around 7AMish, which is ironically the time I wake up when I DON'T have a day off. I hung around home for a bit, then, as usual went to Sannomiya. I checked out the few stores while I was there, and bought a screen for my ipod touch while at the Sannomiya “Labi” store (big electronics store, similar to circuit city I guess?) My ipod touch works great, but obviously the screen gets dirty really quickly (I never knew my fingers were THAT greasy). I bought the cover hoping it would make it look better, but after I put it on, it ended up looking worse, and of course there's little tiny pieces of hair stuck under the screen that will forever remain there. I guess it helps protect it better, but it looks way older than just a week old.

After I was done there, I took the train to Osaka. I got to Denden town, and ate cheese curry for lunch. As usual, it's my favorite thing to eat here, and one of the few times I'm glad I'm in Japan when it comes to food (as opposed to hating it). At that point it was about 12:45, and after checking on the Capcom website, they were advertising Super Street Fighter IV available to the public to play from 1PM until 5PM. I was the 16th or 17th person in line. They started at 1PM on the nose. They had two setups, a big screen hooked up to a PS3, and a smaller screen hooked up to a 360. The PS3 station had two HRAP3s, and the 360 stations had TE sticks. They said “1 person 3 matches”, so what that meant was that two people play each other for 3 matches! That's fine and dandy until they realized how many people were in line and that 3 matches takes a LONG time. They changed it to 2 matches after the first 2 pairs went on each station. I waited maybe 20 minutes total before it was my turn. Since I've been eying Juri, I picked her. My opponent obviously didn't know how to play, so it made it really easy to try what I wanted to. He didn't even play new characters, he used El Fuerte for the first match, and Chun-Li for the 2nd match. Fine by me. I tried EX divekick into Ultra 2 with Juri, missed the first time. Focused and got more meter, and then tried it again and hit it. It felt really cool to hit it and to be like, one of the few people there who actually had an idea of how to do anything. I played one match with Ultra 2, and the other with Ultra 1. I didn't really like Ultra 1, but I had to try it anyways.

After that, I went to Athena and played some AH3 for a while. I was doing decent, getting wins against good players, losing to some others. It was a decent session.

After a while, I met up with Dan in Umeda. We were at a Tullys coffee shop, and apparantly they have chili dogs now! I had dinner already, so I wasn't too hungry, but Dan got two of them and said they were good. He was sick recently, so it was good to see him better. After that, we went to The Hub and had a drink and some fries before heading to Osaka to go to the capsule hotel for the night. I tried to mess around with the wi-fi at the capsule hotel, but none of my programs that needed wi-fi worked. I was a bit disappointed because I know there's not a lot of places with wi-fi in Japan, but I figured that when I did run into them that I could at least use them, so not being able to was pretty disappointing, but oh well. Anyways, we chilled for a while, after going in the baths, but we were both pretty exhausted, so we went to sleep not too long after (around 12:30 or 1?). I woke up around 8ish, and couldn't fall back asleep for whatever reason. I went down to the lounge and watched TV there for a while. There was this ping pong tournament between Ai Fukuhara and this Chinese girl. I'm not really a fan of ping pong or anything but I like watching tournaments, so that kept me entertained while I played SFIV on my ipod touch.

Eventually Dan came down and we got washed up and headed out. The weather was really nice, and Dan had to take off his jacket cause it was too warm. We stopped by McDonalds first and got some breakfast. We saw these group of people playing monster hunter, but it wasnt like, a few nerdy dudes, it was like, a host looking guy, a somewhat gothy looking girl, and another host guy who was passed out on the table. Interesting. We ate and got out of there and headed to the Den. The first place we stopped by was A-too because Dan wanted to trade in his games AND pick up some new games. I saw that they had dream club FINALLY lowered to 2000 yen, so I was like “cool, ill pick that up” and Ar Tonelico 3 was still at 3000 yen, so I said I would pick that up, too. Dan got like, 16000 yen for his 5 games, and then buys FFXIII as well as one other game. We went looking around at a few more stores and me and Dan both picked up copies of Saki Mahjong for the PSP. It was kind of expensive (5300 yen) but I mean...it's Saki mahjong, haha. I went back to A-too and picked up Dream Club and AT3, both of which cost less than my one psp game, haha. We went to the free gaming area where you can just go in for free (its at the 3rd floor of a store in denden town) and play psp against other people or card games or whatever. It's pretty sweet, and really nice of that store considering they really don't make any money off of it. After that, we stopped by Athena for a bit to use the bathroom and ended up playing games for a bit. I played some melty cause nobody was playing arcana. We played a game of Taiko, did Hello! and Kiramekirari (both im@s songs) at the Taito station.

We headed out after that and went to Kua Aina for lunch. It's that burger place in Namba parks that I occasionally mention. We got burgers, and they were super good. I think it was around 4ish at this point? We decided to just head out. Dan said he was gonna go hang out with Alex, and I was gonna see if Andrew was up to anything. I called Andrew and no response. I got a text a minute or so later saying he was in Sannomiya. I was headed there anyways, so I was like “yo lets meet up”. So we met up, got dinner and hung out at the arcades for a bit. I played a buncha MvC2 and ended up getting owned pretty hard by this Storm/Cable/Cyclops player. I have such a hard time against Cable in that game, but after 9 tries I finally beat him. I played a bit of SFIV using my Chun Li against this Ryu player. I think I won 3 and he won 2? It was fun either way, considering Chun isn't even my main character. I'm trying to get better at that game in general because Super Street Fighter IV is coming out soon, and I want to try to get better just in general at that game.

My bus was coming soon, so I headed back home. I played Saki mahjong on the way home. It's really fun, and better than the crappy not very fun 13 dollar mahjong game for the DS that I had. I got home, hung out on the internet and then went to bed after a while. My 6 day work week began, and after it was finally over, it was time for the weekend.

Saturday night after I was done, I just hung out at home and played games. Sunday, I had plans to meet up with Alex in Osaka. I left my house to catch my bus, but I realized halfway to the bus stop that I forgot my headphones at home. So I had to go the bus ride without them. I just played Saki PSP on the bus, but I got a little carsick after a bit so that kinda sucked. I kinda half slept for the rest of the bus ride. I got to Sannomiya and decided to pick up more headphones, since having an extra pair never hurts. I got the same type as the last $10 pair of headphones I bought cause they work well. I opened them, and they were only 50 cm long! I was like “WHAT? Why are they so short?!” They weren't even long enough for me to put in my pocket, attached to my ipod without my ipod dangling. I went back to the store and looked around and they put the 50cm headphones right next to the 1.3meter headphones at the exact same price. It makes no sense. If they were even 10cm longer, I would have been fine with them, but less than 2 feet? Really? Oh well...

I went and found a 1 meter headphone extension for 500 yen, so I just picked that up and used that for the remainder of my trip. I headed over to Umeda after that to meet up with Alex. We planned to meet at outback steakhouse, and Alex and Tyler (friend of ours also lives in Shiga) just got there a little before me. Because it was lunchtime, they had lunchtime specials making it pretty cheap. Of course, we got a bloomin onion which is still the best thing on the menu there, imo. I got a steak that came with buttered rice, cole slaw, and a free drink. I got pink lemonade with tons of refills. The steak was awesome because it was decent size and it was already pre-cut. That way, I didn't have to sit there and cut my steak, I could just dig in. It was the best steak (maybe the only steak?) I've had here. The buttered rice was really good as well. After a 15% discount thanks to a coupon from Alex, it came out to only like, 1500 yen for each of us. For such a good meal, that's a more than reasonable price. But then, as we were leaving, the manager who I guess recognized/knows Alex, gave each of us a 1000 yen off coupon. So if we come and get a similar meal, it'll be extremely cheap! It was really nice of him, and I can't wait till the next time I can go back.

Next, we went to the Pokemon center to check out the stuff there. They had a “charizard promotion” or something where they had a ton of charizard goods and stuff. My favorite pokemon is Pochama (piplup in English, the little penguin), and they had a pochama promotion last time I went. Anyways, Alex and Tyler picked up a few things. I picked up some pokemon stickers for class for prizes, and I bought a teacher stamp that has pochama and pikachu on it, and on the top it says pretty much “Great Job!” in Japanese. So now I can just stamp good papers with that when I grade them.

After that, we were about to go to denden, when Alex wanted to pick up something else that he forgot. Tyler had to use the bathroom anyways, so we headed over to the nearby Namcoland arcade. Tyler used the bathroom, and I was watching Taiko. This little girl, probably around 3 years old, goes to the taiko machine and takes the sticks (which are more than half her height). Her mom puts in 100 yen to play, and she puts on the easiest mode, and does the anpan -man song. While it looked like she was kinda swinging randomly at first, I realized she somewhat knew what she was doing. She was drumming to the beat and on the blue notes, she would try to hit the side of the drum, and actually got it a couple times. She ended up actually passing the song! A little 3 year old girl playing Taiko drum master passed the song. It was the cutest thing ever.

Afterwards, we met up with Alex again and headed to Denden town. In Umeda, right in front of this big shopping mall called “HEP5”, there were 3 cute girls cosplaying as Hatsune Miku. It was super random, and I only got a crappy pic from across the street, but yeah, thats the sort of thing that I wouldn't bat an eye to in Denden town, but in Umeda, the cool people area? Really? Afterwards we went to the bookstore to pick up an application for the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam. I haven't taken it before, but I figured I would take it this year to see where I stand. While we were walking, we saw a store called “The womb”. I dunno what to think, but me and alex wanted to go in just so we can say “We were in the womb together”.

Afterwards, we headed to Denden town. Alex went to look at pokemon cards and stuff while me and Tyler looked around the den. I wasn't really looking for anything, just the usual Ritsu plush that I'm never able to find (since I have the other 4 girls already). Tyler was looking for kamen rider stuff since he cosplays. We just looked around at the stores, taking our time doing whatever. It was cool, we just got to hang out and talk and look around the Den.

After a bit of looking at stuff for Tyler, we went to the Lashabang store. And when I walked in, right at the showcase, I FINALLY found the Ritsu plush I was looking for. It was only 1500 yen, which is a steal as far as I'm concerned. I was looking for that plush for so long and was unable to find it ANYWHERE, so being able to find it made me SUPER happy. I now had the complete set of 5. Anyways, I went around and took more pics of R4 stuff for an article I'm doing, and then we went to the cheese curry place for dinner. After we ate, we were all full from cheese curry. We walked around a little bit more, but we were all tired, so we all just headed back home.

Monday was a free day for me. I used it to do a ton of laundry, get a haircut, throw out my garbage, take my recyclables to the recycling place, do grocery shopping, organize my closet, and clean my apartment. Usually I'm out both days of the weekend and after work I'm too tired/lazy to do stuff, so it was nice to have a day to do all that stuff. I just relaxed and played SFIV and some Ar Tonelico 3. It was fun overall and relaxing.

Next, I had a 4 day work week. Friday night I just chilled at home. Saturday, I went to Kyoto and met up with Andrew (reno), Jeff (azrael), and Aurich. They had a big 5v5 kansai tournament for SFIV at a-cho, so I checked it out. Jeff and Aurich's team got top 8, which is really good. There were over 100 people, so they placed above quite a few teams. The winning team consisted of pretty much the best kansai players. Good times.

After that, we went to TGIF, as one just opened in Kyoto. It was really really good. We had a waitress named “Purin” which is Japanese for “Pudding”. Jeff ordered “boneless buffalo wings” but like, they don't have boneless wings, they have “boneless buffalo bites” and “buffalo wings” so when we got the order, we got buffalo wings when we wanted the bites. Jeff was like “wait, I ordered the boneless” and had them send it back. After that, Purin suddenly wasn't our waitress anymore, so we figured that Jeff scared her off. I ordered a dessert and I guess they didn't write it down cause I didn't get it, so I asked them if it was coming, and they didn't have it written. I didn't really feel like eating it anyways, I just wanted to get back to a-cho, so I just said don't worry about it, but the waitress apologized a ton and I think she thought I was mad. I wasn't mad, but everyone else was done eating and we were all ready to go anyways, so I didn't want to waste time by being the only one eating. It worked out for the best.

Anyways, we went back to A-cho, I watched some games, played some more games, and just relaxed. At around 9:45 or so, Andrew was like “I'm going to Monte 50 to play VF there because nobody is playing here” I decided to go with him and figured I would play at Monte too. I then realized that I would totally be able to make the last train home if I left, so I did that instead and said bye to Andrew at Umeda. I headed home and slept in my own bed.

Sunday, Bill and Maria planned a fajita party with a couple teachers that we both knew. One of the teachers drove us to the costco, and we went there. It was mad crowded. We got our food first, I got a big delicious slice of pizza for only 300 yen. I could eat that pizza everyday if I had the option. Then we went around shopping for stuff. However, Costco was just WAY too crowded. It was obnoxiously crowded, and actually kind of stressful. However, I got some stuff. I bought some granola bars, some dehumidier boxes, some mini frozen pizzas, and an “ihome”. I have 2 ipods now, so I can put one in there to charge it, and play music from it, and I don't have to deal with my computer and the crappy speakers on that.

After that, we hung out, ate well and had fun. After we were done and the Japanese teachers left, me and Bill played TvC for a bit and then I headed back home for the night.

This week, super street fighter IV comes out! I'm looking forward to it. My plans are to go to Andrew's place on wed and get my copy, play there for a while, thursday is a holiday, so relax, play outside, and then friday is a work day, and then golden week! It should be a lot of fun, and I just have a few more days of work to get through!

So yeah, sorry this one took so long to write, but take care all!

Team Spooky

2010-04-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know, www.teamspooky.com (for a link, please just look at the top link at the bar on the right) is a website started by many players on the east coast who are into "poverty" games, such as Melty Blood, Arcana Heart, Akatsuki Blitzkampf, and many other doujinshi games, and so on. The reason why they're called poverty games is because they're generally games that one would consider to be "poor", and poor = poverty, so instead of saying "we play poor games", saying "we play poverty games" have more of a meaning of the type of game we're talking about. Poverty games can range from arcade releases that don't make it big, such as spectral vs generation, Sengoku Basara X, fate unlimited codes, etc. Many of the "anime games" are part of this genre, as well. Anyways, Team Spooky has been around for a while (named after Spooky, an east coast player, who is pretty much liked by just about everyone). The website grew in popularity for a number of reasons, and now there seem to be a decent amount of subscribers.

In any case, I've been writing a lot of Japan and game related articles for the website, so if you're interested in games in general, and especially games with a somewhat niche following, then check out teamspooky.com. My next few blog posts are going to be centered around some arcades. With pictures, and sometimes a video walkthrough. I might even cover a tournament or two.

Either way, if you like that sort of thing, feel free to bookmark it. Normally I write my blog posts at work, but I've been really busy recently, so I haven't had too much time to write, hence the long 3 week break. Hopefully I'll get back to writing soon, and put up a new blog post. Take care everyone!

The Sadventures of Rob - Gunmans come to Kansai.

2010-04-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Ok last I left off I was sick. I relaxed and got better.

This is the weekend when Andy (Capps), Mike (Elvenshadow), Sam (Raviloli), Mike's brother Tony, and their friend Emmet were coming to Kansai. They all live in Gunma prefecture, hence the title of the blog. I took friday off of work because Andy said he was coming Thursday night, so I could just go to Osaka after work and hang out with them for the weekend. Right after work on Thursday, I biked AGAINST the wind, got home, showered, grabbed my stuff, bike against the wind some more to the station and ended up actually making good time. I made such good time that I got there way before Andy showed up! I looked around Bic Camera for a bit, and then met up with him. It was really easy, and he was on time and was able to get to the meeting place without any issues. We went to Athena and played AH3 there while waiting for Mike and the others.

Mike, Sam, and Tony show up after a bit, and we hang out at athena for a while playing. I played Sam in MB, which he just recently picked up, and we had a lot of fun F-Miyako vs F-Akiha/ F-V.Akiha matches. After a bit, we went to go to the cheese curry place that I always talk about, but they close at 9 on weekdays, when they're usually open till 10 on weekends, so they ended up being closed when we got there. We walked to Cocos and ate there instead, though. We went to a store where they have a 2nd floor, and we got the 2nd floor all to ourselves, which was really nice. Felt like we could talk and not bother other people.

After we ate, we went to namba hills for a bit. There was a dude playing GG, so Mike played against him, and me and Sam played a bunch of melty against each other. After it closed, it was about 11:45, so me and Andy went to the manga cafe while everyone else went drinking.

We went to the 12 hour for 1900 yen place. We get a free shower with it, so it's really convenient. They were out of single mat booths, so they said “oh, we have pair seats”. I was like “can you show us what they look like?” and they showed us one that was really small. I gave Andy this look and said “They're pretty small, let's go somewhere else” and right when I was about to tell that to the guy, he was like “Wait, we have another one that's bigger, but the same price!” I was like “oh?” He showed us the bigger one, and not only was it a little bigger, it was like, twice the size. Plenty of space for both of us to sleep with plenty of space for our bags. It was great in general. I'm glad we went to take a look because if we said “Oh, yeah we'll take the pair seat” I guarantee they would have given us the small one. But because I went and looked first, we were able to get a big one for the same price, which was awesome.

After we got our seats, we went and got some free drinks. I also got some vanilla ice cream because it's free at that manga cafe too. We looked at some magazines, walked around chillin and just having drinks and stuff. Then we went back to our booth and used the computer, watched vids, and just relaxed until we went to sleep. I woke up around 8AMish. Andy was still sleeping so I just used the computer and reserved the shower for me and Andy. Around 8:45, we got 40 minutes for the two of us to shower, so I went first, and then Andy went. The shower is pretty nice, a little room you get to yourself, you have a space to put a bag/dry clothes, and a sink/mirror. It's great considering it came free with the 12 hour pack. We stayed in the manga cafe having more drinks and relaxing until 1045ish. We got out of there and headed to Denden.

We stopped by an arcade near the manga cafe and played Taiko. It was Andy's first time playing Taiko! I took his taiko virginity. We started off with GReeeeN's “Haruka”, and then did an idolm@ster song (Hello!) and ended with Shuuchishin. It was fun for me. Andy passed Haruka, but not the other two. It's a shame you have to use the same difficulty, cause he would have been better on normal but he played it on hard with me instead. After that, we went to Taito station, looked around for a bit but didn't play anything. Same with Avion, looked around but didn't play any games. Then after that, we went around Denden town for a bit. We looked at figure stores and whatnot. We got some chicken for breakfast at the convenience store. Can't go wrong with family mart spicy chicken IMO. We went to gamers next. They had a buncha small gashapon set up, and Andy got this mame-shiba one. He got a little mame-shiba driving a boat or something. It's hilarious. We looked around a bit more, and then I got a text from Mike saying that they were ready. We met up and went to Outback Steakhouse. We got there around 2:30ish, and there was a big sign that said “Open from 5PM on weekdays”. I didn't know that they weren't open until 5PM. So we walked like, 20 minutes to Monte 50.

At monte, I played a bit of BB. I got a 5 game winstreak. I was doing pretty well. This one Noel player who I met a long time ago at monte was there, too. I don't play much BB, nor do I go to monte that often, so I haven't seen him in a while. We were talking a bit and I lost to a Hakumen. He played and he owned that same Hakumen for free with Noel doing all these crazy combos that I didn't know she could do. Maybe I should at least learn the better combos for the next time I play, haha. I said bye and told him I was gonna go play AH3. I went upstairs and played that for a while. I played this one Zenia player a ton, and got like, a 10 winstreak. Then Capps said he would record, and recorded the one match I ended up losing to that guy. Ugh. Then this Elsa/Saki player played me a bunch. We had good matches, but Elsa is soooooooo cheap, haha. Because of her air combo finisher, she gets a 4 way mixup that's too fast for me to react to. I still generally beat him, but yeah, that character is very strong, prolly #1 in the game. After playing a few more credits, I moved over to MB and played Sam some more. He was leveling up really well with his V.Akiha, so I was having trouble near the end of our sessions. It was good times, but we were all really hungry, so we went to outback.

Outback was amazing, we got 2 bloomin onions for the 5 of us, and Me, Mike, and Sam got ribs. I got full like, halfway through, but I finished eating the ribs cause they were so good. I had a coupon for 15% off, and it turns out that it isn't just for one person, it's for the entire bill, so the 16,500 yen order got like, 2475 off. So almost 2500 yen saved for one small coupon. The dinner itself was awesome though. We were just chillin and talking about whatever. Tony speaks no Japanese, and is quite loud volume-wise, and seemed to constantly be making a fool of himself, but it was fun to watch, I guess. Normally, when you ask for water, you say “mizu onegaishimasu”. (Water = mizu, onegaishimasu is kind of like, “please”), but he would just point to his cup and say really loudly “MEE-ZOO!” So imagine someone looking at a waitress and pointing to their cup and shouting “WAH TURR”. I think they're used to that kinda thing at outback cause they were like “whatevs”. Andy ordered a coke with no ice, and the waitress was like “no ice?” and andy was like “yes, no ice”. And they brought him a coke with ice. Owned. Sam took the leftovers from the bloomin onion, took some extra sauce, and put it between some bread and made a bloomin onion sandwich. I'm hungry as I type this so it sounds good, but at the time, I was like “uhh...no thanks” He said it was good, tho, and I believe him.

After we were done at outback, we headed back to monte. I played more arcana and melty. After we were all done at Monte, we headed out. Mike, Tony, and Sam were going to a club where they can drink all night, and me and Andy headed to Spa World.

We got there, and we figured we were gonna go to the pool for a bit, but when we got there, they told us “Oh, the pool isn't open.” I was completely surprised because I thought it was open all night like everything else. It's only open till like, 7PM on weekdays, and 10PM on weekends. We got there around 10:30, so even if was a sat night, we wouldn't have got there in time anyways. Oh well. We went to the bath area, got washed up first, and then hung out in baths for a while. After we were done, we got dressed and walked around a bit. We got some drinks and just sat on a couch talking about whatever. Right when we were in the middle of a conversation, some random Japanese guy in his 30s came up and was like “Hello, are you sightseeing Osaka?” I just said yes, and hoped he would go away, but he sat down and like, asked us random questions and told us “Please teach me English.” The thing is, I was in a conversation with a friend of mine that I don't see very often, and we were at spa world to relax, not to “teach English”. He just wanted to practice his high school English and didn't even ask “Is it ok if I sit down”, didn't introduce himself. He just asked random questions and tried to like, help us I guess? He was trying to be friendly, but it didn't occur to him that I know the area quite well, and I don't need his help sightseeing anyways. His intentions were nice enough, I guess, and for a Japanese person to come up to foreigners, it takes courage, but he was very “KY” as we call it here (It stands for something that literally translates to “Cannot read the atmosphere”.) He couldn't read the fact that we didn't want to talk to him and that he was completely bothering us. I was still nice and talked to him for a couple minutes. He told me I looked like David Beckham at one point. (http://img707.yfrog.com/img707/5250/davidbeckhama.jpg = Rob) After a couple minutes, I did a fake yawn and went “Well, I'm really tired, so I'm going to go now, bye.” And we left and went to the room where everyone is sleeping and passed out.

I woke up around 6:30 or so and went to the bathroom and stumbled back to my chair. I figured I would wake up around 8AM when the lights go on. Check out time is 9AM, so that would give me time to go take baths, and get ready. I woke up, and looked at the time. 8:55. I was like “umm......” and then I just got ready without shaving, messed up hair etc, everything. Andy was waiting for me right outside, and we went and checked out. Then, since we have a 30 minute time on our card (which doesn't really seem to matter because the gate machines are broken, and it's just some guy standing at the gate taking the “ok to leave” tickets) I went back upstairs and fixed my hair (sorta), shaved, brushed my teeth etc. It sucks that I almost overslept, but I didn't have to pay any extra, so that's nice at least. We got outta there and headed to Mr Donuts for breakfast.

We got to Mr Donuts and chilled there for a bit. At about 9:45, we headed over to SCOT. Instead of playing regular fighters, we went up to the 3rd floor where all the goofy games are. I played this one fighter called “Angel Eyes”, which I played for a little in Chicago against Webster. It was crazy seeing a cab for it, haha. I played Karnov's Revenge for a little, but there was no sound, so not hearing BALLOON BALLOON made it not as fun. However, I still got to balloon quite a bit. After that, me and Andy played some shmup called “Trouble witches”. It was cute and it was a lot of fun. Maybe I'll play it more again some other time. After that, it was about 10:30. The Morning Musume store opens up around then, and so we went there since it was only a few stores down. We spent about 45 minutes in there or so before we headed to Dotonbori. I picked up a DVD that has all each of the BerryZ girl's version of Dschinghis Khan. Andy got some small pics and stuff. After 15 or 20 minutes of walking, we made it. We waited in line at the really good Takoyaki place. Andy got some takoyaki and after that, I headed out to meet another friend for a bit.

In Umeda station, I ended up running into my 1st year in college dorm roommate, who I stayed friends with throughout college, who is also an ALT in Osaka now, and a friend of ours from the Japanese university I studied abroad at, who studied abroad in Chicago at Depaul. It was a huge coincidence, and it was great seeing people I haven't seen in a while.

After I was done, I met up with Andy in Umeda, we bought some cheap JR tickets to Otsu, where the concert we were going to tonite was. Since Andy got me into Hello!Project stuff by showing me a bunch of random youtube vids, we wanted to see a Morning Musume concert. We were like “man, it would be so convenient if there was a concert the weekend you were in Kansai” and sure enough, only an hour or so from where we were, they were doing a concert. Since Andy goes to Tokyo often, there's a specific store where you can get tickets in Harajuku, so he went there and got 2 tickets for 5000 yen each, when they're normally 7000 yen retail, and we got to pick the seats. Not too bad. Anyways, to get to Otsu, normally its 920 yen or so each way to get to Otsu from Umeda, but because we went to the cheap ticket place when we met in Umeda, we got round trip tickets for 1020 yen. So we saved more than 800 yen by making a quick 5 minute detour. We got seats on the train, which were really comfortable, and we got to Otsu no problem. The concert venue was about 20 minutes walking from the station, but we looked at a map and it was a really easy path, straight for a while, and then one turn. The one turn was at the lake, so it's not like we could pass it up unless we somehow didn't notice we were walking in water.

After we got to the venue, we noticed a bunch of people wearing purple and giving purple glowsticks. Apparantly, one of the band members, Mitsui Aika, is from Otsu, Shiga. So this is her hometown concert place. Everyone wanted to support her, so they were giving out free purple glowsticks, since purple is “her color” (each band member has a different color that's assigned to them). We took one each. We looked at the concert goods, too. I wanted a sports towel (because it's the only concert goods that I would actually USE,) but they were like, 2000 yen, which is way too much for a towel, so I didn't get anything. Andy got a picture set, which looked pretty good. Afte that, we got to our seats. We got 2nd row seats, kind of on the side of the theatre, but there was nobody behind us, and we were only 3 rows back. We had a bar in front of us too, so it was like we were in a little VIP section. And even tho it was the 2nd floor, it wasn't that much above the 1st floor. They were pretty close to the stage compared to other concerts I've been to. Maybe 50 feet? I could see each girl pretty clearly from where I was.

The concert got started and it was actually better than I expected. I didn't know as many songs as I would have liked to (since most were from their recent album, which I didn't purchase), but they all sang realy well, and the girls that usually get ignored actually got a lot of lines, and I didn't feel like they got ignored. Their outfits were cute, but not over the top, and the dances all looked good. Even tho it was their 2nd concert of the day, they still had a lot of energy. After the concert was almost over, the lights went off, and everyone took their purple glowsticks (Aika's color) and was waving it and chanting “A-I-KA! A-I-KA!” over and over. It was crazy. They came back out, did another 2 songs, everyone did their little speech, and it was cool. Then at the end, Aika came back out and said like, “Thank you” again. Overall it was fun. However, most of the fans were kind of umm...hardcore? I guess that's a nice way of putting it, but yeah...they're very dedicated to what they do, they knew all the dances and were totally wearing the concert “gear” and stuff. I personally just kinda waved the glowstick however I felt like, usually just in beat with the music, but some of these people are really into it, haha...Either way, Aika seemed really touched, and it was a nice gesture for them to get a buncha purple glowsticks to hand out to people.

After the concert, we went back to Umeda and met up with Mike, Sam and company. We went to the good cheese curry place, and Mike, Sam, and the others showed up with 5 minutes before the place closed. Tony was quite intoxicated, so he was a bit of a pain because he gets extremely loud, but everyone else ate and enjoyed the best cheese curry ever. I apologized to the guy who works at the cheese curry place, and we headed out of there. We played at Athena until closing and then went to this bar in Amerika-mura. It had a cover charge of 1500 yen with a free drink. I got a beer, but it was really loud and really crowded, so me and Sam stood off to the side talking. Around 2ish, I was dead tired, so I got out of there and went to the capsule hotel nearby. I went to sleep right away and woke up around 9ish. I took a bath, got ready and got out of there. I went to Athena and Denden for a while. I picked up some xbox s-video cables so I don't have to switch the cables from my CRT to my HDTV, I can just unplug one in the back of the 360 and plug the other in.

After a bit, I went back to Athena and played for a bit until Mike was ready and came up and got me. We all went to Kua Aina for food after that. Andy wasn't feeling like eating, so Emmet ate his food, but everyone else ate well enough. Everyone wanted to go to Osaka castle, so I figured “eh, I'll go with, why not?” because I wanted to hang out more. We got to Osakajo-koen station and it was packed. Apparantly there was a johnnys concert or something going on. Johnnys is pretty much the male version of hello project, but unlike hello project, where it's lots of 30's to middle aged men, it's a lot of younger girls, so it seems less creepy. We walked to the castle, and on the way, a buncha kids in baseball uniforms (maybe 2nd graders?) went HELLO!! to us. Me and Mike, being on the ball (and als having experience with this, haha) yelled “HELLO!!” back, while Tony stood there like “huh???” They came up and started shaking our hands, and stuff. Then they wanted to take a picture with us, so we did. It was awesome, they were cute kids.

We walked up to the castle, which is already on a hill, and then we got to the castle and because we didnt want to waste time waiting for the elevator, we walked up 8 flights of stairs up. The view was AWESOME, we got to see a lot of Osaka. It was really cool. The inside was ok. I like pots, but I don't need to see an entire floor of pottery, haha. After we finished looking around, taking pics, etc, we got out of there. Emmet was with Sam, and they went out first. I was with Andy, and we went out after that. We see Mike come out and see him walking our direction. However, his little brother wasn't with us (and lacks a cell phone, too). So we were like “oh man, I wonder if he thinks his brother is with us, let's see his reaction when we ask him where his brother is.” So he comes, and we're like “Sup, so where's your brother?” and he was like “WAIT, YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS?” It was suuuuper funny (at least to us). Apparantly, when we went to the 1st floor, he didn't notice so he was on the 2nd floor. Mike got him back so it was ok, but it was pretty funny. We relaxed around the castle while Andy was taking pics. We just chilled there, and when we were done, we headed to Umeda. Andy had to head back on the bullet train, so we said bye and parted ways.

I was planning on buying an Ipod touch, and Tony wanted to check out Yodobashi camera anyways for the figures and stuff. We went there and Tony picked up some stuff and used my point card. I got like, 5 bucks in points for free, woot. I saw that they had dream club plushies, but they were marked down from 3500 yen to 1000 yen. I picked up the Setsu plush for 1000 yen, because it was def worth it for that price. After that, I bought an ipod touch 32G. Got 15 bucks in points for that, so total right now, I have about 30 bucks in points! Not too bad. After that, I had to head back, so I parted ways with those guys and said I would try to come to Kanto sometime.

I got back, and set up my ipod touch, and named it “Eri” after my favorite idolm@ster character, and my favorite girl in Morning Musume. Looking forward to playing around with it this week!

Next week, I should be meeting up with Dan, who has been sick lately, so hopefully he'll be totally better by this weekend. Until next time!

The Sadventures of Rob - Sicksicksicksicksick

2010-03-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

Hey all. Last I left off was the really short blog post. I have a bit more time today to write, so I figure I can go into far more detail than I did in the last post. Hopefully itll at least be more interesting to read (or MORE boring depending on how you look at it).

Anyways, so I've been “sick” since the 8th. I've had various things from cough, to sore throat, cold etc. While I didn't know at the time, I THINK I know why I got the cough at least (which I actually still have, and it's March 30th today). Since it's been so cold out, not only has the weather affected my immune system, but I wasn't opening my windows enough and airing out my apartment properly, so I think the stuffiness, along with the cold weather, and this stale air probably caused me to get the cough while I'm sleeping, so instead of sleeping making me better, it was probably what caused me to get the cough in the first place. Nevertheless, I also think having the cough weakened my immune system. On Mar 11th, I went to the doctors because I was feeling worst than normal. He prescribed me some medicine. Apparantly, I got a sinus infection. Lucky me. So I had a cough and was constantly congested.

However, something good did happen that day! I got a package in the mail. It was an order I made at the “Foreign Buyers Club” website a month and a half ago. In it, I received:
6 cans of Tostido's brand Salsa con Queso, 12 bags of tortilla chips, a 3 lb box of cheez-its, and a box of 30 handy-snacks. Some of you may be going “EEEEW”, but feel free to laugh it up when I get fat. Hey, I might even hit a record high of 110 pounds! gasp

Anywho, the upcoming weekend was a 3 day weekend, so I already made plans a while ago for how to spend it. Sadly, after being sick and not really being in the right state of health to go out and do stuff, I went out anyways, cause I hate cancelling on people. Friday after work I left, and headed for Osaka. I met up with a friend there at Athena named “Archer”. He's a Japanese guy who works as an English translator. So I think he likes talking to me because he can practice his English. Anyways, we both play AH3. He uses Time Kamui, so he does a couple ground this into her 41236 move, then into time ball super, uses extend, combos for a bit, and then sets it up so he forces you to reset, but to be too far away to do anything about the arcana blaze super. So he gets like, a 35% damage combo, and then another one. Not too bad. I generally beat him when we play because he both lacks Petra experience, and lacks the patience to deal with bullets flying everywhere. We still have good sessions either way.

So I played a bunch that night, and ended up beating Kamei aka Guy-girl 5 times in a row at one point. He was pulling out a buncha different characters. After all was said and done, I won about 10 to his 3. The characters he used were Akane (his main), Catherine, Weiss, Liese, Sharl. He won one match with Cathy, Weiss, and Sharl each. A reason why I was winning was because he likes to do charge moves (charge [e]), so I just dodge it on reaction. He's also not quite used to Petra's new range and stuff either, it seems. I'm sure he'll beat me down hard the next time we play, but for now, it's nice to know I have the potential to be able to beat top players.

After that, I played on a different cab, and got 15 wins in a row vs various players. I got 4 in a row vs Tall Heart Man, which is really good because we usually go 1 for 1, so me taking 4 in a row felt nice. Archer almost beat me and ended my winstreak, but I got one lucky dodge A against him, into an air combo ending in j.236C, and ended up having enough homing to cancel down and do j.B 5A 623A+B. Had he bursted, he would have still been alive, but I dont think he was expecting to die from that. I had literally a pixel of health left. Then Guy-girl ended my streak with his Catherine after that. It was about 11PM, so I had to head out.

Because I was feeling kinda so-so, I went to Spa World (which may have been a mistake considering all the walking I had to do). It was nice to soak in the warm baths, and it felt good to sit in the steam sauna, but ultimately, I don't think it really did anything to help speed up the healing process, and overexerting myself by walking a bunch prolly cancelled it out. The real reason why I wanted to be in Osaka early was because I was meeting up with Alex and Dan in Denden town. So after my baths at spa world, I went to sleep. I woke up and just felt awful. My throat was dry, and I had a bottle of water, and even if I drank from it, my throat would get dry again within minutes. I was aching all over and moving was the last thing I wanted to do. But, I had to get out of there. I washed up and sat in some baths for a bit. I walked out of there feeling miserable and aching all over. I managed to stumble my way to Mr Donuts, got a few donuts for breakfast, and took mah meds. I walked over to Athena and hoped that playing games could make me feel less like death. It worked a bit. I practiced some combos in Melty Blood, but I definitely wasn't all there. I played a bit of Arcana, and while I was playing, Dan and Alex show up. I dunno if it was the meds, or maybe euphoria, but I started to feel better once they showed up and I started talking to them and stuff. Dan played a credit of Ah3 as Weiss (since we were still waiting for the denden stores to open up, while me and Alex watched some AH3 tourney vids and talked about pokemon cards and stuff.

After that, Alex wanted to go around to a few stores that had poke cards. Me and Dan walked around a few other stores. I picked up an Azusa plush for a friend to send him, and just walked around the other stores for a bit. Dan went back to Athena to play some BB:CS while Alex and I looked at cards and stuff. We were all done relatively quick. After that, we took the train to Umeda and went to Outback Steakhouse. Since it's Alex's birthday the next weekend, they sent him a coupon. He can either get a 2200 yen steak for free, or get 2200 yen off an entree of his choice. Pretty good deal for free. We got there, and as expected, it was delicious. The bloomin onion was the pinnacle of perfection. It was soooooooooooo good, and probably the most delicious thing I've eaten in a long time. My entree was Grilled Chicken with BBQ sauce on it, fresh veggies, and french fries. It was all amazingly good, and just as good as if I ordered it in a US outback. While I wasn't feeling the best, it was still really good, and I definitely plan on going back. At the end of our meal, they brought out this ice cream sundae which was one scoop of ice cream, and prolly 6 inches of whipped cream on top of it. They sang Happy Birthday to Alex, took a photo of the three of us, and after we finished the ice cream, they put his photo in a little paper frame and wrote “To Alex, Happy Birthday~” It was pretty cool.

After that, we took the JR back to Sannomiya. The weather was amazing, and because the JR train is mad quick, we made it to Sannomiya really quickly, with enough time to catch the bus back to Ono. Me and Alex talked the whole time and Dan was asleep for 90% of it. We got back to Ono, and got to my place, and I was extremely relieved to be home. Better to be sick at home than to be sick 4 hours away.

After we got back, we watched a bit of K-on, and then started playing Mahjong while watching K-on, and while eating tortilla chips and salso con queso. We played a game, and after that, went to the Ramen place. Alex and Dan wanted to get “bari-bari” ramen, which is extremely spicy ramen. I got Bari 2, which is like, mid level. Normally I like Bari 1, but I wanted to burn this infection out of my system. We were all in pain after eating our spicy ramen, but it was quite awesome. Alex said that he has to part ways with the Bari-bari though, and that he's never doing that again. We went back to the apartment, tried out ths Naruto game for the PS3 that I borrowed from Andrew. Laughed at how bad it was. I showed them FFXIII, and then since I was feeling not too good, and Alex was tired, we just went to bed.

We woke up, got ready, and played one last game of mahjong. We played until we had to leave to catch the bus. We took the bus to Sannomiya. Dan had work on the monday, while me and Alex had it off, so Dan headed back right away to Tsuruga, which is like, 5+ hours from Ono. Ugh. I wanted to take Alex to the Panda store that I saw when I went to Chinatown, so we started walking toward there. We stopped at the kobe rashabang, and a few stores that were selling poke cards just so alex could check them out. He ended up finding a couple he wanted, so that's cool. After that, we walked to the Panda store. We found a couple stores that looked like it, but since I forgot exactly where it was, we had to ask around. We did eventually find the place, and I got Alex's birthday present, which was a sports bag that looked like a Puma logo, but it said “Panda” on it instead. I had to head out to go to Andrews place to eat dinner and play some Street Fighter, so I let Alex hang out at the Panda store and take his time browsing, while I headed to Nishinomiya.

I decided to take JR since it's closer to where I was, and Andrew said he can direct me. I get to the station, and I end up walking kinda in the direction he said to, and follow a few things he says, but then I don't really see other stuff that matches what he told me, so I just kinda picked a direction that I felt was right and started walking. I didn't really know where I was going, but I knew I HAD to be close, and the Andrew called, asked where I was, and I was like “don't worry I'll find my way, there's just buildings and stuff I guess”. And then in middle of the phone call, I was like “oh, im somehow right in front of your building” and he was like “yo what?” So yeah, just picking a direction and walking and “feeling” the way to go ended me exactly where I needed to be.

I got there, Jeff (Azrael), John (Fireballtrap), and Eddy (Kunai) were there. I played a couple matches of SFIV, but I was sucking it up bad and only managed to play well against Eddy. We went to Nishinomiya gardens to this one buffet place that had a buncha various kinds of Japanese food and ate as much as we could. Many good times were had, and overall, even the fish wasn't too bad. Not my preferred choice of food, but not bad at all either.

We headed back to Andrews place after that, played more SF for a little and then we put on the “Earth” series movies on blue ray. It was about Caves, Deserts, and Ice Worlds. It was pretty neat, penguins are my favorite animal, so I liked the section that had them. There were some other interesting things in the vid too, but yeah. Andrew also got Tomodachi Collection for the DS, so we also spent a buncha time making avatars of each other. It was a lotta fun overall.

Me and Eddy spent the night, and since I wasn't 100%, I just wanted to head back home and relax. I was feeling fine until I got home, then I felt like I had a fever coming. I took a nap and hoped it would go away, and of course it didn't. Tuesday/Wed I went to school with a fever. Tuesday wasn't too bad, but Wed was killer. My head was killing me, etc. I was fine and acted like I was fine through the ending ceremony but after that, I just felt like crap. I ended up napping in the nurses office for a bit. Of course, evne tho its late march, it was still freezing outside, but not only was it cold, it was raining. I went too the doctors after work, and yeah, all my side effects were from the fever. I got meds, went home, and knocked myself out. I called in sick on Thursday and Friday, and just took it easy and relaxed. I slept a lot, and spent a lot of time just watching TV and going on the computer. I started to feel better around Saturday, but I still decided to take it easy and stay indoors. I stayed inside and only left once to get some food/oj.

Over that weekend, I beat Tales of Graces for the wii, thankfully. I didn't really feel like finishing FFXIII, and I have other games I would kinda rather be playing. Aside from that, I just played a lot of SFIV online. However, I was doing pretty poorly, it felt like my stuff wasn't coming out when I wanted it, and I couldn't break throws, etc. Then I tried a match of Blazblue, and instantly realized that the TV was lagging like crazy. I dragged my old CRT into the main room, and hooked up my 360 to that. Instantly, I was able to tell the difference. I went and started playing more, and I was able to actually play correctly, without the lag handicap. Kind of a dumb mistake, but oh well. My setup now is pretty neat, because I can play SFIV on the small TV, and watch TV on the big TV, or put on a movie, or whatever. There's a lot I can do, and because I use floor chairs, it's easy to move them and I don't have to rearrange any furniture.

Last night the school had a party for the teachers who are leaving in a nice hotel in Sannomiya (90 min away by bus). It was nice to see them off, but it was kind of expensive, a lot of commute time, and still mad cold. Oh well.

This weekend, Andy (Capps), Mike (Elvenshadow) and a few other guys who live in kanto are coming to Kansai for spring break, so I'm gonna take Friday off of work and meet up with them. It should be a lot of fun.

The Sadventures of Rob - Shortest post covering 3 weekends ever

2010-03-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I updated. I keep forgetting to write and the less often I write, the more of a task it becomes.

Anyways, no major life changes these past few weeks. Friday Night the 26th, I went to Bills place, and then played some TvC. We played for a while, recorded some matches which are up on youtube, and then since we were getting bored of games and wanted to do something else, we went Karaoke at the place in Ono. After we were done there, we went back, and I went to sleep.

The next day, I planned to meet up with Alex kinda early, but we were both mad tired, so we decided to meet up a bit later. I got to Namba around 4ish or so? Met up with Alex and CJ, and we went around some stores in denden, and I got vol 1 of k-on on blue ray for 1800 yen! We went to Kua Aina, this burger place and got giganto burgers. It was an awesome meal. Alex and CJ headed out soon after, and I just killed some time playing at Athena until I went to the capsule hotel for the night.

Sunday night, I went to Sannomiya and met up with Andrew. There was a location test for the new JuBeat. It's a lot less lenient in letting you pass “expert”. Now you can't even pass it unless you have like, at least an S on the previous game. There was supposed to be this other game on loctest, but we didn't see it. After that, we just killed some time at Magical Space. They had a special for Ah3 where it was 2 credits for 100 yen. Normally it's 1 credit, and only 2/3 rounds, so it's totally not worth it. But at 2 credits, it became worth it. I played a bunch and generally won my matches. I caught the last bus back and headed to bed after I got back.

The next week was extremely long for some reason. Longer than normal. There wasn't anything special about it either, it just felt like it took forever to finish.

After the long week ended, it was time for the weekend. I hung out with Maria, Bill, and Sarah (ALT who lives next door) and we went to the Ramen place, and watched Usavich, and various TV channels on my giganto TV.

Saturday, I went to Kobe/Osaka, and went around a buncha stores. Sat night, I headed out to Alex's place, met up with Dan, and hung out for a bit in Maibara until Alex got there. CJ was there too and we just kinda hung out doing whatever. We went to Cocos for lunch and we ate some curry. Me and Dan headed to Osaka after that, and Dan bought a buncha new games. We walked around the Den and went to Athena for a bit.

The next week went by fast. Wed was graduation here, so there was a party afterwards with the teachers, so that was my wed night. Aside from that, since I had a cough/cold, I didn't really feel like doing anything cause being sick sucks. Saturday night, I ended up in Umeda, Osaka, so I just went to Monte 50 and played AH3/MBAA/BBCS there until 11ish, and then I headed to my usual manga kissa. I also went to the pokemon center in Osaka while I was there, and got some stickers for school, and a small Piplup/Pocchamaa plush for my counter.

Sunday I went around the Den by myself, and found the Azusa/Yui new k-on plush set for pretty cheap. I went to Athena after that and played a ton of AH3, and a bit of MB/BB.

So I've kinda been busy, but kinda not. My very monotonous lifestyle leaves little to the imagination, but I guess you guys know I'm alive so it's cool.

Can you handle this?

2010-03-01T00:47:00.000-08:00

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/9140/awesomerb.jpg

Can you?

The Sadventures of Rob - Upgrading

2010-02-25T18:27:00.001-08:00

Hey all, I have some free time, so I decided to write a bit. I last left off before the thursday holiday (National Foundation Day). Some people prefer to have a day off of Monday or Friday for the 3 day weekend, but for me, since I don't really go on that many trips, when I get days off in the middle of the week, its really cool because it allows me to go to Kobe or Osaka on a weeknight, and then stay over for a night, like a mini-weekend. It divides my week into two smaller weeks. So I had 3 days of work, which went by quickly. After work on Wed, I headed out to Osaka to meet with Andrew, his GF Ibuki, and a friend of hers.

We met up, and hung out, waiting for Ibuki's friend to show up, but she didn't show up when she said she would, and she was unreachable on her cell phone. We went to dinner anyways, and had a good meal at this indonesian resturant or something. It was funny because when we walked in, there were like, a buncha staff members all showing the way to a seat, like, every 2-3 feet, there's a staff member smiling and being all “THIS WAY!” Same thing when we left, everyone lined up and was like “THANK YOU”. Quite interesting. After that, Ibuki's friend showed up, and we met up with her and then went Karaoke for like, an hour. It went by pretty quickly and it was fun. After that, everyone had to leave, so I went to Namba and went to the 12 hour manga cafe. They were out of mat booths, but they had reclining chairs, so I just opted for that. Usually, when I get a reclining chair room, I just sleep on the floor, but this time, there wasn't nearly enough space, so I ended up having to sleep on the chair itself. I usually have problems because its not completely flat, but rather more like a 45 degree angle reclined. However, I managed to position myself comfortably ENOUGH to be able to fall asleep for a good portion of the night. After getting better sleep than I thought, I got up, and reserved the shower room (free shower with the 12 hour pack). About an hour later, they came by, I took a shower, and then went on the internet a little more before I headed out.

I left the manga cafe, and of course, where do I go? Athena. I got there, and there were a few people there already. There was a gdlk Liese player going up against guy-girl. I went around to see who it was, and I recognized him as the Tokyo player Furiita. I also saw Pincho, and a Tokyo Petra player. They only played on cabs that were 2/3 rounds (I guess because Arcana is a way diff game when played 3/5 rounds), so they actually changed one of the machines from 3/5 to 2/3 rounds. I played against Pincho for a bit, and he destroyed me 8-2. It was really fun because he straight up exploited my weaknesses, so I learned a lot from playing, but it felt too short. Oh well. After everyone left, I was getting hungry, so I left too and went to get my usual cheese curry. It was delicious as ever, and since I was already up and about, I decided to walk around the den. Being on the hunt for K-on plushies as usual, I spotted a DX Mugi plush for 1500 yen, and since I was missing her, I picked it up. Now I just need the DX Ritsu plush to have the set. I didn't buy anything else, if I remember correctly.

I went back to Athena, played more Arcana/Melty/Blaz whatever. It was good times overall. They're pretty hardcore there, so I feel like I have to play my best just to hang, but that makes me better in the long run. I was kinda getting bored though, so I headed back a bit early and just hung out at home.

Back in Ono, after having it feel like my weekend is over, it's Friday, and I go to work, and finish it up, and before I know it, it's another weekend! Alex just got back from a trip to Hokkaido, so I haven't seen him or talked to him for like, a week. I wanted to see Dan, too, and since Dan was going to Alex's place in Shiga, I definitely had to go. I set out Friday, but I barely missed the bus (that comes once an hour) by two minutes. So I went to the train station instead, and just missed the train (leaves every 15 minutes) by 1 minute. I got to Sannomiya, and ate a beef bowl with cheese at the Sukiya there before transferring to the 2 and a half hour train to Alex's place. I got to the station, and I walked in, and it turns out, I missed the train by one minute, and now I have to wait a half hour for the next one. Worst train day EVER. Then, I was writing a long email on my cell phone to Alex, when I hit the wrong button, and it all got cleared. So I'm kind of annoyed at this point. However, once I got on the train, and got going, everything was fine. I got to Alex's place, and we just chilled there. While there, FINALLY, after a long time, I beat idolm@ster for the DS. For those who read my blog and pay careful attention to little details that they probably don't care about, you'll remember I bought the Eri character CD a while back. The first song is probably my favorite track on the CD, so I've been listening to it a bunch. This one communication in the game came up, where your producer gives you a piece of paper left by her old boss, and Eri starts reading it, and reads the lyrics to the song. Then, one of those things where they give you 3 options and you have to get it correct came up, and since I knew it was the lyrics, I hit “lyrics” and I was like “hah, for the first time since playing, I'm not just guessing and hoping I hit the right option!” (Because even if I know what they mean, it's sometimes hard to tell which one will be the best answer). It's something dumb, and I was really happy. But, there's always been a song that you can't unlock with Eri. Turns out, the song on the character CD ended up being that song! Awesome! So now that I beat the game, I have the song unlocked in stage mode, so I can just play it whenever I want with Eri. Sweet.

After that, I crawled under Alex's kotatsu and went to sleep there.

We woke up, I got showered and ready, and we headed out to Minami Hikone, which is this area where there's a buncha cool stuff and stores and whatnot. We headed out and went to the train station. We missed the train, so we had to wait for a bit. While we were waiting, this little kid comes up, and apparantly is a student of Alex's. He's like, 1st grade in elementary school. He runs to Alex and does this little kid like GRR ATTACK!!! play thing with him. He then looks at me, and asks me who I am, and asks if I'm a friend of Alex's. I'm like “yeah, I'm another English teacher like him”. He's like “OK!” and then he starts attacking me, too, haha. He sees my bag, and sees this little cross thing stuck on there and tries taking it. Then, he sees my jacket, and I'm like, “isn't it cool?” and he's like “meh”. After that, he uses the fur on my jacket and was making a mustache out of it. It was pretty funny. His older brother (5th grade?) was there, too, and was talking to us for a bit, too, asking where we were going and stuff. His grandmother or whoever looked really apologetic to us like “I'm sorry he's bothering you” and all that stuff, but it was funny, and it killed time spent waiting.

Anyways, we get there and the first place we go is Coco's for Lunch. I got my cheese curry, plus a piece of Nan bread, and it was suuuuuuuuper good. Near the end tho, it pretty much killed me, and I had to struggle to finish the last few bites, but I did it. After that, we went to the big shopping center Vivre. We stopped by the arcade because we wanted to play Taiko, but there were these 6 or 7 high school students. They brought their own sticks, and pretty much set up camp. When one was finished, the next would go, and there was no room for others in this equation. We figured that we would go and come back in a few hours and they would be gone, so we left. We went to these game stores, and checked out prices. At the GEO store, I saw some k-on blue rays for fairly cheap, so I kept note of that, but didn't really see anything else. We went to the book-off/arcade. While looking around for books there, I noticed they had volumes 3-7 of Shikigami no Shiro (originally a shmup) for only 100 yen each! I got vol 1 and 2 a while back, but I couldn't find 3-7 anywhere, much less for cheap. So I got the 5 comics, and they were only 5 bucks for the whole of them! The problem was more carrying these things since it's a pain to carry anything, haha.

After that, we went upstairs to the arcade. I don't know how it stays in business cause it's like, ALWAYS dead, but whatever. Maybe they know something I don't. I saw some guy playing Street Fighter IV, so I played against him. I lost the first match, but then won the next one. He left, and so I started playing the computer. Another guy came up to play me and I ended up winning like, 3 times in a row! He left after that, I beat the game, and then we headed out of there. We went back to the namco arcade (it's been a couple hours at this point, I think?) and they're still there, but they reverted from doing 2 players at the same time, to 1 person playing, and a second person playing on the 2nd drum, but without a score and stuff. So cheap. I didn't feel like waiting around, or getting in there, so we just headed back.
We get back to Alex's place and I just head under the kotatsu and relax there until it's about time to go meet dan. We meet up with him at the Ramen place, have dinner there, and then head to the Red Velvet Lounge. There's a buncha old people there singing Enka like usual. We decided not to bother and went back to Alex's place and play Mahjong. We end up doing a game, and at the end, I get a really good hand and win. We decide to try out the Red Velvet Lounge one more time, in hopes that the old people (who have probably been there all day) would finally have left, but nope, they're STILL there. We hope that if we go there, they'll leave after a bit, but of course, that doesn't work. They've already set up camp. Alex brings this beer and so we drink some and we get a turn every once in a while. We're singing mostly stuff that isn't too “embarassing?” Just normal J-stuff, or popular English songs or whatever. We're then sick of hearing Enka at this point because every song sounds exactly the same, and these people aren't leaving, so me and Alex duet Fuwafuwa time and troll the old people, and then we leave. We play another game of Mahjong and Alex ends up getting a bomb hand and wins the match. It was mad fun, but I had to get up early the next day, so I didn't want to stay up too late.

After I go to bed, I get up, and leave. I do some stuff somewhere, I don't remember. Anyways, after that, Andrew calls me, and says he's meeting up with his friends in Sannomiya and going to eat. I say I'm down, and I go with him. So me, Andrew, and 5 girls (including Ibuki) end up going out to this Indian Resturant. We eat there, it was really good. Afterwards, I have to head back and catch the last bus.

The next week was pretty easy at work, not much going on, just a lotta tales of graces. I caught a cold sometime tuesday, so that was pretty annoying, so I just went home and relaxed and slept more than usual. I felt really bad Thursday night, but I was at about 95% by Saturday. Saturday I didn't do much, but I went to Andrews place and slept over there. We played some SFIV but I suck at it now, so I either have to grin and bear it, and get better, or just straight up stop playing. I can't decide atm which I want to do. Oh well. We went to bed after that.

Sunday, we got up and went to Coco's for some curry. Andrew had some stuff to do in Osaka, and I wanted to go to Sannomiya and play games. I head to Sannomiya, play some games and stuff. I remember that there's a Blazblue CS tourney at the Sannomiya Sanx. I decide to give the game another shot in tourney. I get in a pool with a Litchi, a carl, and a bang. The litchi pretty much owns me. He was good and his character is S+ tier. I beat the carl player. Last is the bang player. He's just this random scrub that I would see around. I beat him first round, but 2nd and 3rd round, because he's bang, he gets high damage off of dumb hits and I end up losing. So yeah, I lost to a Bang and a Litchi in my pool. I leave after that and play some Melty at Magical Space. I see this H-Miyako there, and I'm like “oh man, I can beat this guy” and he owns me 2 games in a row before I beat him. He switches to his main, F-Sion, and we go about 2 wins for him before I win one. Then we go even for a bit, and at the end, he gets two wins, and I call it quits.

After that, I walk around the anime store area of sannomiya, just killing time and whatnot. I meet up with Andrew and stuff. We play at arcades for a bit, then go get some food. We have some time to kill, so I stop in the Sannomiya Labi/Yamada Denki store. I check the TV floor just for kicks. I saw a cheap 90,000 yen TV marked down to 60,000. I decide I'm gonna invest and just get it. We get some food first and I think it over anyways. I go back and ask the guy about it. He says that while the TVs are cheap, they're not exactly high quality. I say I'll think it over and I talk to my friend. We look at more TVs. I see a 37 inch Toshiba TV. Normally 180,000 yen, it's marked down to 134,000 or so for the day. The thing is, you get a bonus 20% points. So you get like, 27,500 worth of points for getting the TV. I decide on it, and after looking at how nice the quality is and everything, I'm like “man, this is awesome,” I gotta do it. So I call the guy over and we get it done. I just bought a big TV to be delivered to my place out in the boonies for free.

Now that I had like, 28,000 yen in points (I had points from before), I used those and just bought a ps3 and paid 1,780 for it. I just carried that home tho, no need to like, have that delivered.

So yeah, interesting turn of events that night went to.

Monday, I got home from work and played a buncha tales of graces. Tuesday, I had errands to run. I went to the dept store and checked out TV stands, but didn't see one I liked. I got some McDonalds for dinner and stuffed it in my bag and left. I biked over to the home improvement store. I saw a TV stand there that I liked and it was reasonably priced. I picked it up and after I bought it, I realized “How the hell am I gonna carry this home?” So I put it on my bike and kinda balanced my bike while pushing it. I did that for about a block before I was like “man, something is gonna fall SOMETIME.” I decided to quit while I was ahead and just park my bike in this empty parking lot, and just carry the darn thing home. I walked maybe a half a block before stopping each time. By the time I got home, I was drenched in sweat, and my arms were numb. But I got it home! I ate my burger, and then got to work. I moved the TV from the main room into my bedroom, and moved the desk from my bedroom into the spare room I don't use. I then built the new TV stand. It was kind of a pain, but I did it, despite instructions being in Japanese. The only thing is, I put one part that was supposed to be facing forward on backwards. It's on the botttom shelf, so it's hard to see, but I was just like “whatever, I'm not taking it apart again. It's fine.” I set up the 360, the ps3, and put my joysticks/controllers etc in their spots. Awesome. I just chilled for the rest of the night.

Wed comes around, and my TV finally shows up. The guys come and they build it and everything. They show me how to use it, and I ask about the games, and they plug the systems in, and talk to me about games. One of the dudes says he has a ps3 too, and was telling me a few games he likes and stuff. It was pretty sweet. I don't have any ps3 games yet, so I can't play it, but I booted up my 360. I fixed the settings, and tried some idolm@ster live for you. It was ok, but I wanted to play some Street Fighter or something. I played online, but did poorly, so I shut it off, and decided to go to the Ono city pool. I'm really out of shape so I want to kinda start getting back into shape, but I don't really want to lift weights, so I figure swimming might be the way to go (at least thats what my friends are saying). I went there, it's really easy, 500 yen to get in, and that's it. I got in, changed, threw my stuff in a locker, and did a few laps back and forth. It was a ton of kids in a swimming class, and then nobody using the “free” lanes. So I pretty much had it all to myself. I guess there are perks to living in a somewhat rural town. Anyways, after maybe 20 minutes or so, I was drained, so I left (don't want to overdo it at first). I biked home and by that time, I was so tired, all I could do was lay in bed motionless. After 20-30 minutes, I felt better tho, and went up to Bill's place and played some TvC.

Yesterday (thursday), I had laundry, so I did that, and since it was too late to go to the pool, I decided to take a bike ride around Ono, since the weather is so nice (It was around 50-60 degrees most of yesterday). There's this one ramen place that I go to sometimes, and while it's really good, I was wondering if there's anything PAST that. I biked past there for maybe a mile or so, but there really wasn't much of anything. Oh well, it was still good exercise. Maybe one of these days I'll try to go to the next city over, which might be like, 40 minutes or so.

Anyways, it's friday! This weekend seems like it'll be pretty epic. I'll hit the pool again tonite, and then just relax with my new giganto TV and some games. Peace!

The Sadventures of Rob - New blog name

2010-02-07T19:22:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, it's been a couple weeks since I updated but here's what happened since:

So after my last entry, I had a 6 day work week, because of a marathon at my school on Saturday where I had mandatory attendance. So after spending half the day standing in a rice field pretty much freezing, I was able to go home. I got ready and headed out to Osaka. Dan and Toshi went to see Avatar, and I was gonna meet up with them afterwards at Athena. I got some Cheese Curry, and went to Athena and played some AH3. I was doing pretty good, and then Dan and Toshi showed up. We continued to play some more, and Dan played Toshi a bunch. I originally met Toshi because of Arcana 1, so he was interested in AH3, but Lilica, being DRASTICALLY different from how she was in ah1, proved to be very difficult to Toshi, and Dan ended up winning vs Toshi most of the time simply by doing 2BC 236A+B with heart. Good work, Swede.

After that, we headed to that pizza place that I went to the week before. Not going alone makes it a LOT less awkward. We got a pepperoni pizza and some nachos. It was pretty good. A bit expensive of course, but the pizza was good and the nachos were decent. We juts hung around and chatted and we had some drinks, too. After that, Toshi had to head out, but me and Dan stayed at Athena and played around there for a bit. Around 11:40ish, we headed out and went to the 10 hour manga cafe.

We got there and we started to talk about whatever. About 20 minutes after being there, we got a knock on the door from the staff guy. Even though we were whispering, apparantly we were talking too loudly. So instead of just asking us to be quiet, the person got up, went upstairs, found a staff guy, and told him instead. Way to avoid confrontations, Japan. Oh well. Me and Dan ended up talking via IRC even tho we were right next to each other in the booths. Pretty dumb, and I don't think we were even that loud, but whatever, not worth getting annoyed over. Anyways, I went to bed early (1am ish...well...that's early for a sat night). I woke up around 8:30 and wanted to shower. I went to the front desk and asked them if I can reserve a shower. They said nobody is in it right now. I was surprised cause usually there's a long line. I then noticed the price changed from 200 yen to 500 yen for a shower, but includes a few more things. Oh well, I really wanted to take a shower cause if I don't, then my hair looks kinda greasy, and I needed to get it cut anyways, and if it's too long and greasy, it just looks REALLY bad. Man, I'm so metro.

Anyways, I showered and stuff. I don't like how I can't get a hot shower, but rather a lukewarm shower. I mean, I'm paying 5 bucks for a shower, at least give me WARM water. I'll settle for warm, but that lukewarm temperature reminds me of my old apt where I would be shivering, and getting out of the shower was even colder than getting in the shower. I'm glad I don't live there anymore, but back to the real point, I got showered and stuff. Dan woke up a bit later and we hung out at the manga cafe until it was time to go around 10.

We got some cheese curry for breakfast and then walked around Denden town. I traded in Oboromuramasa at A-too and got 4000 yen for it! Considering I paid 5000 yen for it, getting 4/5 back what I paid for it (since that was around June/July) is awesome. We looked around at game prices and at denden in general. Around 4:30ish, after we ate McDonalds at the Bic Camera, we headed out to Andrew's place in Nishinomiya like, 30-40 min away. We got there and he let us in, and we hung out and played games until like, 10PM. We played some DOA4. Dan tried Demon's Souls on Andrew's ps3, and was using Eddys character. He was doing ok, but he got owned by this one boss and killed Eddy's character. It was pretty funny. We watched the pixar movie “Up” on blue ray first, then we played some mario wii for a while, but I forgot my wii-mote, so we ended up doing only 2 player Mario and just taking turns for each level.
After we were done with our fun there, me and Dan took the train back to Osaka and went to Spa World. We spent the night there and went in the baths and the saunas and whatnot. It was really nice. There was this one dude who brought his (what looked like) 7 or 8 year old daughter there. Now I know Spa World is a nice place and it's really cheap and all, but I wouldn't bring my naked daughter in a place where a bunch of older guys hang out. Like, real talk, safe or not, it's just not something that I would want to do if I ever had a daughter. I went to sleep around midnite and slept pretty well. I got up around 8ish and I was just so tired that I didn't even want to MOVE for the first 15 minutes, so I just layed there until Dan woke up. We got up and went through the baths again. We finished and got out of there.

It was 9AMish by the time we got out there, so we just walked to McDonalds and had breakfast there. We didn't have anything else to do for the time being so we just walked on over to Athena. We played some AH2. Dan played some Heart, and I played as some Maori. We then played some BB, and once 11ish hit, we went to Denden Town. Surprisingly, for a monday morning, there were a lot of people playing BB. Dan was gonna buy a PS3 so we hit up a couple stores and he decided to pick it up at A-too. While I was there, I saw Tales of Graces for the wii for 4000 yen. I've been really wanting to play it, but I wasn't sure. I then saw a strategy guide for 100 yen, so I decided to just pick it up, unsure of whether spending 4000 yen on a game that I hear has a lot of bugs is worth it. Dan picked up his PS3 and he was pretty happy it seems. After that, Dan wanted to head back to Tsuruga (for good reason). I already told Andrew that I would have dinner with him in Osaka around 7ish, and it was only about noon at the time. I was feeling really tired but I don't like cancelling plans at the last minute just because I'm tired, so I decided to just go to Athena while Dan went home and then see how I felt after playing some more arcana.

At athena, I started off playing my Maori against some Kira player. I beat him 2 out of 3 times or so, and we had some good matches. There was this Time Lilica player who was doing some crazy combos that had some sick 50/50 resets, but I was still able to beat him by mashing j.A with Maori, so that's pretty cool. I got like, 13 wins total before I ended up beating the game. The new character was unlocked earlier that morning, and so a bunch of people came on like, their lunch break or whatever to try her out. I don't care about her, I like Maori better anyways as a secondary. After a while of that, I ended up seeing this Yoriko player who I call “Nelson” because he has a giganto overbite that looks like Nelson's from the Simpsons. Normally, in AH2, Nelson would beat me, but in AH3, now that Petra is way cheaper...er...more solid, I was able to not only beat him, but get streaks on him. We played for a pretty long time. It died out a bit, so I went and played some Blaz or something. I confirmed my dislike of the game, and then went back to Arcana. This time, there was this one guy there who played as Weiss. I was beating him pretty bad for the most part. There was this one match where he got 2 rounds in a row on me, and then not only did I come back and win the match after being down 0-2, but I did it by getting 3 perfects in a row. I felt like I just trolled him super hard. This Fiona player whose pretty good showed up and played. I played him, but after a match or two, my button broke. I had to get the guy to fix it, and I got a credit free. But like, I was supposed to leave to meet Andrew really soon, so I had to pick Maori predicting I would lose. I won one then lost to his Dorothy, and I headed out after that to meet Andrew.

I met Andrew at Umeda, and we met up with his girlfriend at Juso (really close to Umeda, kind of a shady area apparantly). We went to this Indian resturant that was really good. It was a lot of fun, but it got to be about 8:30-9ish, so I had to head back.

The next week, I was way too tired on Tuesday, so I just napped, but Wed I played a bunch of Tales of Graces. Thursday, I played the new TvC with Bill, and just like that, I was back out on Friday. I went to Sannomiya first, ate some cheese curry and ended up beating this guy in AH3 with multiple double digit winstreaks. The thing is, unlike Athena, where it's 3/5 rounds for 50 yen, this was 2/3 rounds for 100 yen. And those rounds go by FAST. Dude spent like 3000 yen playing against me while I only spent like, 400. Good times. I headed out after that and went to Athena. There was a ranking battle going on that I just missed (didn't know there WAS one going on, oh well). But everyone was there, so I just played a buncha casuals. Around 10:45ish, I headed to the GOOD internet cafe, the 12 hour one for 1900 yen that comes with a free shower. I slept really well and I had a shower and everything. I spent a buncha time just browsing the net and doing whatever. It was around 11ish by the time I got out of there, so Denden was already open. I headed to Sofmap and picked up the Yui/Mio k-on plushies that I was looking at before. It was lunchtime already so I went and ate some cheese curry at the good place across from Athena. I went to Athena after that and just chillaxed and played AH3 until Alex showed up and met me there around 2ish or so. We walked around Denden looking at stuff, and Alex sold a bunch of games that he doesn't play and got a decent amount for them.

Alex actually came planning to meet up with some friends of his from Shiga. We were supposed to go to this Ramen place in Umeda that's supposedly GDLK, but not 30 seconds after we bought our tickets for the train, did they call and go “oh btw, it's closed right now”. We ended up going there anyways and going to Yodobashi Camera. Before we got in, we saw an advertisement for FFXIII with the black guy on this pretty big poster, so Alex went and took a picture next to it. Alex saw a Dedede plush and got a couple waddle dees to go with it too. He had a point card with a ton of points on it so he pretty much got the Dedede plush for free. Pretty awesome, and he was super happy. We went to this place in Umeda, HIPS or something, and ate at a resturant there. After that, me and Alex headed to Monte Carlo to wait for Dan. Alex said he was content watching me play AH3, but then I remembered that they had the Usagi mahjong game there on vs mode. Since it's a team game, both players pick their partner and their character. We played against each other for at least an hour on like, maybe 2-3 bucks each. It was rediculously fun, and I got a buncha crazy hands, and Alex did too, but wasn't used to playing in the arcades, so he wasn't able to finish many of them. Anyways, Dan showed up and then we played a couple more rounds and then went to the nearby Hub in Umeda.

At the Hub, it was mad crowded, typical for a Sat night I guess. I got a Zima and a mojito, and Alex and Dan got some long island iced teas, and a beer or something, as well as food. We just chilled and ate some fries and stuff. Alex had to go around 9 something though, so he could catch his train. Me and Dan then went to Athena after that. We went and tried to play Arcana but I wasn't feeling it. I almost beat guy-girl, but I lost at the last second because the wrong move came out when I had the winning combo. It's cool though, prolly my own fault anyways. I decided that playing BB would prolly be more suited to my current mindset and I was right. I ended up with like, a 13 winstreak before losing to (surprise!) a mashy Tager. Its all good cause it was about time to head out.

We grabbed some food from McDonalds before going to the capsule hotel. We stayed in the one that's a bit cheaper, but has the bath on the 7th floor, with big glass windows of a view that overlooks osaka buildings. So we get to stand there naked and show our nakes selves to the world...from 7 floors up. It's a pretty crazy feeling but yeah, me and Dan just hung out, took a nice bath and stuff. We even submerged ourselves in the cold water bath and then went back to the hot water. That's intense. It sounds easy, but it's extremely hard to do and really takes a whole seperate mindset to be able to do it. Thankfully, we were able to just jump in the hot water bath after that, but it's pretty crazy cause like, after you get in the hot water, its hard to tell whether its actually hot or cold and kinda just gives this weird feeling at first before you get used to it.

After we were done there, we headed to our capsules. The TV was already on and playing some extremely low quality adult entertainment. Everything was mosaic'd out so badly that it was impossible to see like, ANYTHING, much less get entertainment out of it. However, it was the only TV channel that was completely clear. Every other channel had static, which is actually pretty funny. I was mad tired anyways so I just went to bed not soon after. It was really hot in the capsule so I ended up just sleeping naked with no blanket. I slept decent enough I guess.

After we both got up, we went back and took our morning bath. We got out of there around 945ish. We got breakfast at the same McDonalds we stopped at the night before and relaxed for a bit. Naturally, since nothing else was really open, we just went to a couple arcades. We played some of the new Taiko game. They got the new im@s song from the DS version in at Taiko, so me and Dan played that. We eventually went to Athena again. Dan tried out Weiss (sword girl) in AH3. He likes sword characters, and she's fairly simple so he might use her now. After that, we headed out to Denden since it was opened by that time. We walked around all the usual stores. I had some manga I wanted to buy, as well as looking around at just games and stuff in general. We made the rounds, hit up A-too, because Dan wanted to trade in a game he just beat for the ps3. We then went back to Athena to kill time and wait for Toshi because he said he was gonna come down at 4PM. 4PM rolls around and toshi then sends a message saying he can't come. Grrr. Oh well. We go to Mandarake because I haven't been there in forever, and we look around there. It was interesting, but as usual, nothing to really buy except a manga that I wanted.

We headed out and went to Subway after that. We had some food and then we were both kind of ready to go back. I realized that if I went back to Athena, I wouldn't be there long enough for it to even be worth it. I just headed back home and took the train to Sannomiya. I just missed my bus so I had some time to kill before the next one, and I just walked around for a bit. I got to my bus and took it home and got home early enough to talk to friends online and stuff.

Last week, I played more TvC with Bill, and on days when I wasn't doing that, I was playing Tales of Graces, which I really like. I like the new battle system, and the main guy character, as well as most of the side characters are pretty likable IMO. The story isn't too bad either. Not nearly as “epic” as the other ones right now, but still quite interesting nonetheless.

This week, however, I decided to stay in on Friday. I went to Bill's place and a few of us ending up drinking alcohol and watching a really bad movie starring Chuck Norris called “The Forest Warrior” which is one of those straight-to-video movies, and it's directed by Aaron Norris, his brother. It was pretty cool, theres a scene where he transforms from a hawk into Chuck Norris and does a flying kick on these evil lumberjack guys trying to cut down trees and stuff. Not to give away anything, but there is a scene where Chuck Norris turns into a bear. REAL TALK, Chuck Norris straight up turns into a bear. First he was Chuck Norris. Then he was a bear. It was probably the most amazing scene in a film that I've ever seen.

Anyways, that was fun and all, and then we just talked for a while before we had to head out. I went back down to my apartment and stayed online for a while before passing out. I woke up mad early because I have a hard time sleeping past 8:30 thanks to my curtains blocking absolutely no light. I got up and did some stuff, ate some breakfast, cleaned up, etc. Around 11ish, I headed to Sannomiya, like usual. I played some MBAA at Magical space for a bit, then headed out and checked out the Rashabang and Melon books and those kinds of stores. Then, I played some AH3 at Sega Sannomiya Sanx, where they increased it to 3/5 rounds for 100 yen as opposed to the usual 2/3 rounds. I beat this one Yoriko player like, 4 times in a row before he stopped, and I just went on and beat the game.

Around 7ish, I was done in Sannomiya, and then I went to Osaka and met up with some friends I know from online. They were at Namba parks eating at Kua Aina, the hawaiian burger place. We talked there for a bit, and then headed to this bar in America-mura. We hung out there and saw some interesting people. Since people were feeling sick, they wanted to get back before too late. So me and my one friend, Ahmed (who I went to high school with, and is now a JET in Osaka), walked around some arcades and stuff for a bit before we headed off our own seperate ways. I went to the 10 hour manga cafe and slept pretty well there, too.

I got up, and headed out of the manga cafe. I went to Athena for a bit because it was open. People were playing BB and MBAA. With BB, I had a revelation, and for the first time in a while, I felt like I knew what I was doing with my character and was actually having a lot of fun playing. I played some Melty Blood after that, and I lost every match I played, but it was all against good players, and I still felt like I was playing well, and did pretty good and learned a lot. It was just a lot of fun in general.

Then, I walked around Denden on my own because I had to pick up some stuff for friends and I had to sell a bunch of games I forgot I had/don't play. I got 13,200 yen for the games, and only a couple of them were actually worth anything. (That being, Smash Bros Brawl and Melty Blood Actress Again). It was really nice to get rid of games I don't use anymore, and now I can use that money toward something else that I might want to get.

After that, I went to Athena and played some AH3. I was doing really well, and then this other Petra player who also used her in AH2 played. He did some stuff with her that I didn't even know she could do. It was awesome and I'm gonna try to figure out some more stuff. There was a tourney at Avion after that, and so everyone went. Since there was a lot of prep time, I just played BB:CS in the meatime against this Ragna player who looks like he's about 40, who beat me the week before (who I used to play against in CT and destroy). He almost beat me the first match, and then I stepped it up and started beating him 3-0 almost every match. This Lambda player also came and was pretty good, but I still won. I was on a 6 winstreak and then they called me to play in the tourney. I played Tall Heart Player first round. He won the first round. I perfected him the second, but he beat me the third round. Oh well. It was fun times anyways and I watched the rest of the tourney. I even played some SFIV on the “beginners” cabinet. The guy I played against was a sagat with 11,000 BP. I only have 8800 BP, and that's with my Chun. I ended up actually winning the first match somehow! I lost two in a row to his sagat after that, but they were good matches, and I probably would have won had I had my actual character to use.

This Mei Fang player who made it to SBO in Ah2 ended up getting First. The Clarice player who used to own me, who I now go even with got 2nd, Karate Kenji, the other Petra, got 3rd, and Tall Heart man got 4th. Fun tourney. After it was over, they put it on freeplay. There's this Lilica player who has a really droopy face, kinda like John Kerry. So I'm calling this guy John Kerry Lilica. He plays Rock Lilica, and everything he does is super gimmicky. He just randomly throws out 3Cs, and since it has super armor he gets the hit a lot. He also just jumps and does 5[D] from really far away and then spins the stick so lilica moves all crazy fast and stuff. He also mashes out the stone stomp move a ton. The last time I played him at Athena, he beat me 4 games in a row. I felt like this is the one dude that I just can't beat. A couple of the guys play a match before they leave, and John Kerry Lilica ends up beating them. I play him and use the Ice arcana and I end up winning. He plays again and I try using time twice in a row, but I get owned. This Kamui/Zenia player came and was doing ok too. He beat me one match with Kamui, but then I beat his Kamui. After that, I got 7 wins in a row against John Kerry Lilica and 2A Mashing Zenia before they turned the machine off of freeplay. But for some reason, I'm doing best with the Ice arcana, which is ironically the first arcana I picked for Petra when I first tried her in AH2.

After that, I went and ate some cheese curry. I then met up with Ahmed again and we went Karaoke with him and a few other ALTs. It was a lot of fun, and its always nice to meet new people. After we were done there, I had to head out because it was getting late. I ended up barely missing a couple of my trains, so I had to take the slooooooow train back to Ono. On one of the trains home, this greasy middle aged guy got on and stood next to me (even tho there were open seats). He then started to get drowsy and started to lean on me. The first couple times I just brushed it off. The third time he did it, I nudged his head off of me, and then he kinda woke up and stuff, but then started to do it again. I couldn't really move cause there was a huge crowd of guys ALSO standing there, so I was in the worst part because every other part of the train wasn't this packed. But like, if you're that tired, and you see seats behind you, why don't you sit down? I was about to get off, so I don't know why he wasn't sitting. And like, yeah, if you're a cute young Japanese girl, I don't mind if you lean your head on my extremely bony shoulder, but when you're this greasy middle aged guy, that's unacceptable in the Rob book. However, better than making a scene and getting mad, I just moved as much out of the way as I could. Anyways, the next train I got on was relaxing, and I just played Scribblenauts on the way home. I got home around 10:45, and was in bed by 11:30ish.

Sorry this is so long, but it's such a pain to write sometimes. And these are answers to the comments left last week on my blog:
Lix – Yeah, 650 for a slice of pizza and a drink is mad expensive, but going with friends and ordering a whole pizza isn't too bad. It's really good so it's completely worth it to me.

Mike – Yeah, Nazuna might be your style. Eko (the girl with the crazy drawn guy) might be good for you too. I say give her a try too, but Nazuna (or Furry McWolfback as I like to call her) is still pretty solid. AH3 is really good, and if you're gonna get into a new game, now is the right time for AH3.

So yeah thats all for now I guess...holiday this thursday, don't know what I'm doing, and depending on what other people are doing, I may hang out with them this weekend. We'll see.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Bathroom surprise

2010-01-18T17:26:00.000-08:00

Blog -
Hi guys, continuing from last week, this is my blog. Right now, the internet is down at work, so not only am I not able to keep myself entertained during boring times, I now can't even do work because everything work-related that I need to do requires the internet, so I'm forced to entertain myself through offline means.

Anyways, since Monday was a holiday, my work week started on Tuesday. Tuesday – Friday, I would go to work, come home, and play Star Ocean 4, as my new years resolution is to finish the games I bought. Star Ocean 4 was at the top of the list, so I wanted to beat that one first. I got around to beating it on Friday night, and it felt really good. But it was also good because instead of going to Osaka on Friday and spending an extra day there, I stayed at home where it's nice and cheap.

I went to bed Friday night around midnite, and then woke up around 8ish. I stayed home for a couple of hours just relaxing, and caught the 10:17 bus to Kobe, listening to my new k-on music, and my Eri (from im@s) character CD. I got there close to noon. I went and checked out the Lashabang store looking for railgun manga, or just cheap music CDs or whatever, but I didn't find anything. I checked out a couple more stores, but I wasn't really looking for anything, just browsing, so I didn't buy anything. I decided I was hungry, so I headed over to Osaka and played IM@S DS on the train. I got to Osaka and headed to this little cafe/bar called “Slices”. It's a pizza place and it apparantly has American style pizza (as opposed to Japanese style).

I went in, and there were a few other people there. The people working there just kinda stared for a but and said I could sit down. I sat at the bar and they took my order. I got a slice of pepperoni and an OJ, which was 650 yen. The OJ came half filled with ice in a really small glass. I got the pizza, the slice was a little smaller than average, and there wasn't enough cheese. The sauce burned the top of my mouth p badly, but aside from that, and the expensive prices, and the awkwardness of going alone, it was ok. I started walking toward Namba. I stopped at the import food store along the way because I saw they had skippy extra crunchy peanut butter 16oz size or whatever for 3/1000 yen. I picked up 3 of them, and now I'm pretty set on peanut butter for a while. I was running really low before, so it's really good that I was able to pick some up.

After that, I headed to Athena for a bit. Since arcana 3 came out, I've been having a craving to play it, so I sessioned in that for a bit. Played a bit of BB:CS, too, but AH3 is way more fun. After a couple hours there, I wanted to walk around Denden town again and look at stuff before all the stores closed. I went around to all the different stores, and saw a bunch of stuff I wanted, but knew I shouldn't buy. After however long I spent looking at game/figure stores and whatnot, I settled on buying the railgun manga vol 2, and on a small ritsu (from k-on) phonestrap for my phone. It was like, 2 bucks, and it's nice and small, so my formerly strap-less phone now has a strap.

After that, since I was already up and about, I went and got my usual cheese curry. It was delicious as always. Since the cheese curry place is right near Athena, I just went back to Athena and played Arcana for a while. It went well, and most of the top arcana players in Kansai were there. I played that for a while, played a little bit of BB:Crappy Sequel, and then I looked over to where Melty Blood is. I saw Long Hair Glasses Man (better known to most people as Kou) sitting there playing. We use the same character, and I learned a lot from watching his vids, but nobody was playing against him. I decided to give it a lot and see if I could learn anything. I played him for 4 matches in a row, and won 1 round. He indeed showed me why he is a descendant of some greater power, brought down to this earth to wreck havoc in loli fighting games. After 4 matches, I headed on out and went to the 12 hour manga cafe place. It was 10:45 or so by this point, and they didn't have any mat booths or reclining chair seats. I wasn't about to sleep in an open seat, so I just decided to head to the capsule hotel.
At the capsule hotel, I got there, signed in, did all the necessary things, and then went to the public bath. I took a nice hot bath, which felt really good, and then relaxed in the jaccuzi bath for a bit, too. After that, I was kinda tired, so I headed up to my capsule and just watched TV for a bit before heading to sleep. I was in my capsule but I had to go to the bathroom, so I got up and went to the bathroom. However, right when I got to the bathroom, therewas some dude just laying there in his normal clothes. I was like “aah!” cause I didn't excpect to see some dude laying there. I wasn't sure if he was dead/drunk/etc. But he heard me I guess, so he just got up all non-chalantly, looked at me, and just went over to his capsule and I guess went to sleep there. It was really weird cause I was like OMG IS THIS GUY DEAD? DRUNK? UNCONCIOUS? Not what I expected to run into at like, 11:30PM. I was gonna ask him if he was ok, but from the looks of it, he was fine, but if he was fine, why was he laying on the floor in a bathroom face up? Strange, but I guess it's good that he wasnt dead I guess? I would have prolly had to call someone, tho we did just do a CPR thing at school, so I would have at least been able to deal with it, had he had a heart attack or something. I still kinda want to know what was up with him, but at the same time, it was so weird (especially the look he gave me when he got up, it was kinda like “o hai thar!”) that I kinda just want to pretend it didn't happen.

Anyways, back in my capsule, I kept waking up because people's alarms kept going off at random times. I forgot to bring earplugs, and I wasn't about to pay 3 dollars for a set of them, so I kinda got in a half-asleep half-awake state for half the night. Around 8ish, I got up out of my capsule, took a bath, got washed up etc. It was only around 9AM by the time I was done, so I just sat in a lounge chair playing im@s DS for 50 minutes or so. I got out of there and headed toward Athena again. I stopped by Mr Donuts for a quick bite to eat and then continued on my way to Athena.

I got to Athena, and there was this one tall guy I always see there who uses Heart. He's really good, and so we played a bunch. He said that I got good at the game, and I told him that it's only cause Petra is really good now, and cause j.236A is super good. I played for like, 2 and a half hours, and then headed out to meet a friend. We met up, and after I was done with that, I went to Kobe cause it was on the way home.

At Kobe, I stopped by the Sannomiya Sanx arcade. Apparantly there was a BB tourney that I missed, but wasn't too sad about missing, cause I don't really want to play that game in tourney. However, a lot of the Kobe players were there, so I talked to Kanimiso (best player in Kobe, Hakumen user) and stuff. I played BB and of course got owned by a Tager. Fun. I played some AH3 after that, and beat this one Lilica player a few times. However, unlike Athena's 4 setups, 3/5 rounds for 50 yen, this place had 1 setup, 2/3 rounds 100 yen. Ugh. Good thing I was winning or I wouldn't have bothered. However, people stopped playing, so I beat the game and then headed to Magical Space. I got 5 wins in arcana before people stopped playing me. As usual, I ran into Andre and we hung out for a bit. After talking for like, an hour, I went to my bus and he went home to cook. I JUST missed the bus so I went to Sukiya and ate dinner. I saw that they had a beef bowl with cheese on top. It looked good, but either it wasn't as good as I was expecting, or I wasn't as hungry as I thought. I still ate the salad and drank the miso soup (painfully, as my mouth still had the burns from the pizza) and most of the beef bowl, but I couldn't finish it. I also used the bathroom there so I wouldn't have to go on my 70+ minute bus ride.

I rode the bus and played im@s ds most of the way back. I went home, relaxed for a bit on the computer and then went to bed, ready to start my workweek. I have 6 days this week, but monday off, so my weekend is sun/mon instead of sat/sun. Since I beat Star Ocean 4, the next game on the list was either Happy Dance Collection or Oboromuramasa (demon blade). I opted for Happy Dance Collection since it seemed like it would be easier to beat. I brushed off the dust on my wii and started that up. It's kind of aggrivating sometimes cause it doesn't always read my inputs, but whatever, we'll see if I can still beat story mode anyways. That's my goal for this week. Hopefully I don't give up, but if it gets too aggrivating, then I may have to. I'd like to think I'll be able to stick with it though, because I really want to beat all the games I bought but haven't played enough.

Ok thats all for this week. For next weekend, I don't really have plans yet, but I always seem to find something to do, so it'll be ok. Worst case scenario, I just stay home and grind more of my games. Chances of that are pretty low cause I'm kinda hype for arcana 3, haha.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - America Trip + First Japanese weekend of 2010!

2010-01-12T19:09:00.001-08:00

Blog from the states:

This will be a blog tracking the past few weeks. The day before I left, I went to Sannomiya because I had to get to the airport the night before. So I met up with a friend of mine from High school, who's currently an ALT in Osaka named Ahmed. So we meet up, and we head to Cocos, so I can get one last cheese curry before I have to go home. We eat and hang out and stuff. Then we were like “ok, what should we do?” so we go around to some arcades and just hang out and stuff. I played some Majhong for a bit, and after a while, we head to the Sannomiya Sanx arcade and I play a bit of Shining Cross. We went to Magical Space and I played some JuBeat, too. After that, it was about time to head out, so I went to the bus station and talked to Ahmed until my bus for the airport had to leave. It was a huge pain having to carry around all my luggage anywhere I wanted to go, but it couldn't be helped, since I didn't really feel like putting it in a locker for just a couple hours.

After about an hour or so on the bus, I got to the airport. It was roughly 10:45PM by this time. I sat around and played some PSP/DS for a bit. I was trying to connect to the internet on my netbook, but there was no place to do it. I couldn't get in the terminal because they didn't open up until 5:30 or something like that. However, they had an internet cafe there, so I ended up just eating the 3000 yen cost for 6 hours, and went there. I woke up from my half-asleep state (couldnt sleep that well) and the gates were open, so I went and got my boarding pass and whatnot, went through security just fine. It was a domestic flight from Osaka to Tokyo, so it was pretty much all Japanese people and me. That flight was easy, a little over an hour. They didn't have OJ on the flight, so I ended up with apple juice instead. Ugh. After that, I was in Haneda airport.

From Haneda airport, I had to transfer to Narita airport, which is a little over an hour away. No problem. I looked to see how much prices were on a limo bus. 3000 yen! WOW, expensive! I had no choice but to take it though. First, I decided to use the bathroom. There were people changing and taking forever. Ughhhhhhhhhhh. So annoying! Finally, after like, 5-10 min of waiting, I got in a stall. After I took my time, I went and got on my bus. After like, an hour I was already at Narita airport! Cool, so it was around 10AMish. However, united didn't open up until like, noonish. So I now had 2 hours of nothing to do, but not yet in the terminal. I got some OJ and found a little spot where I can plug in my computer to the internet! However, either the internet didn't work there, or the $1 lan cable I bought didn't work. I ended up just spending the $5 to use the internet for the day. After a couple hours, they finally opened up the United counters. I got in, got registered, etc, went through security no problem, and headed inside. The first thing I did was go to the shower area. For 500 yen, you can get a shower for 30 minutes. They provide 3 towels, and all the things you would need, body soap, shampoo etc. I went and showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, all that good stuff. It was great, and I looked nice and fresh and felt great after that.

After that, I went and got a hot dog at the food place that was closeby. For being made in Japan, it was pretty good. I sat down and just used the internet, killing time until it was time to board. Near me, there was some woman with a kid who I think was named like “Malekai” pronounced Mal (rhymes with pal)-i (the I sound in icky)-kai (rhymes with pie). The kid was like, 2-3 and obviously didn't care about anything his mom said. So this entire time, the mom is sitting there doing that half-yelling thing, and that whole “don't go too far, malekai” thing. But every 5 seconds, I would hear this mom yelling out this poor kid's dumb name. The kid didn't look too bright either, and he obviously knew that he could just ignore his mom and be fine.

However, behind me, there was another mom and two kids (prolly 5 and 7). She bought chicken nuggets and fries for both of them. However, the daughter dropped her nuggets and fries all over the floor. The mom picks it up and then goes to throw it out. The boy is like “I'll share with you! I'll pick out the ones you can have!” and then he grabs the box, but at the wrong end, and all the nuggets and fries spill out of THAT one, too. I had to try not to laugh, because that would be mean, but as a bystander, it was pretty funny.

Anyways, after killing a buncha time online, I got on the plane and survived the trip. It felt like it took forever, but thats how it goes when you've been en route for over 20 hours before you even get on the long flight.

Anyways, I got home and my parents picked me up! Everything that happened in the US was pretty standard.

However, the first night we were back, as we were driving to the local mall like, 2 miles away, some lady driving a mercedes ended up crashing into some car that was making a left turn in front of us. We were like, right next to it when it happened. It was pretty crazy. First day being home, and already I saw an accident. Nice.

On my 2nd day, while we were shopping in Target, suddenly ALL the lights go out. I'm not talking like, dim and romantic, I'm talking pitch black. My first thought was to use my cell phone screen as a small light. I was all “alright, now it's my time to shine” but like, by that time, the emergency lights already went on. Oh well. It wasn't quite my time to be a hero.

Aside from that, there were just a lot of family gatherings, and gathering at friend's places, plus a few tournaments.

On the way back, I got a ride to O'Hare airport from my dad, and everything went smoothly getting to San Francisco. I even ran into a friend I knew from Shiga-ken! However, once I got to San Francisco, I noticed that I didn't have a boarding pass. I went to see what it was all about. Turns out they overbooked the plane back to Japan. I happened to be one of those people without a seat. They offered people $200 in travel vouchers to take a different flight, and when I said I would take that, they said “sorry, your luggage is already on the plane, we can't change flights for you.” So pretty much, I HAD to get on that plane, or all my stuff would have gotten to Kansai without me. They then offered people $600 in travel vouchers to stay another day in SF (hotel and meals paid for, too). A family of 4 ended up taking that. If I didn't have work the next day, and if Icould do that, I totally would have. I would have just walked around SF where it was like, 70 degrees out, and just relaxed and whatnot and gotten 600 bucks toward a trip.

Anywho, after waiting for a while, they called my name to the front and I got my boarding pass and got on the plane home. The flight was pretty good. I just fell asleep for most of it, and woke up when it was time to eat, then went back to sleep. I got to the airport and I got a text from Dan saying he was at Kansai airport. I was like “wow, I just got here, too!”, so we ended up being able to meet up. Pretty big coincidence if you ask me.

Anyways, we departed and then we each went our seperate ways. I got on the limo bus back for Sannomiya. There, I took the bus that goes back to Ono, however, I'm carrying 2 bags on my shoulder, rolling my suitcase AND my laptop bag on top of my suitcase. So I get on the bus a few minutes before it leaves. The bus is completely packed tho, just about every seat is full. Ugh. So Im kicking my laptop bag across the floor while pulling my suitcase sideways and everyone is just kinda staring. Ugh. Then I was able to get the suitcase and one of my bags in a seat, and then get the other two bags in the space above. However, I still didn't have a seat, and I was told I can't stand so I had to pull down a seat in the middle of the aisle, meaning I was blocking anyone who wanted to get off the bus, and I then had to pull the seat up, and stand everytime someone wanted to get off. It was a huge pain. Finally, the guy sitting next to my luggage got off, and so I sat next to that and was fine. Then I had to get off the bus, so I had to get my suitcase, and then pull that off the bus before getting back ON the bus and grabbing my other things. I paid and then walked back to my apartment.

It was a huge pain overall, but at least I'm done for a while. I just found out after that event though, that I can pay to have my luggage shipped to my apt from the airport. So if I got 2 of those bags shipped, it could have been way easier as opposed to carrying those on a bus. However, the bus was the cheapest option and even though it sucked, it wasn't that expensive.

Anyways, I had 3 days of work before the weekend. I went to Saty on Friday, and they had a bunch of sales because it's after new year, and I guess they're changing stock or something. Either way, I got some good deals.

Saturday, Bill and Maria planned on going to Kyoto to meet Maria's former host family around like, 9:30, so I was like “well, I have to go there and meet people by noon for the tourney” so I figured I would go with them and get up a little earlier, but have company for a roughly 3 hour trip. So I got up around 6ish so I could meet up by 6:45 so we could catch our train. More importantly though, I really wanted to play arcana heart 3. So I got to a-cho around 10ish or so. It took forever, but finally I get to play AH3! I look around the arcade, and I don't see it. I walk around some more, check out everywhere, and I don't see it. They seem to have every game BUT arcana 3. So I was kinda disappointed. I played MB and BB, so it wasn't all bad, but I was just really in the mood to at least TRY arcana 3. Oh well. I got a big mac for lunch, and then came back and met up with Jeff (Azrael), Andrew (reno) and Eddy (kunai). We all entered the tourney and we all got peaced out first round by players we all had a chance of beating. Jeff almost beat KOK, a high level Sagat player, KOK was down to only a little bit of life, Jeff had about 60% life left, but then Sagat landed a tiger uppercut FADC ultra and it was game over. The crowd was pretty sad about it, but it was still a great fight. Wish I recorded it. I played a blanka player who had 25000 BP and like, a 50+% win ratio vs my 35% win ratio 8000 BP chun. I ended up getting the 2nd round. I ended it with an airthrow that looked mad sexy. I actually played really well, as far as me and chun is considered, but I don't really use her, nor am I particularly good at her, so I'm not disappointed with how I played.

We got free drinks, so we went to the maid cafe part of a-cho and drowned our sorrows. After that, we went to Shakey's pizza for all you can eat pizza. We hung out there for a while and then went back to a-cho and played more games. I was doing decent in MB, Tekken, and BB. After that, I went to Kyoto station to meet up with Alex. We met up and went back to Maibara. We met up with Dan there (we got there at like, the same time) and then went back to Alex's place and went to go Karaoke. However, there were people there when we got there, so we opted to not go in. We headed back and hung out for a bit. I went under the kotatsu and pretty much went to sleep. Dan and Alex played Mario and Modern Warfare 2. Dan was up at 7:30 or something, I got up too, and he played call of duty, and I played PSP idolm@ster. Around 11, Alex woke up, so we played mahjong and mario. We were each 1-1-1 in mahjong, and Dan won the tie breaker. We were doing good in mario, and then Dan had to go to home cause he had work on Monday even tho it was a national holiday.

I went to bed after eating and getting back to Alex's place, and then woke up and left early from Maibara to get to Osaka by 10. I got to Osaka and went straight to Athena. I played some AH3 finally, and it was awesome. Then I played a bit of MBAA. After that, I went to go trade in some games. I went to A-too and traded in the following:
Ace Combat 6 US 360 – 1500 yen
Tales of Phantasia PSP – 1800 yen
Tekken Dark Ressurection PSP – 1500 yen
Tales of the World US psp – 500 yen
Melty Blood Act Cadenza ps2 – 200 yen
1000 yen just for trading in 5 games.
So for trading in 5 games I don't play and wouldn't play again even if I owned them, I got like, 6000 yen. Not too shabby. So now, because of all the Christmas money I got, and because of all the money I won from the tournies I played in, and because I sold some games, I now have some money, so I was ready to go on a spending spree.

However, I wanted to go play more arcana first. So I played some Arcana, and then met up with Andrew and Eddy again in Namba. Andrew said “meet at Namba Hills”, which is an arcade. I said alright, and went there. He said he went up to the 6th floor. I was like, “umm, there's no 6th floor?”. I was really confused and walked around for a bit looking for buildings that it could be at. Finally, we talked on our cell phones, and he meant Namba PARK, which is in the opposite direction that I just came from. Ugh. So I went back there and met up with them. We then walked around Denden town and went to some game stores, like sofmap and a-too. Eddy bought a couple games, and so did Andrew. We all got DOA4, so we're gonna play that online against each other (hopefully soon). It got to be 4PM and they had to head out, so I went to Athena and played more Arcana. I got a winstreak, and then people stopped playing, so I beat the game and left. I went to go around Denden on my own to go buy stuff, but I didn't see too much that I wanted. Plus I was being super super cheap about everything, and so I only spent a little and only bought stuff if it was rediculously cheap. I got:
K-on Don't say lazy single – 200 yen
K-on Fuwafuwa time single – 400 yen
Railgun vol 3 manga – 400 yen
Eri (from im@s) cd – 800 yen
Phantasy Star 0 DS – 700 yen.

So I spent like, 2500 yen on stuff. Not too bad. I got new music now, and I think I'll sign up for Japanese Itunes and pick up the rest of the K-on songs that I don't have (as the CDs with those songs were far too expensive). I guess I'll save my money for the next time I see something I really want. I refused to buy any games until I beat star ocean 4, and even then, I still have some other games that I really should be playing more, so I dunno.

Anyways, I headed home after that, took some cold medicine because I had a cold and went to bed. However, because of that, waking up Tuesday felt almost impossible. I got up and went to work and somehow made it back awake. I stopped off and bought some stuff for the house at Saty before I headed home, and got McDonalds for dinner (been craving big macs recently). I went home and played star ocean until I went to bed around 11:15. I'll probably do more of the same tonight.

That's all! Please leave comments or whatever! Positive, negative, I don't really care, just leave comments! Thanks for reading!

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - More of the usual

2009-12-10T22:47:00.001-08:00

Ok since I've really not felt like writing my blog, it's been a couple weeks since I last updated.

Two weeks ago, I went to Osaka friday night, hung out with friends and then went to Namba and stayed at the new manga cafe that just opened. It was pretty sweet. Here's a rundown:
1)They had a 12 hour pack, so I could stay there pretty much as long as I wanted, get a full night of sleep without worrying about having to wake up early and get out of there. The best part was that it was only 1900 yen or so, which is pretty awesome for being able to stay somewhere for 12 hours straight.
2)For the 12 hour pack, they give you a free 20 minute shower with it. Normally a shower costs and extra 240-300 yen or so, but since you're doing a 12 hour pack, they give it to you. I got to take a shower, and since it was a 12 hour pack, I didn't have to worry about running out of time to take a shower. With the shower, they clean it after each time someone uses it, so it was clean, there was a fresh towel there with shampoo and body soap, and a free toothbrush etc. It was pretty great.
3)I was in a mat booth, and I got a free blanket to use, a pillow, and a computer with high speed internet. It was big enough where I could stretch out my legs so I didn't feel constricted.
4)Free soft drinks and free soft serve ice cream. They also had some other drinks like milk, tea etc that they made themselves.

So yeah, it was pretty awesome. I stayed there from about 11:15 PM to 11:15 AM.

Now it was Saturday and I was in Osaka. I played some BB:CS for a while at Athena and ended up getting a big winstreak. After I lost, I went and got some cheese curry for lunch. Since I was in denden town, I went and walked around, but got kinda bored, so I just went back to Athena. There was a tourney going on at Ko-hatsu, but I didn't really feel like going, so I just stayed at athena and played there until about 11ish.

I stayed at an internet cafe again saturday night. I stayed at the 10 hour place. I got up. I forgot my razor, so I was completely unshaven, and felt really dirty because of that. I just played at Athena for a bit, ate some cheese curry, and picked up Fate: Unlimited Codes and Melty Blood: Actress Again for the PS2. I headed home after that and played some Melty Blood for the rest of the night while just relaxing.

Fast forward to Friday, and I'm scheduled to meet Alex in Kyoto. I go to Sannomiya and get some dinner, play a bit of melty blood, and do some shopping. I get to Kyoto station and I kind of went into the whole thing not really knowing where anything is. I check a map and kinda just start walking. I take a couple of wrong turns or whatever, but I fix myself. Eventually, over an hour of walking later, I get to where I'm supposed to meet Alex. I meet up with him and we walk to A-cho afterwards. I play for a bit and get a small winstreak and then we head out to Maibara. We get back there around 1 something, and then we kinda just go to bed.

Sat we go to Minami Hikone, which is pretty close to where Alex lives. I pick up some clothes and stuff, and we check out a few game stores. I get a couple CDs and then we stop by his local arcade. Someone is playing the new Blazblue there, so of course I challenge him. The guy wasn't bad, but was really bad at using bursts, so he wasted them instead of using them smart and ended up losing. I won 2 matches in a row 6 rounds straight and then he left and I beat the game. After that, we headed back to Alex's place and got ready for Karaoke.

We went and met up with people at the station, and then went to the ramen place for dinner. We got Ramen, and then me and Alex left to meet up with Dan. We met up with him, and Dan went to get Ramen, and me and Alex went ahead. Apparantly the place was only usable until 9PM because of a reservation, and it was like, 7:35 at that point. Me and Alex sang a few songs until people got there around 8. We continued for about and hour and then went back to Alex's place. A buncha people were there and we played card games and told stories and whatever. After that, everyone left except for me, Alex, Dan, and Tyler (another ALT). We played Mahjong for a bit and then went to sleep. In the morning, we woke up, played mahjong and then we left around 2ish.

It was still early so I stopped by Denden town. I ate some delicious cheese curry for lunch, and then went to the Cospa store and picked up the Etopen plush that I reserved. I played some BB and MB at Athena after that, and when I was finished/bored, I went home and relaxed.

I got a small cold from Alex, so I'm just taking it easy this weekend. Either way, less than a week before I go back to the states!

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Blazblue: Continuum Shift release!

2009-11-24T19:04:00.000-08:00

Ok guys, its been quite a while since I've written in my blog. 2 weeks or so? Anyways, writing it is kind of a pain, so thats why it's kinda turned into every other week now.

So 2 weeks ago, I hung out with a friend Friday night, then went to namba and played some melty blood at Namba Hills. I beat this arc player, but then he left after I beat him. I played the computer and used it for combo practice. I went over to Athena after that and played some people. I got mostly owned, but I wasn't doing too bad overall. I went to the internet cafe and took my rest there.

Saturday, I got up and went to Athena. I played a buncha Melty Blood but since I'm still learning, I was losing a bunch, and it was getting to be a bit expensive. I played some blazblue and during my 20 game winstreak, Dan and Toshi came, so I lost on purpose to this one Jin player and we headed out. BNK and his friends showed up during my streak and played me a bit, but they had plans it seems, so the headed out.

Me, Dan, and Toshi then walked around the Den. I had to run an errand and once we did that, we continued to walk around a bit more. Dan traded in some games, and picked up some other games. I saw some cool stuff, but after thinking about it, I decided against buying it because I don't need more junk around the apt.

After we were done, I wanted to eat some cheese curry, so Dan and Toshi went ahead of me to the Hub (a chain of bars). I ate my cheese curry, and one of the guys who worked there was like “oh, long time no see!” I told him that I've been busy, and he was like “We haven't seen you in a while, so we were a bit worried” I then told him that I lived kinda far away, but when I can, I try to come and eat there. I said bye to him, and then headed out to meet up with Dan and Toshi.

We chilled at the hub for a while, and I inquired about Dan's plans for where we're gonna stay. He was like “actually, I was thinking of heading to Alex's place and crashing there” I was in a good mood, so I was like “man, im totally down!” but I told him to tell Alex that I wasn't in the mood for it. Toshi obviously never took a DARE class cause he caved in under our peer pressure and came out to Shiga-ken with us, too.

We took the train there and got to the Red Velvet Lounge, and Alex was there along with a few other shiga-ken ALTs that I know. Dan walked in, and then me and Toshi came in and Alex was super happy that he not only got a Dan, but a Rob and a Toshi, too. We then did karaoke for a while and then headed back to Alex's place. We watched some survivor and just chilled before heading off to bed.

We got up and ate some of alex's home cooked french toast for breakfast, and then played some smash bros. We played majhong, too, and then we played some Naruto. After that, we went and got some Ramen and then me and Toshi headed out. We took the train back, and I got to sannomiya after like, 2 hours. I wanted to relax before taking the bus for another hour and a half, so I played some melty blood for a bit against the computer to practice combos. It was about time for my bus, so I left and took the bus back home.

The next week, I had 3 days in Ono, and then a conference in Sannomiya Thursday/Friday. Awesome! The 3 days flew by and then it was time for the conference. I got on the 8:14 train to sannomiya, and got there around 9:45ish. It started at 10:30, so I was plenty early. Not gonna talk about the conference, but afterwards, I went to one of the arcades and played some melty blood there. It was pretty fun, but people stopped playing after like, an hour and a half. I had some time to kill, so I went to the Loft, which is like, an arts and crafts store of sorts, and bought some stickers for my students. I went and met up with Andrew and his GF after that.

We went and got some indian food at this resturant that Andrew knew. When we got there, we were the only people there. The food was really good. A tad expensive, but it was really good so I was satisfied. We went to the really nice starbucks after that. It's an American style house (from the days when Americans lived there because it was near the ports where they would do trades or something like that) converted into a starbucks. It's really nice, and we were the only people there. We got our drinks (Andrews GF paid for us, very nice of her), and on my hot cocoa, the starbucks girl drew a little smiley face. And then when I got it from her, she said in English “Thank you!” It was really cute. We talked there until it closed, and then as I was leaving, I waved to her and said “Goodbye!” Too good.

After that, I played at magical space against Naaga until it was time to go, then I went to the manga cafe and slept there. It was cheaper to stay in sannomiya overnight than to go back home and come back. That way, I was able to wake up around 9 (which is sleeping in as far as im concerned) and still make it with plenty of time to spare. Now it's 11/20 and the new BB is out as of this day.

I walked on over to the seminar hall, and did the first half. Now for lunch, we get 90 minutes. I used that time to walk 20 minutes to the Sega Sanx, and play the new BB for like, 45 minutes before walking 20 minutes back (I grabbed some convenience store fried chicken on the way, and ate that while waiting).

For the 2nd half, it was over after an hour and a half and I went back to the Sanx. I played there for a while, but Noel was feeling kinda weak. I couldn't really figure stuff out and I was just losing to spammy Ragna players. I got kinda sick of playing and went to magical space and played some arcana there for a bit. I had to go back home to change and stuff for the weekend, so I caught a bus back home, went on the computer and then went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning and headed to sannomiya again (after a shower, change of clothes etc). I saw Kanimiso (a hakumen player) there. He was doing well, and we played a bit. Other people were playing, so I went to the other cabinet next to him and played there. We were both sitting there getting streaks. I figured out some interesting stuff for Noel that might make her ok. At one point, he must have heard me go “What the hell?” or something, and he started joking around and was going like “oh my shit!” when he was getting hit. It was pretty funny. Around 1:30 or so, I headed out. I went to Umeda and went to Monte 50. I met up with Andrew there and played some games for a bit. I played some Melty blood, and then a few games of BB:CS before heading out to meet up with Eddie (Kunai). We then walked toward Ko-hatsu for the tourney and stopped at Coco's Ichiban along the way for some curry. I got cheese curry of course, and after we ate, we walked to ko-hatsu. I wrote a tourney report on dustloop, so you can check that out in the BB:CS information and news thread if you want.

After ko-hatsu, we went to Namba and went to Denden town and checked out a couple game stores there. We then went to Athena and Sega Avion for a bit. After that, we got hungry so we went to this one hawaiian burger place. It was really good and I got too much food so I wasn't able to finish it, sadly. もったいない！

After that, we went back to Andrews place and stopped at the arcade near his place along the way. It was a small place that smelled bad, but had people playing Melty and SFIV, so we played there for a bit. We headed to Andrews place and just played games and stuff till we went to sleep.

Sunday, Jeff (Azrael) came over and we played SFIV a bunch. We went out and ate some Yakiniku and it was mad delicious. I was completely stuffed after we were done. We went back and played more games and hung out. Jeff headed back home somewhere at night, while me, Andrew, and Eddy stayed there and played more games till we went to sleep.
Monday (because it's a holiday, I was still out), Eddy headed back early, and I stayed a bit later. After showering and whatnot, I headed out and Andrew went to the Gym. I went to Umeda and played at monte 50. I just played there pretty much all day from like, noon to 8:30PM. Mostly BB:CS, but some melty blood too.

After that, I got some subway for dinner and headed home.

That was it. Not much interesting, but BB:CS is fun so far. We'll see what develops from it, haha.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - New Clothes

2009-11-11T19:11:00.000-08:00

Ok last I left off was after the random Tuesday holiday (Culture Day). Andrew's girlfriend gave me advice on what kinds of clothes I should wear to look better. Recently, I haven't really been spending much money, so I decided to splurge and get a new wardrobe that looks appropriate for going out. I headed to Saty after work on Wednesday, and went to the area where all the cool clothes are. Here's what I picked up:

2 pairs of jeans, one dark, and one with those beige stains on them.
2 white hoodies
a striped button up shirt
new shoes (NOT gymshoes, brownish/greenish walking shoes)
A new bag

I figured that was enough to carry. I got back, and then Bill texted me and asked if I was free to hang out. Since I live in Ono, and it's a weeknight, 99% chance of “yes, I'm free”. I was looking for a new Jacket, too, so we went over to the used store and checked them out there. There wasn't really anything there, so we just headed back and hung out at my place for a bit. I dont think we played any games this time, but we just chillaxed. He headed back around 9ish or so, and I just hung out on XBL or something.

Thursday, I wanted to still pick up a few more things, so after work, I headed back to Saty to get more stuff. I got:
a black winter jacket
a new belt
another striped button up shirt

That should be enough for now I suppose.

I headed back home, and just did whatever. I found out that I had no plans for the weekend, and Alex said that he was having a big Karaoke thing at the Red Velvet Lounge on Sat, so I was like “oh snap, can I head over Friday night, and we can hang out Fri-Sun?” and he was down.

I decided to test the waters with my nice new clothes on Saturday, so I packed some up and brought them in my bag, while wearing my normal cothes on Friday. Right after work, I dashed home, got changed, and ran to the bus stop. The bus was late AGAIN, but it finally came after 10-15 min of being late. I got on, and I hear “ROBAATO?” and it turns out that because it was open high school at my school, a ton of 3rd year students of mine were on the bus from whatever high school they went to visit, along with the girls basketball coach. I waved and stuff, but it was a bit embarassing since they caught me in casual clothes going out. They got off at the next stop, and because there were so many of them, it took forever to get off the bus. (Its the opposite of America with buses, in Japan, you pay as you're getting off, because the price you pay depends on how far you went). I now understand why the bus was late.

Anyways, I moved seats to near the back and started to doze off while listening to music. I napped for a bit, and then finally got to Kobe. I got there around 6. I had plenty of time to kill before the 9:30 train for Maibara (where Alex lives), so I decided to have some fun. I headed to where the Rashabang was, but I didn't see anything there. Honestly, that sort of stuff doesn't really appeal that much to me anymore. I actually went to that area for a different reason tho. There's a small arcade there that has 2 Melty Blood cabs, 3/5 rounds 2 credits for 100 yen. I got there, and there was this mech hisui player playing. Nobody was plyaing against him, so I played him. I beat him, and then a couple other guys played me. I beat them, too and got like, 5 wins in a row before losing a match to this Len player. I played him again and beat him. I played a few more, and got a few more wins, then lost a match to this Ciel player. I played him again and won a few matches. Then this Riese player goes against me and absolutely destroys me. I play him one more 100 yens worth, and he beats me bad again. I decide it's not worth it because he's just way too good, and I wasn't really learning anything because I was just getting owned perfect after perfect, pretty much. I was getting hungry anyways, so I walk on over to the Cocos Ichiban and get my usual Cheese curry. I went around 7:30, which is about an hour after I usually eat there. It was pretty empty, so instead of having to wait a while for my food, I got it really quickly. I ate and then decided to head to this arcade to play some arcade majhong. I wanted to practice for the weekend, since we were probably gonna play at Alex's.

I go to this one arcade that's owned by the same company that owns Magical Space, but it's a few blocks away from magical space. I got there, and it was 2 credits for 100 yen! Alright! There were like, 8 machines, and only 3 guys playing, so I just sit down at a machine and play. I put in 100 yen, register my e-amusment pass (I bought one for 300 yen, and am using it for the first time with majhong). There's now two options of types of games I can play. One that's life based, where I get a certain amount of life, and one that's a full game, where until the game is over, I keep playing. Generally, the full game is 2 credits, and when it's 2 credits for 100 yen, it's totally worth it. I played that mode, and got wrecked. I tossed out tiles I thought were safe and ended up getting owned. Oh well. I put in another 100 yen to play another full game, and when I looked it said “credits – 3”. I was like “WHAAAAAAA?” I did the “full game” option again. It only took up one credit! Score! I play another game, and this time, I get wrecked AGAIN. I don't even know why, but that's two games, with two 4th place finishes. Ugh. I still have 2 credits, so I play another game. This time, I get 1st place! Rock on! This gives me a free credit, so I get a free game. I get 4th place AGAIN. And then for my last credit, I get ANOTHER 4th place. Needless to say, I got wrecked, but it's all good. I can only go up from here, haha. It was still fun, and a lot more relaxing than like, fighting games.

After that, I went to play some Jubeat, cause they have 4 machines there (2x as many jubeat machines as any other arcade ive been to). However, they normally have 3 songs for 100 yen, which is average. BUT it was a special day, it was like, the 6th of the month, therefore 2 credits for 100 yen! That's by far the best deal I've ever had. So I got to play two credits of JuBeat for 100 yen, which was awesome. I would have played another 100 yen worth, but like, I had to go catch the train. I got on the train for Maibara, got there FINALLY (it felt like forever, but I just played idolm@ster DS most of the time). I got there, and Alex commented on my nice new jacket. Awesome. :D

We got back to his place, played some Naruto and then went to bed.

Saturday, we got up, played some games, and then headed to Minami Hikone for shopping and food and stuff. We went to Coco's and I recommended the cheese curry to Alex. He got it, but with a lot of spiciness, too. I love Cheese curry, and so eating it 2 days in a row felt great. We met up with CJ and Maureen there, too. We ate and then walked over to the mall. I got some shirts and a couple of pairs of socks (since I only had white socks, I need other colors to match my new shoes). I brought the socks to the register and the cute girl working the register was like “if you buy two more, its 980 yen for 4 pairs!” when its normally 300 yen a pair. I was all about that so I grabbed another couple pairs, which actually ended up being good cause I need the extra pairs anyways, now that I think about it. The shirts are really cool tho, and were really cheap. We were looking for shoes, but my feet are way too big, so I ended up not finding any, which is a shame. I played a bit of tekken at the arcade, and then we took the train to Hikone. Instead of just taking the train to Maibara, we got off at Hikone, and for the sake of exercise, we walked about 10KM (6.2 miles) back to Alex's place. It was cool and a good workout. We got back, showered up, and I put on my new clothes, and looked pretty snazzy, and Alex put on a suit.

The reason why we're dressing up is mainly because Dan always comes right after work, and he always is wearing his work clothes, so he comes in dressed better than Alex. Alex wanted to not be outdressed in his town, so he said he was gonna wear a suit. I personally didn't want to be the only one of us three dressed down, and I got a buncha new clothes anyways, so it was good to see what they looked like. So we met up with everyone at the station and then went karaoke. We stayed there singing for like, 3 hours, and then we went home. Alex and Dan were both really tired, so we all went to bed, which is good cause I've been lacking sleep recently (well, more like always).

I slept later than Dan and Alex (which is rare), but we got up, and watched a couple eps of survivor. We played some Naruto EX3, and then after about an hour, we played majhong.

I started out really well with my east round hacks. But then it got to Dan's deal on the south round, and he won like, 6 hands in a row. It was absolutely rediculous, but he pretty much obliterated me and alex and because that ONE game took so long, we only got to do one game, when we normally do like, 2-3. Oh well. Alex cooked us some food, and we watched Naruto after that. After we watched Naruto, we really wanted to play, so we played until it was time for us to go. Dan had to leave a bit early, and then it was time for me to go. Alex went with me to the station and then I went to buy my ticket, but the ticket selling place was temporarily closed! DOH! So I ran to the vending machine where they sell discount tickets and got one there. I ran for the station and luckily made my train. Things ended up working out. However, I got kinda nauseus on the train, and I got really really hot. I got off at Sannomiya and was doing ok, I walked around for 10-15 minutes before my bus. I got on the bus, and then I started to feel REALLY nauseus. I took some dramamine, and it helped a little, but it was still a crappy bus ride. I FINALLY got home and once I was in and sitting down, I felt a lot better. The dramamine's side effects were kicking in, so I was pretty much ready to go to bed around 11. I went to bed, and got up for work on Monday at 7, and that's that.

This weekend, I plan on meeting up with Dan on Saturday and doing...whatever...lol. I want to play more Melty Blood, so that'll be on the schedule, but aside from that, I don't know what we're gonna do, but who knows, maybe it'll turn out interesting anyways, heh...

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - New Blazblue Loctest + going home for xmas

2009-11-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

Ok it's been a while since I wrote, but I'll try to keep this short.

10/23 Friday – I finished up work and went to Osaka right after that. I stopped at Kobe to get food, but I wanted to play Arcana at Athena, so I went there. I played Arcana for a while against Kouya's Akane, but he was pwning me with Gier cause of Akane's crazy teleport mixups and stuff. Anyways, after enough time with that, I played some Blazblue. I finished the night playing some Melty Blood and picking up a new character that I'll use at Frosty Faustings.

Around midnite-ish, I went to the 8 hour manga cafe. I really wanted to get to the blazblue CS loctest early. I slept there, and while it was good sleep, I had to cut it short obviously because I wanted to get out of there on time.

I left the manga cafe a bit before 8 and got to namba hills a little after 8. There was already a really long line for the loc test. I got there like, 2 minutes after it opened, and there were like, 20-25 people in line before me. I waited about 45 minutes and then I got to play. I wrote my thoughts and stuff on dustloop.com (check the noel forums), but yeah, it went well. I got 3 wins my first time playing, and then the machine kicked me off (3 winstreak max). I saw braces noel kid, and his friends there, so I waited in line with them.

I played again and got 2 wins, and then lost in the last match (which is fine, cause if I won I would have been kicked off). I definitely got a good feel of the game, and it was a lot of fun. I started practicing some Melty Blood, and then Kilvear, an arcana player from Singapore showed up. He was in Japan on vacation and has a friend with him. We all played the loctest a bit more, and he played MB against me and pretty much owned me. It was good practice tho. Overall I played 12 matches of the loctest before I got tired of waiting in the line.

After that, I got some food at Matsuya and then I went with Kilvear and his friend to Athena and we played some Arcana. He uses Catherine, who is pretty bad in AH2, so I was beating him. We then went and played Demon Bride, and I think he won like, one match and I won like, 7 or 8. After that we walked around Denden town. We headed to sega avion and I met up with Andrew (reno) and Eddie (kunai) there, so I said bye to Kilvear and his friend. We went to A-too and the two of them picked up some games and stuff. After that, we went and met up with a few friends and went to an izakaya. It was all you can drink for like, 1200 yen or so, so pretty cheap. It was really fun and after that, we parted and went back to Nishinomiya. Me and Eddy crashed at Renos place. After we all got up and stuff, we got ready and went and played some SFIV. Jeff (Azrael) came too, and we all played for a while. Jeff pretty much owned us, and the other three of us went even against each other. After that, it was time to head back, so we went back home and I started my new work week.

…

Fast forward a week. Even tho I wasn't really spending much, I got hit with my school lunch bill, my school “misc expenses” bill, and my internet bill all at the same time, so all the money I was saving for having fun just got tossed out the window for bills. Soooo sad. :(

However, on a good note, my school prinicipal approved my request to go home. Normally, teachers here wouldn't be able to take off until the 22nd, but that would be after my Mom's side of the family celebrates Xmas, so I wanted to go before then. He said something along the lines of “Other teachers normally wouldn't be able to do this, but because you're doing a good job, I'll let you go early.” Nice! I ended up finding good plane tickets for only like, 881 dollars round trip! It's a somewhat strange schedule on the way there that involves a lot of waiting at the airport, but I get to Chicago thursday, Dec 17th at 2PMish, so it works out well. I'm glad I'm gonna be able to come home for a vacation, as it'll be nice to see everyone again. Anyways, back to how my was.

Friday night (10/30), I had a drinking party with my coworkers from one of my schools. It was the “under 35” one, so there were only like, 7 of us there. It was mad fun and we were there for like, 5 hours. It was kind of expensive for one dinner (6500 yen) but it was really fun, so I'm glad I went.

I went back home and went to sleep promptly. I woke up and just relaxed around the house. I headed to Kobe after I got the urge to play some games. I played some games and after I got bored there, I went to Osaka and walked around Denden town. I looked around, but I only bought a small magazine. I'm just not finding anything I want, and when I see something cool, I second guess myself and always end up deciding that it's not worth it. I guess it's good, I can save more money and not have so much junk, but yeah...

Anyways, I went to athena after that and played more arcana and BB and stuff. When it got close to midnight, I headed to the 10 hour manga cafe and passed out. I got really good sleep there surprisingly. I got out of there and headed to Athena for some early morning Blazblue. Of course, BNK was there, and this one bang player was there, and this is the guy who picks like, every character and does so-so with them, instead of just sticking to one and getting really good with them. He beat me a couple times and then I got used to him and won like, 24 in a row against him. I wanted to play other games after that like Tekken and MB, so I played those for a bit. I headed out around 3ish to Nishonomiya and hung out with Andrew at the Nishinomiya mall. We got some food, and I got some clothes at uniqlo. We hung out at Starbucks after that and just had coffee (I had hot chocolate), and we just chilled until it was time for me to go home.

After I got home, I stayed up a bit late cause tuesday is a holiday!

Monday I got up, went to work, came home, and had a nice busy night:
Came home, put laundry in the washer, relaxed online for a bit. After one load finished, I took another load, threw it in the washer (my washer is small, keep that in mind), and then biked out in the unusually cold weather to Saty (local dept store) and got a haircut. I got a big mac at mcdonalds there and brought it back home. I got back, ate the big mac, and by that time, the load finished. I took that load out, put another load in, and then took the 2 loads to the laundromat in freezing weather on my bicycle. Wait a half hour for it to finish, take it back, throw it on my bed, take the new load that just finished BACK to the laundromat and then wait 30 minutes for that to finish, bring that home, take it back, take my clothes, fold them, and put them away. Before I knew it, it was 9:30.

After that, I just relaxed, but got hungry around 11, so I ran out YET AGAIN into the cold to get some convenience store food. After that, I went to sleep cause I was exhausted.

Tuesday, the holiday, I set my alarm to 8:30 and woke up to it. I went on the computer a bit to wake myself up, and then took a shower and got ready to go. I got all my stuff, but I realized I took too long in the shower, so I might miss my bus. I ran to the bus stop from my apt, and right when I got there, the bus was already there stopped (thankfully someone else was waiting there I guess). It waited for me and I got on, thankfully. Phew. I got to Kobe, and then transferred there to go to Osaka. At Osaka, I met up with Andrew, his GF Ibuki, and another mutual friend of ours. We went to this Thai resturant (I heard wrong, we went to a japanese resturant that served a fish called "tai", thanks to Andrew for correcting me), and I didn't know what they had there, but I just ordered what everyone else did. Out comes this fish head and like a fish tail. Not only is it a fish head. It's a BIG fish head. Teeth, eye, everything. Now those of you who know me well enough know that I'm not good with fish. At all. Like, I've upped my tolerance to the point that I can eat fish that doesn't LOOK like fish. As in, no head, tail etc. But thats exactly what this was. It was a big giant fish head, tail etc. I tried to play it cool, but I guess somewhere along the line, my face gave it away, and it was all over at that point. I still ate as much as I could cause while it was good, I wasn't used to poking at a fish head and going OMG I CAN EAT THIS PART.

Anyways, after that, we went to Namba and went to the movie theatre. We went there to see the Michael Jackson movie. It's only in Japan for 2 weeks before it gets pulled for good, so we wanted to see it on time. We watched it and it was really good. I don't watch movies often, but I would suggest it. After the movie, we went to Umeda and to the Seattles Best Coffee there. We got coffee and stuff there (I got an iced chocolate, which was a mistake because it ended up being 70% ice...JAPAN...), and then after we were done, we headed to this import stuff store right near the station gate. We looked around there, but everything good was expensive so whatever. I'll be home soon enough anyways.

Anyways, I don't quite have plans for this weekend yet. We'll see how it goes...

-Rob

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - The Red Velvet Lounge

2009-10-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

Sup all my brothas from otha mothas.

So last week Friday I said I would go out to Shiga-ken to hang out with Alex. I got home from work, showered etc, took the 5:20 bus, which ended up being like, 15 minutes late. It's crazy cause stuff is almost ALWAYS on time in japan, yet that bus was really late by Japanese standards, esp since it only comes once an hour. Anyways, I got to Kobe around 7ish. I wanted to stop by the Tokyu Hands store (a giant store that has umm, a ton of stuff, dont really know how to describe it) to check out the majhong mats. They had one for like, 4000 yen, but I couldn't really see anything about it, so I didn't bother. I got some cheese curry, and then headed on out to Shiga. I took a train there that I thought was a super express, but it turned into a local. So I was like “oh man, its going really slow, I better switch trains at this station to an express one” but it turns out that the express one wasnt coming for a half hour after that, and that it would have been faster to just stay on the local one, ugh. I caught an express train that went like, halfway to where I wanted to go, and I ended up transferring there back to the train I was originally on. Needless to say, it was kind of a pain, but I finally ended up in Maibara. I got to the station after messaging Alex when I would get there, and he was nowhere to be found, so I figured something was wrong, and I just ended up walking toward his place. I stopped by the convenience store, and as I was walking, I ran into him. He thought I would be later than I was or something, but its all good. The whole trip ended up being close to 4 hours and 15 min or something, ugh.

We got back, and he had to take care of some laundry issues. We took care of the laundry and then got back and played some Naruto EX3. After a while we got tired and went to sleep. I woke up a bit earlier than Alex and played some DS idolm@ster. I won an audition in game, man im awesome. Anyways, after that I got up, and we played some more EX3. We got showered and ready, and just when we were thinking of going out, it started to rain heavily. We decided to just stay inside since we didn't want to deal with walking in the rain. We just continuted to play EX3 and then once we got tired of that, we got some food and then decided to take a walk around maibara for a bit. We ate some mcdonalds and then walked around this pretty rural path. We saw a love hotel, and an elevator testing facility but not much else. When we were about 30 min away from the station, toshi called and said he was here. We were completely surprised and it prolly would have been more convenient for him to let us know 20 min before that he was gonna be there in 20 min, but no worries I guess. We walked back and met up with him. We went shopping and got some drinks before getting Dan from the station.

We met up with Dan and then the 4 of us went to an “izakaya”(It's like a resturant, but with much more drinking involved I guess) to eat. Alex saw a few of his students there. I got a tonkatsu set that was pretty good, but the skin kept falling off of my meat. After we ate, we went to the 7-11 to grab snacks and prepare ourselves for the Red Velvet Lounge (RVL), which is the karaoke place we go to. It's called the RVL cause its a lounge and the walls are covered in red velvet.

Now the RVL is the greatest karaoke place in the world for a few reasons. First off, you don't pay for time you're there. It's simply 100 yen a song and that's IT. So if you just want to hang out, but don't really want to sing, you can tag along, bring your own drinks that you can get at the 7-11 nearby and enjoy the party. They have all the songs that the good karaoke places have, so its not like it's worse in that aspect. And normally, for karaoke to be reasonably priced, you have to go in the middle of the day, and it ends up being like, 15 bucks anyways. Going late at night is even more expensive at like, 25-30 bucks a person prolly for 2 hours. With this, 24/7, it's open, and always just 100 yen a song. It's the perfect place to go. Doing 10 songs (which, with 4 people would probably take around 3 hours if each person did 10 songs) is only 1000 yen, which is way cheaper than going karaoke for 3 hours with 3 other people. 100 yen is nothing, it's a credit or two at an arcade to me, so that's not even real money, and its a lot of fun going with everyone. So yeah, RVL, the reason why I go 4 hours to shiga-ken (ok not really, but a huge plus).

We got there and drank and sang and stuff for quite a while. From around 7:30 to 10:30 I think. After that, we went back to Alex's place and started our weekly majhong session. We got through one round before we got too tired to play more. We set up the futons and stuff, watched an episode of survivor and then passed out.

Apparantly Alex woke up at 7AM from a crazy dream that he wouldnt tell us about cause he knew we would make fun of him, and just layed there for a while. Toshi was up around 8ish or so, and I was up a bit later than that. We all got up and once we woke up, we played more majhong. We finished off the round, and I ended up getting a buncha really good hands in a row. It ended and then we took a break, showered, got food ate, whatever. After that, we started another game, but about ¾ of the way through, we stopped cause toshi and alex weren't feeling it. We played some Naruto EX3 and then went for Ramen. Since me and Toshi took the same train home, we left together and headed home. Another fun weekend in Shiga!
Next week, I'm gonna go to the BB loctest and meet up with the SRK crew. It should be fun and I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

LEAVE COMMENTS ON MY BORING TO READ WEEKEND!

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL - Season 2 - A weekend in...Ono?

2009-10-14T03:09:00.000-07:00

Sup gais,

Last week I left off Friday night. I headed toward Osaka, but stopped by Kobe on the way since the bus stops there anyways. I ate my usual cheese curry and then stopped by a couple stores like the lashabang. I didn't see anything there, but I noticed that the figures that they're selling at the local lawson (convenience store that I buy my breakfast at on the way to my school) were there, but mad jacked up in price. They're 800 yen at that store, and like, 4000-8000 yen at the lashabang. Crazy. After that, I went over to the "Tokyu Hands", which is a big store with a ton of stuff. I picked up some majhong stuff like spare scoring sticks since the ones that came with my set are really small, I wanted some normal size ones. I also picked up this awesome street fighter IV keychain that looks like a tiny arcade stick. If you press the buttons, it makes a sound, but the coolest part is that if you input a move, it'll actually do that move. I got Chun-Li's keychain, so charging back then forward and P will do her kikouken. It's so unbelievably rad that I honestly couldn't wait to get back home to play with it, haha.

Anyways, I checked to see when the next express train to Osaka was, and I had some time, so I went to the Magical Space and played some Tekken. I played a dude who had a big streak with Asuka. Lost the first time, but beat him the 2nd time. After that, he played me with Dragonuv, and owned me. It was about time to go to my train anyways. As I was walking back, I ran into Andre on the street (!). We always somehow run into each other in Sannomiya, haha. Anyways, we talked for a bit and I headed off to Osaka. I played idolm@ster DS on the train, so before I knew it, I was already in Osaka. Nice!

Since it was already kinda late (9ish), nothing was really open except arcades. So I just headed straight for Athena. When I got there, the arcana crew was all there. Guy-girl was there playing Akane. I played him with my fire Petra. He owned me the first two rounds, and then I somehow made a comeback and won the next 3 in a row. I dunno if he let me win or what, but I was happy either way. I played some dude's Zenia and he beat me at the very last pixel. Oh well. Everyone except this one random Lilica player, Kouya, and me left. I played the random Lilica player and beat him like, 4x in a row with Petra. I finished up the 9 minute training mode and then talked to Kouya for a bit. He said he wants to use Akane in AH3, even tho he's pretty much been an exclusive Kamui user in AH2. That's kinda neat. I told him I wanna stick with Petra, and he asked about Lilica, and I just said that recently, I've began to like gun girls, so I'm sticking with Petra. I just don't feel like Lilica clicks with me anymore, and her execution, even tho it's been toned down from AH1, still kinda gives me a headache. But yeah, he said he was interested in the new BB, and said he wanted to play Noel, too. I told him that she seems to be weak in the loc tests, but she'll prolly be decent in the real thing because of that. At least that's all I have to hope right now, haha. I played him a few times, he beat me 4 times in a row with Dark Akane. I went downstairs and checked out the BB/Tekken setup. I played a game of Tekken against a Devil Jin that was the same rank as me. I beat him, then he played Feng and just did f+21 1+2 mixups. He barely beat me, but he was playing like a douche so I just stopped and went to BB. I beat the guy on the other side (a ragna with like, a 30 winstreak) and people stopped playing me. I went a couple stages into the computer and then just headed out and went to Avion to check out the Friday Night scene. It was pretty dead, so I just left and walked to the manga cafe. I got a 10 hour pack, got some drinks and just used the internet until I fell asleep. For some reason, I couldn't stay asleep, so I woke up around 8:30 or so, and just used the internet some more, got ready and killed time until I had to go around 10AM.

I got up and headed to the Taito station. Alex said he would meet me around 10ish. He ended up being late and when he did get here, he got lost a bit. At Taito station, while waiting, I played some JuBeat (4 songs for 100 yen!) and some Taiko no Tatsujin (I did 3 idolm@ster songs, lol). I managed to finally meet up with Alex and we walked toward the Den. We first stopped off at sofmap, where he bought a copy of Gears of War 1 for like, 880 yen or something. We checked the top floor too, saw some neat stuff but nothing worth buying for me or Alex. We went to the Lashabang and didn't really see anything there, either. We headed out and checked the A-too, but the CD alex was looking for was way too expensive, so we just left. By that time, he had to go to a beer factory tour already. I was like "aight" and just went to Athena.

At Athena, I saw Braces Noel Kid there. He was playing his Carl using friend. Carl friend won, so I played him. I used Tao first, and lost. Then I used Noel and beat him. He played me a few more times with diff characters, but his carl did the best. I ended up playing a buncha people and got to around a 20+ winstreak. At that time, BNK was like "hey, we're headed to ko-hatsu for the tournament!" It was a tournament where only people who haven't won a ko-hatsu tourney, or qualified for SBO or whatever can enter. I was like "hey, can I come, I wanna watch!" They were surprised I wanted to go, but they were cool with it, especially since I knew how to get to ko-hatsu. We started talking and it turns out that BNK loves majhong, too. He also loves Saki! We were talking about majhong and saki and stuff on the way to ko-hatsu. After a while, he was like "I'm studying English, so can you talk in English to me?" So i talked to him in English about Saki and he responded in Japanese. It was funny.

We got to ko-hatsu and a buncha people were there. I was playing some BB and stuff and I was doing pretty good. I watched the tournament, and the top 4 were:
1) Kanemiso (Hakumen) (top player in Kobe, he's really good and we go about even)
2) Den (Bang) (bang player that i used to play in Monte. He's a really nice guy, and we talked a bit)
3) Tager
3) Tager

So the 3 worst characters made up the top 4. Noice.

Anyways, I played some Akatsuki Blitzkampf. I won a match with my average Anonym, but then lost the next two cause I got corner trapped. The regular tourney was about to start when suddenly, i got a message from Alex saying to meet up with him in Shinsaibashi. I left and took the train there. We met up and he brought two friends with him. We went and got pizza at shakeys, and then went to Tokyu Hands in Shinsaibashi to look at the majhong stuff. They had this portable majhong mat for 3500 yen or so. It had the ends so you can pull the tiles to the end, and the mat itself was kinda like spandex material. It was really awesome, and has a bag that I can carry it in, too. TOO GOOD.

Anyways, we headed to Umeda after that, and parted with Alex's friends. We met up with Dan there, and another Japanese friend of Alex's. We went to some weird little bar that was too expensive and didn't really have good drinks (at least thats what everyone said). Dan ended up seeing his cousins' wife there, who was attending a friend's wedding party. Some annoying dude named John or something was there, and he kept talking. He was obviously drunk, but just really annoying in general. Not too fun, and I was really really exhausted, so we ended up heading home after that. It was a 2 hour trip, and we made the time pass by through talking and playing 3 player wi-fi DS idolm@ster on the train. I'm glad we all have a copy of the game! We finally got back, and stopped at a convenience store before heading home. We got to my place and pretty much set up majhong and played 3 player majhong while watching Saki till we passed out.

Sunday, back in Ono, we woke up, played a round of majhong before heading to get ramen. Dan got the spiciest ramen that they had at the store, and Alex got one that was pretty spicy, too. We ate and then went to the station and waited for Toshi to show up. He surprisingly took the trip out. He got there, and we headed to max value and picked up dinner, snacks, drinks, etc for the party that night.

We started playing majhong, and then we finished another round. We all ate dinner and then people started coming over. Sarah and her husband Jesse, and their daughter Harley came over, and then Bill and Maria came over, too. We played majhong and talked and drank and just had fun in general. We then threw an impromptu Power Instinct 2 tournament for the PS1. I had everyone there enter. The results looked like this:
1) Rob (Old Lady who transforms into a young girl via a FACE SUCKING throw) (oume)
2) Alex (NINJA MAN WITH THE KICKS!!!) (saizo)
3) Maria (A very manly, ugly, voluptuous thing that I think was a woman) (angela)
4) Bill (The indian man with a generic backstory, a generic name, but looks like a white dude hence he's:) (white buffalo)
5) Jesse (HE AINT FAT CAUSE HE'S) (thin nen)
5) Sarah (the cute girl that everyone thought I would use, that I avoided using for variety's sake) (kurara)
5) Dan (An old guy who fights with a cane and moves incredibly fast for someone with a cane. Plus he doesn't wear a shirt) (kanji)
5) Toshi (The little fat kid who always get made fun of in school who transforms into someone that looks like he lost a bet) (kintaro)

So that was fun. It was pretty hype considering it was a game that nobody played and stuff. Everyone had to head out soon after that, and we continued to play majhong. We got some food at like, 2-3 am from the convenience store, started to play more majhong, but me and alex were too out of it around 3:45 so we went to bed.

Monday, since it's a holiday, we woke up late. I woke up around 10:45ish, and toshi and dan were already up by then. Alex got up soon afterwards. Everyone got packed and ready to go. We played a game of majhong, and then headed out. We went to the ramen place and Alex and Dan had a race. Alex won by a lot, and then after we finished eating, we headed out and the three of them headed back home. I walked back home, and once I got home, I was too tired to do anything, so I just took a nap. I woke up and cleaned my place. I got everything straightened out and stuff, and then I just relaxed until it was time for bed. I went to sleep and that was about it.

This weekend, I'm going BACK to shiga-ken to hang out with Alex and Dan for the weekend. It should be fun, we'll do some karaoke, hit up minami hikone, play naruto, and a lotta majhong. It'll be a fun time for everyone.

PEACE
-Rob

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - 13 Orphans

2009-10-05T23:16:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

This weekend was pretty awesome. I met up with my friend in Sannomiya, and then from there, I still had time to catch the limited express train to Maibara (where Alex lives). I finally got there, and we met at the station but Alex just got done throwing up cause of bad food or something. We went back to his place, and just chilled for a bit, and then we both went to sleep.

Saturday we woke up around 10. We relaxed and I showered and got ready. After that, we played some vidja games, and then left around noon to go to Minami Hikone, which is 2 train stops away, and a pretty hopping area. We went to some game stores, and I bought a point card for my friend who wanted one. After that, we hit up this one game store, and Alex bought a 360 elite in like, near perfect condition for 25,000 yen, which is like, amazing. It even had the HDMI cable. After that, I noticed a small rack that said that all CDs marked 380 yen and under are 100 yen at the register. They had a buncha used Jpop singles that included DVDs of videos. They had a buncha hello project ones, like Buono, C-ute, BerryZ, etc. I ended up getting 11 CDs with 9 of them having DVDs for 1100 yen! Such a steal.

After that, there was a book-off nearby, and on the 2nd floor was an arcade. It had like, all these fighting games, pretty much anything I play except Arcana. They had a buncha rythym games, too. It was crazy seeing it. They had some majhong games, and pachinko/slot medal games and stuff. Everything was 100 yen, but still awesome, and I would personally be really glad if they had an arcade like this near me. Pretty sweet. Anyways, we left there, and checked out this used store. They had a VHS of The Outlaw or something like that. I forgot the name, but it starred The Rock, and a monkey humped his face somewhere in that movie. They had some majhong sets, and I was debating buying one, but maybe next time.

We then decided to go to the mall and get some food. We ate at a lunch place, and I had a katsudon. It was so-so, so I finished the meat and eggs, but left some rice. After that, we went to the Namco arcade they had there. Tekken was the only game there, but there was someone playing. I played him, and we played a ton of games. I ended up ranking up, which is awesome, but it would have been better at 50 yen a play. Oh well, supporting arcades either way is the way to go imo. It was a nice arcade, and it was worth playing and supporting it. After that, we were getting tired, so we headed on out of there and went back to Maibara. We got to Alex's place and we were like “wow, we're really tired” cause we walked a bunch and stuff. Alex opened up his Xbox and popped in the really bad Rock movie. We watched that, and messed around with xbox live and stuff for a while until it was time to pick up Dan from the station around 9. He came and we went and got some food at the Ramen place, and then went Karaoke.

At karaoke, we just did a buncha various songs, and we had a buncha fun. That lasted until like, 1AM, so about 3 hours. We got back to Alex's place, and played some Majhong. Dan won the first hand, and we got about halfway into the second hand before me and alex were like UGH NEED SLEEP. So at about 4AM, we passed out.

Alex set an alarm for 10AM, and so we got up after laying there for like, a half hour, 45 minutes or whatever. We got ready, and alex went to McDonalds and brought us back breakfast. We set up majhong and started again. We continued our game from last night. Alex was REALLY close to getting a godlike hand, but I didn't discard the tile that he needed or I would have pretty much lost right there. He had what's called a “limit hand”, which is where you have a hand thats really rare, and gives you the highest value possible for a single hand. Thankfully, I didn't give into it, but he was kinda salty about the whole thing, cause Dan ended up winning that hand like, the turn after.

I won that game by a decent margin. The next game, a couple hands in, I ended up getting a pretty bad starting hand, but that starting hand is good only in a situation that gets you an extremely rare limit hand (called 13 orphans). So I just went for it, and the next 4 turns, I drew exactly what I needed to, and then proceeded to wait for the next 10 turns or so. I had one of those like, super intense like “OMG I MIGHT GET THIS HAND” moments, but I had to stay calm and stuff. Dan made a mistake and carelessly tossed the tile I needed, which netted me the points for MY limit hand. It took so many points that the game just ended right there with me winning. Like, the funny part is that I told Dan, Alex, Bill etc that they didn't need to worry too much about limit hands because theyll never happen in a match anyways, and I ended up getting one, when I figured it was like, impossible. I was pertty happy about that, and Alex was kinda salty.

We started another game after that, and Alex was doing better, but I ended up getting a buncha good hands. At the very end, during Dan's deal, Alex ron'd me, and because he knew it would end with me winning either way, he said “you're welcome” right when he did it, and that was the game.

After that, we went to get some food, and so we ate at a small place in his mall. We had a quick meal there because I had to make sure I didn't miss my train. I got on my train at 6:20. Fast forward 3 and a half hours, and I finally got home. I stayed up way too late (as in, didn't go to bed right when I got home).

Yesterday, I got home from work, which felt really long cause I was so tired, and then did a buncha laundry, and since I had stuff to do anyways, I goofed around for a couple hours while the laundry was washing (had to do 2 loads in the washer). Finally, it finished, and it was already dark out. I got some garbage bags from the 1000 yen store, then I picked up dinner and some other food from the grocery store. I rode my bike BACK home, then grabbed the cans and glass bottles to throw away. I went BACK to the grocery store, and threw out the cans, but there wasn't a place to throw out the glass bottles like I thought. I rode around with the bottles for a while until I just threw them in the dumpster of the old place where I used to live. They pick them up on Wed, so they'll be there for like, a day, but still, kind of annoying. I got back to my laundry 15 minutes after it ended, brought it home, and then put it away. It took so long to do all that, it felt like my night was consumed by laundry. I was really tired that day anyways, so I got home, ate, and went to bed. I'm not AS tired today, but still not feeling energetic in the slightest, especially since I had 5 classes today out of 6 possible class periods.

I'm prolly gonna go home this week and just relax at home.

This weekend is a 3 day weekend. I'm meeting alex in Osaka on Saturday, then we're gonna spend the next couple days in Ono. A lot of majhong will prolly be played. I'm looking forward to it. Peace.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Silver Week

2009-10-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, its been forever since I wrote, but I figured why not.

I left off at Silver week. Silver week is like golden week (5 day weekend), but in september. It just so happened that two holidays ended up being monday and Wed, so we got the tuesday off also. Awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

My silver week started off by going to Kyoto with Sabin, Reno, and Azrael. While I was at the station, I saw a cute girl (looked a bit nerdy, but still cute) wearing an idolm@ster concert t-shirt. It was awesome, and I was thinking of going up to her and talking, but then I decided against it. Anyways, the reason for going all the way to Kyoto was to hit up the arcade A-cho, which is probably the best arcade in Japan IMO. I used to go there all the time as a study abroad student (cause it was close and stuff), but being 3 hours away made it not so appealing to want to go to unless there's a really good reason. This time, the reason was a SFIV tournament. It was 3v3, so Reno, Azrael, and Sabin teamed up. I play Sakura, who isn't in the arcade version, so I don't even have a character anyways, but I went to cheer on the team.

I started off by playing some Blazblue before the tourney started, and ended up getting like, 20 wins before I got bored and wanted to watch SFIV and hang out with the guys. Everyone was having fun it seemed and it was time for the tourney to start. RF's team was favorited to win, but they ended up losing first round in their pool. They looked really crushed, but the way the tourney worked, there was a losers bracket too, so they were able to fight their way up to a chance to make it to the final 8 bracket.

Sabin's team was in Uryo's team's bracket. Uryo = gdlk Viper player. Anyways, so Team “Winning the tourney is cool, but let's go for winning a round first” was up (the Reno, Azrael, Sabin team). They played a team of Ryu, Abel, and Gief first. Reno ended up OCVing the entire team with his honda! Nice!

Next up was Uryo's team. First, their chun player beat Reno. Az ended up beating that chun player in a REALLY close fight. And then their geif player, Cantona (top ranked Kansai gief) beat Az. Sabin got really close to winning, but instead of getting an ultra, which might have won the match, he got a teleport that screwed him over and cost him the match. Oh well. There was a losers bracket, so they played the same team they beat the first time. Reno beat the Ryu player, lost to the Abel, but Az ended up taking the other two guys out. Nice!

Now the team is in a round robin again. If they win the round robin, they go onto play in the top 8 single elim bracket. The thing is, they had to play Rfs team. He made short work out of all 3 of them (he is the top kansai player by far, ranked top 5 in Japan, and uses Sagat), and that was that. Rfs team actually went on to win the tourney. They were favorited to win, so I was happy to see them win.

After that, we hung around and played some casuals. I played against Nezu's bang a bunch. We went back and forth for a bit, and then I got like, 6 wins in a row on him. I could tell he was getting mad, and he was playing like a huge douche after a while (just running away with bang super), so after he finally beat me, I just stopped playing him. We all went out to eat, but had problems finding a good place that didnt have like, hour long waits. We just went to this place that had an “everything is 240 yen” place. We all ate and drank a bunch, and had fun just hanging out. After that, we went back to A-cho and played some more. It was getting late, so we headed back to Osaka. Me and Art got back to Umeda and just walked to his place from there. I was mad tired, so I crashed, while Art stayed up a bit later.

I woke up and took a shower and stuff, and Art got the bed. I chilled at his place until like, noon, where I headed out to meet up with Dan. I went to Athena and played Demon Bride and Arcana there until he came. Toshi came with him, too! We walked around the Den a bit, and I ended up buying idolm@ster for the DS. After that, we went and relaxed at a coffee shop for a bit, and then we went to Athena. I played blazblue there for a while and then after we were done, we went to Spa World. We stopped off at Yoshinoya for a beef bowl first.

We got to spa world and went around the baths and stuff. It was really good and really relaxing. It was silver week, so it was SUPER busy. I ended up finding a seat, and just sat watching TV for a while. They were showing the X-men movie dubbed in Japanese. I watched that and then after that was done, they were doing a special on Ayaka, a singer that I really like. They were showing other various music videos and performances and whatever, so I watched a bunch of those. Around midnite, they started shutting off the lights, so I went to sleep. Dan woke up me up around 7:15. We went around some baths and stuff, and then we headed out. I parted with dan temporarily and went off to Umeda.

I had to leave early to meet Reno and some other people to go to his girlfriend's resturant in Kyoto. I got there BARELY on time for us to make the bus, and we headed out. It was Reno, myself, Ayako (met her a while ago at Reno's place), and another ALT who works in Gunma. The thing is, because it was silver week, traffic was insane. It was like Chicago rush hour. It should have taken like, an hour and a half, but ended up being over 3 hours there. We got there FINALLY, and had to take ANOTHER bus like, 25 minutes in the middle of nowhere to her resturant. We finally got there tho.

The resturant was really nice. It looked like a renovated house, and was converted into a resturant. It's really nice, and we got our own tatami room. We ordered the lunch set, and it was REALLY good. It was a lot of food, but it was so healthy and so good. I wish I had a resturant like that near me so I could eat that all the time. Too bad its so far away from where I live. After that, we got some amazing deserts. Everyone got an apple cheesecake, and I got a parfait. It was super good and Reno's girlfriend even gave it to us on the house. After we finished eating, we walked around to this garden area and looked at the flowers and stuff. It was a bit too nature-y for me, as in, wild animals that I don't want to deal with were potentially nearby. After that, we walked around a bit to a temple, I rang the big bell there for no real reason, and then by that time, it was about time to head back. We didn't know when the next bus was gonna be, so Andrew waited at the bus stop early to flag down a bus just in case. The other three of us got there as it was coming, and we ran to the bus. We all got on, and as Reno was saying goodbye to his girlfriend, and about to get on, the driver like, really really quickly shuts the door and slams on the gas. We were like “STOP!!!” and he stopped after a bit. It was kinda messed up cause its a small town and there was nobody else on the bus, so him waiting 3 and a half seconds wouldn't have killed him. Oh well. We got back to the station, and we had to wait like, 50 minutes for our next bus. We played some mario kart and stuff while waiting and then got on the bus again. It was another long long trip because of traffic. We left at 4 and ended up getting back to umeda around 8:30 or 9. I met up with Dan and Alex there, and they were both pretty drunk. We headed back to my place in Ono and ended up getting back close to 11:30 or so. We went to the ramen place, and it was awesome, but right at the end, I went to pay for everything and give him my point card. The dude at the register gave me one stamp and refused to give me more stamps, and wouldn't even LOOK at me. I don't know how much sand got in his vagina, but apparantly enough where he was just a complete douche. It pretty much made one of my favorite spots to eat in Ono turn sour IMMEDIATELY. I was really really mad about it, but like, not as mad as when I lose online in blazblue or anything.

Anyways, we went back and played games and hung out until like, 3AM and then we went to bed. I got up in the morning/afternoon or whatever and busted out some Usagi Majhong, and the japanesemajhong.com site and started teaching it to Alex. He seemed to be getting it pretty well. However, we were getting hungry, so we went to the max value and got some food. We first stopped by the Taiyaki stand there and we each had a taiyaki. They were super delicious and then we went in and got a buncha food and drinks for the party later on. I also bought stuff for the moisture problem I have in my apt (which we also spent part of the morning dealing with). We got back, set up the moisture things, and then started eating our food while watching the idolm@ster anime that I got with the limited edition Live 4 U set I bought. We played Live 4 U after that, editing videos and watching old videos that we made a long time ago and stuff. After a while we turned it off, and got dinner at a kaiten zushi place (revolving sushi resturant). It was really good cause I was able to eat as little as I wanted, and and Alex and Dan could eat as much as they wanted. After we got back, Alex and Dan ran to the store to get some ice cream. During that time, Sarah (ALT that lives next door to me), Jesse (her husband), and their 3 year old daughter Harley came.

Bill and Maria arrived shortly after that and so we just ended up playing games for a while and eating/drinking. We played majhong, BS, Critical Blow (this old PS1 fighting game that's really good), and just chatting and whatnot. Around 2ish everyone left, and it was just me, Dan, and Alex. We ended up playing 3 player majhong until like, 6AM. It was insane, it's so addicting. We went to sleep and woke up around 1:30. We got showered up, ate, and then everyone got ready. We then played another round of majhong, and Alex and Dan left after that. I cleaned up the place since there were a bunch of cans and dishes and stuff. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad everyone was able to come and have fun. I just relaxed for the rest of the night, since I had work the next day. Since I woke up at 1:30, I took some sleeping pills and went to bed around 10ish.

I then had a 2 day workweek. Thursday night was a surprise enkai with the teachers. I ate a bunch and drank plenty. Normally I don't like sashimi, or fish or anything, but just about everything I atte tasted really really good. Maybe I'm getting used to Japanese food? WUT? Friday night, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do, so I went to Sannomiya and met up with Andre. I got a plate of cheese curry and a salad, which is a lot of food for me, but I ate it all and was stuffed afterwards. I played some Blazblue and stuff, and then met up with him at the arcade. We went to the Hub and I got a couple of drinks, and Andre got a pineapple juice. We sat and talked for a while, and then I was kinda in the mood to play video games, so we went back to Magical Space and I played Tekken. It was a lot of fun, and I even beat this other Asuka and got a promotion. Tekken is a weird thing cause sometimes it's really fun, and other times, it's just dumb and I don't understand it. But I was having a lot of fun playing even though I was losing to dumb stuff. After that, I wanted a cheeseburger, and I dunno why, so we stopped off at McDonalds, which was pretty packed for 11PM at night. We wandered around Sannomiya after that and chilled in the center area, and then I was getting tired, so I went to the manga cafe to sleep.

I got to the manga cafe, and I went on the computers for a bit and then passed out for a while. It was ok, I got good enough sleep, I guess. I woke up, wandered over to magical space, played a game of JuBeat, and then went to Osaka. I went to Matsuya and got myself a beef bowl, and then played a buncha games. I played some Tekken, which went pretty well. I also played some Usagi Majhong. The thing about that game is that I normally see it in like, single cabinets, but Monte has a special setup where they have 2 cabinets, and you play the other person (since it's teams, one person's team wins). Now Usagi is generally fun because of the huge overreactions by the players if you ron or tsumo them (win a hand, essentially). But with this, I was able to see the other player's reaction because it was set up in a corner, not head to head. So it was like, I would tsumo, and then the characters on the screen would react, and then my opponent would react. I played a buncha times, but after losing to me, most people ended up leaving. Oh well. At least that game is fun single player, but it's really awesome multi-player, especially against old Japanese Oji-sans. I also played Demon Bride against an Arcana/Blazblue player called Aka-mesu. He's really good and won a couple kohatsu tourneys already, but I never stood a chance in the first place cause the character matchup with his and my character is REALLY bad. Not impossible (I did win 2 rounds out of 11 3/5 round matches), but yeah, p dumb. Oh well, I went over and asked him if he was going to the blazblue tourney at ko-hatsu and he said that he had plans. I told him GG's and then headed off to Ko-hatsu.

At Kohatsu, they had a tourney where only people who haven't been in the finals of a tourney, or qualified for SBO or whatever play. It was fun to watch, cause even tho the general level of play was a lot lower than normal, it was still hype. The guy that won was Misao, a Taokaka player who was actually probably too good to play in that tournament, haha. He played against Galileo for some reason (maybe Galileo was qualified too, because he technically never got in the finals of a 1v1 touorney but had a special game against the winner). That match was super hype. Galileo was down in life, and he made a suuuuuuuuuuuper comeback with like, 2 seconds left on the clock. It was so awesome, and everyone got mad hype.

Next, it was casuals for a while. I was doing really well in casuals. Then it was time for tourney. I was teamed with a random bang player. We had to play this Rachel and Hakumen first. The thing is, the second I sat down, I got hit with the “oh wait, how do I play this game” jitters, and ended up not being able to do even easy combos. I won the first round but lost the next two. It was really really bad, and probably the worst I've ever played blazblue in a tournament. I was kinda annoyed, but then I went and played some casuals, which was a big mistake. I played against Jagar, who I normally beat (he's a rachel who has really bad basics, but can win because his character is S tier). Normally I beat him, as I said, but when I played him, I couldn't even win a single round. Even when I had the win, I would do like, 6C 2C into super, and for some reason, I missed it, and I NEVER miss inputs for easy things like that. Essentially, I was playing like crap. It was like Koromo was my opponent, and I couldn't reach tenpai. I was annoyed, but I called up Alex, cause he told me I should go out to where he lived so we can hang out, play majhong, and go karaoke. I decided to go for it, cause I had nothing better to do, and I was too annoyed at blazblue to play it well.

I got out to Alex's place, and met up with him and Dan, and then we dropped off our stuff, and went to the Karaoke place. That place is particularly awesome because it has all the same stuff that the really good places have, but like, you didn't pay for time spent, you just pay 100 yen per song, and that's it. So we ended up doing a buncha songs of all sorts. We did some im@s songs, jpop, etc. It was pretty fun. I was feeling kinda sick tho, so we left and we went back to Alex's place and I fell asleep there on a futon.

I got up in the morning before everyone else. I was feeling fine for the most part, so I just played some DS majhong and idolm@ster for a while. Alex made me ham and eggs for breakfast after he got up, which was really awesome. I got showered and then we watched a couple episodes of the Saki anime. Once we finished that, we set up Majhong at his place and played a round. I barely won, after being way ahead in the last hand, Dan almost made a comeback, but wasn't able to take the W, so I ended up winning by less than 1000 points (which is generally not a lot of points). After that, me and Alex played some Naruto EX3 for about an hour. I used Nana the entire time. It was a fun game for the most part. Some stuff was stupid but overall it felt enough like Naruto, and Nana was enough like Nana for me to enjoy it. After an hour, a message popped up on the screen like “YOU'VE BEEN PLAYING FOR AN HOUR, YOU SHOULD TAKE A BREAK!”

It was about time to head out anyways, so we all went to Ramen. The Ramen was really good, and we just chatted for a bit after that. I headed out Sunday night back home. I caught all the right trains at exactly the right times, so I got back really quickly (compared to if the trains were all slow, even tho it was still a long trip). I got back and just kinda went to bed or something.

Next was my first normal 5 day work week in a while. Except it was anything but normal, DUN DUN DUN.
Nah, but in all seriousness, the first couple days of the week were whatever, I would just come home and play Street Fighter IV online or like, sleep. But then I did something I havent done in years. I marathon'd an anime. I got all of Saki from Alex, and so I watched like, 8 episodes one night, then like, 9 the next night, and then I finished off the next 5 or so last night.

It was also a strange week because I switch schools. Normally in Ono, we switch schools every year, and sometimes you go to 2 schools in a week, but with my schedule, I was at my last school for a couple months, now I'm at this school for like, 3 weeks before going back to the other one. Its weird because each school goes however long without me, so I'm totally not needed, but I'm like that guy that's just kinda nice to have around, even if he's not necissary. Oh well.

Tonite I'm gonna go to Kobe and meet up with a friend, and then I'm prolly gonna go back to Alex's place over the weekend. It's kinda far, but it can't be helped. Not this weekend, but the next one is a 3 day weekend, so that'll be fun. Later all, sorry this was so long, but I was REALLY bored. Peace.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Real Talk

2009-09-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hey all, blog update time.

As I may or may not have mentioned last week, I had a sports festival on Saturday, and plans on sunday night to meet up with Reno and a friend of his. Pretty much, I was hoping it wasn't gonna rain because then it would push things back a day and cancel my plans, but of course, it ended up being the only day in Sept so far that it's rained. The thing is, it ended up working out. We did the first half of the sports festival because it wasn't really raining. But near the halfway point, it started pouring, so the school cancelled after lunch. The students went home, and the teachers said that the enkai will still be on for sat night. This is good because it means my sunday night plans won't be screwed! The enkai is in sannomiya in Kobe, so it's in a “fun” area that I know really well.

We got out at 1:45 or so. I got home (I was soaking wet at this point), showered, grabbed my bag, and headed to Kobe. I got there around 3:30 or so. I went to magical space and just played there for a while. Eventually it got to the time when I had to go to the Enkai. As I was walking there, I randomly ran into another teacher also going there! He knew the way, so we got there without me having to guess how to get there! Lucky!

We ended up being the last ones there (tho still on time). That lasted until like, 8:30ish, and then one of the teachers gave me a ride home, which was really cool, so I didn't have to take the bus.

Next day, they said it was ok to be late, so I went to work at 10AM instead of 8. The sports festival started, and we finished it. Then, as I was getting ready to leave, Reno called me and said plans were cancelled. I ended up hanging out with Bill for the night.

Because the sports festival went on for 2 days, we got the next 2 days off, monday and tuesday. So Monday, Bill went with me to Osaka to meet up with Arturo. I broke my phone and so I had to stop and get a new one, but my data (phonebook, old messages, everything) got erased .Oh well. My new phone is cool tho, it has TV and a built in English-Japanese dictionary.

We got to Namba, ate some subway, and met up with Arturo.We walked around some arcades, and then played some AH2 for a while. After we were done there, we walked around Denden town for a bit, went to SCOT and then ate some ramen. Bill headed out after that, so it was just me and Arturo for the rest of the night. We walked to Umeda from Namba and went to Mist2. We met up with Azrael there, and art played a bunch of SFIV. Andrew (Reno) and his GF Ibuki showed up as well as their friend from Yokohama. I forgot his name, so I'm gonna call him Pen Man, because he always had like, 3 pens in his jacket pocket.

Az headed out and we went to some fancy resturant. We got a buncha food and shared it and just chilled for a while. Pen Man left a bit early, and me and Art split up with Andrew and Ibuki. We went to Monte 50 and played AH2 until closing. We walked back to Art's apartment from there and slept there for the night. We woke up and took our time, and after we got ready, we went and got some food at Matsuya. Since it was still early, we just headed to Monte 50 and played some Arcana.　After we were done playing, we walked around to some random arcades and didn't really see anything interesting, so we went to Namba. On the way there, we saw a "free cafe". It was literally a cafe with coffee, orange juice, and snacks, and they were free. They were sellin stuff too, but it was a free cafe, and the idea was really cool. We sat there and had some snacks and chatted for a bit before heading out of there. It was just recently built, but it's really cool, and in a nice area because it's got a lotta offices and stuff nearby, so it helps out the local office workers I think. After we made it to Namba, we went to Avion and Art played some SFIV there and got like, a huge winstreak. I played a bit of Tekken and BB, but nobody played me in BB, and I didn't feel like spending a fortune losing in Tekken. It got to be like, 8ish pretty quickly, so I headed out and caught the train home. I listened to Buono pretty much the entire way home, and thats about it.

It's Friday now, and I have some plans for my 5 day weekend, but I'll post about it all after it happens. Either way, it's gonna be a blast. Peace.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Fun weekend

2009-09-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend was fun! Hung out with Bill and Maria, played majhong using my Saki majhong set, and then went to the bar on Friday night.

Hung out with Alex (vayseth), Dan, Toshi, and Andrew (reno) sat night, we played at bit at athena and then went to an "all you can drink" resturant for mad cheap, and ended up staying at a capsule hotel.

Sunday, Me, Alex, and Toshi walked around the Den and went Karaoke.

I bought the Usagi PS2 majhong game, Vol 3-6 of the Saki manga, and Vol 6-9 and 11 of Usagi (the stores were missing vol 10, sadly).

Fun weekend. <3 you all.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - The quest

2009-08-31T19:36:00.000-07:00

Ok guys, time to type my blog.

This past weekend was one of those weekends where I didn't really feel like going out, and just kinda wanted to hang out with friends.

Friday, right after work, I rushed home, took the flowers I got from my old school and put them in water, and then changed and headed out. I went straight to Kobe and the first place I went was the Lashabang to try to pick up a figure for a friend, but since I saw it the week before, it was sold out. Oh well. I did happen to see the Saki Majhong set that I was looking for, and it was 10 bucks cheaper there (brand new!) than it was where I was gonna buy it. I picked that up, and it filled up my point card, so I now have 500 yen in credit at that store for whatever I want guilt free, yay!

After that, since I picked up the Saki set already, I ate some cheese curry, and then I just went over to the arcades. I played a bit of Demon Bride, and some guy played me like, 15 matches in a row or so, even tho he kinda seemed like a beginner. I let him get close a few times, but never let him win until I was just kinda really bored and let him win (but I didn't make it obvious). I went to play some other games, but nobody was really playing anything I wanted to play. I went to a few different arcades, and even stopped by the Game in Coo, and since that's a big tekken arcade, I played a little bit of Tekken there, but I just eventually got bored, so I headed out for Osaka and figured that I could have more fun if I just went to Athena and played BB or whatever.

I got to Athena and I saw Rajio playing Tager and he had like, a 35 winstreak or something like that. I decided to play a bit of AH2 first. I won a couple games, lost a couple games, but after other people sat down to play AH2, I decided to just go and play some BB against Rajio. He was up to around 40 at this point, so I played him and beat his tager twice in a row. He switched to Bang, beat me 3-0 in rounds, then I went and beat him and a couple other guys for like, 15 wins in a row until he barely scraped out another win. I headed out after that to the manga cafe area, but not before stopping by the axe tower to play some Usagi Majhong. After I was done there, I went to the manga cafe and read the 6th volume of Saki, and the 10th volume of Usagi. I got “enough” sleep, and then I headed back over to the axe tower once I got out of there.

Back at the axe tower, I played more Usagi majhong. The hosts were there playing Tekken (assumingly they were out all night and since it's morning, their shift is up, so they decided to play Tekken, but for some reason, hosts seem to suck pretty bad at Tekken, so its not worth it for me to play them, but its funny to watch them). After that, I headed over to Athena since stuff wasn't quite open yet. I got there and played this one dude in AH2 for a while, he used 2A lilica because all he did was pretty much mash 2A. Then, after getting bored of that, I played some Blazblue against whoever was there until people stopped playing me. I left and then went off to Denden for the quest of the day.

Goal – To mail 3 packages out of Denden goodies.
Time Limit – By 5PM (before the post office closes) appx 5 hrs
Required Items –
1 xbox 360 elite
1 microsoft 3500 point card
1 blue ray anime dvd
1 saki majhong set (a seperate one, not the one I bought for myself)
3 xbox 360 games

So I decided to venture out into Denden and buy the goods. I have a point card for the Namba Labi, so I figured I would get the 360 and the point card there, and sofmap would be the place for the saki majhong kit if Lashabang didn't have one, and sofmap would also be the place for the games if I couldn't find them somewhere else for cheaper. I ended up checking a few random anime stores and found the blue ray anime for 4000 yen.

I went to Labi and got the xbox and the point card, and got about 2500 yen worth of points on my card. I got the bag and they double bagged it because the 360 was heavy. I walked back to sofmap and got the majhong set and the games, and because you get 5% off on used games if you have a point card, a point card is 500 yen, and I got about 10,000 yen worth of games, I actually save 2 yen AND get a point card out of the deal if I applied for it, so I did that. I get 1% of what I spend back in points, so with that and the majhong kit, I have roughly 200 yen in sofmap points. W00t.

After that, I walked to an internet cafe and got everyones address, and then walked to the post office about 20 minutes away. Once I got there, I got the boxes to ship it in, they gave me tape, and I taped things up and sent them off. It came out to roughly 17500 yen for the shipping. Once that was done, it was kind of a relief. I went back to the axe tower, since it was on the way, and I played some Tekken and Usagi there, and after getting a few wins in Tekken, I lost to this Anna player. After I was done there, I headed back to Athena. Braces Noel Kid was there, and he didn't notice me at first, so I just played Arcana for a bit. After playing that, I headed back to blazblue and played a buncha the players there. I played Ke-chan's rachel and Nu a bunch, and Kouji's tager a few times. While I was waiting for Dan, I played against this Hakumen player who would always be like “AAAH!” on the other side if I got like, a super or did something goofy that ended up working. During this time, Dan ended up showing up. After about 20 games with this guy, I had to go cause I was friggin starving, so I told the guy ggs and that we had to go, and said bye. Me and Dan got some Matsuya after that. We decided to stay at Spa world if they had the 1000 yen deal. We walked there, and they had it, thankfully! After 2 years of promising that one day, we'll head to spa world again, we did it! We got there and got in the baths and just enjoyed the relaxation.

We went in the salt sauna and just talked for a bit. A buncha little kids were they and they were building salt mountains. We stayed there for what felt like an eternity and then got out and showered ourselves off again. After that, we went over to some lawn chairs and relaxed there chillin for a bit. We went to a lukewarm bath after that, and then we headed to the cold water bath area. We slowly emerged ourselves and pretty much hated our lives at that point, but then we went to a warm bath and stayed there for a bit before going to the room with all the chairs and crashing. I didn't realize how tired I was so I put on my headphones and only ended up getting through one song before I was ready to pass out.

I woke up, but I was sooooooooo tired I couldn't even move. I had to kind prep myself up, but it was the most tired I've been waking up in a long time. I was watching a pokemon tournament on TV for a little. The finals was this American kid vs a Japanese kid, and the American kid totally won, and the Japanese kid started crying. It was awesome. Go America, show them who's boss in the world of da pokeymens. Dan woke up and came over to where I was laying down and so we got up and went in a couple more baths before we got freshened up and headed out of there.

We left spa world and headed to the closest McDonalds. We got some breakfast foods and then I decided to show Dan more stuff about Majhong, so I busted out my new majhong kit and showed him all the different winning hand things. Its a lot to memorize, but I think I helped him understand it a bit more, and I think he's more hype for it, too. After that, other stores were open, so we walked to sofmap, and I stopped by the Morning Musume store, but didnt see anything. Dan got a cheap Majhong game and then we just kinda walked around some stores. We met up with Toshi at Athena. He just got back from hawaii, so he brought chocolate covered caramel/macadamia nuts as a souvenier. My poor teeth. :( Anyways, a dude was there playing Noel and using my color, so I had to play him and I ended up beating his Noel twice in a row, and then his ragna like, 3 times in a row. After that, I left the game and we headed out. We went to a coffee place nearby and hung out there for a while before walking to tennoji. Dan got a new bag, so he gave me his old bag, which is good cause it's bigger than the evo bag that I was carrying, and since I had a lot of stuff. We walked all the way to tennoji from Namba, which is quite far, cutting through the very interesting doubutsuenmae area. After we got there, we went to baskin robbins and had some ice cream. They had a sale where they give you an extra small scoop if you get a king size scoop. Dan went first, then me, then Toshi. However, Toshi got his ice cream first, then me, then Dan had to wait a long time for some reason. We were served by the % of Japanese blood in us, I assume. After that, we walked around Animate, some dude was there doing a signing, so a ton of girls were there waiting in line to get a handshake or whatever. After that, we headed out. I said bye to Toshi and me and dan went to the subway. Dan was going partially the same way as me because he was going to a Hanshin Tigers game, and that station is the one I pass by everytime I go to Osaka. I was really tired, so even tho it was only like, 4-oclock, I headed back. I fell asleep on the train back to sannomiya, so I was awake enough to last the bus ride back to ono. Once I got back to Ono, I went to Saty to get some dinner at McDonalds cause of 200 yen big macs, but it looks like they didn't have any big macs, so I just got some cheeseburgers. I ended up just goin to bed around 8ish or so and getting like, 11 hours of sleep.

Yesterday, I ran a few errands and got like, 10 and a half hours of sleep. No internet makes it really easy to go to bed early, haha.

Aside from that, not too much going on. I should get internet at my house on saturday finally, so until then, I might have a lot of sleep, haha.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Back in Kansai

2009-08-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

Ok guys, time for another blog update:

So after I got back from Tokyo, I spent Wed sleeping and doing laundry. I spent thursday hanging out with Bill and playing Critical Blow and Asuka 120%. I spent Friday doing laundry and sleeping. Saturday, I slept late and then went to Kobe. I saw the BB crowd there, so I played against them for a while. I met up with Andre and then we went around Kobe for a bit, getting food. We stopped by this bar and when we got there, it was only the bartender, which was a Nigerian guy. We hung out and talked to him, and then more people started coming in. We talked with a buncha different people and ended up staying until like, midnite. I went to the manga cafe after that, and slept.

Sunday, I woke up and got out of the manga cafe. I went to Namba and met up with Alex (Vayseth) who I haven't seen in years, along with his friend CJ. We started out by eating at wendys, and then going around some random stores and eventually just going all around the den. We went to a ton of different stores, and compared to how much me and alex used to buy when we were students, we both held back pretty well. We saw a buncha cool stuff, but didn't buy too much. They went to go look for routers or whatever at Namba Labi, so I used the opportunity to go to Athena. I saw Braces Noel Kid again, and I just started playing the regulars. I ended up getting a 30 win streak. A buncha other foreigners (have no idea who they are, I saw them at Mikado tho) played me. The ragna player was pretty good, and the bang player was decent, but I still streaked both of them. After a while, a tager player came and almost beat me, but I was at 30 wins, and Alex and CJ were waiting, so I let BNK take over, and he lost, so we headed out of there. After that, we went to Shakeys and ate a ton of pizza and stuff, and since I ate so much so quickly, I was really really tired, like, fall asleep right there tired. After that, we went back to the midosuji line and departed. I went back to Ono and Alex and CJ went back to Shiga-ken.

Monday-Wed I didn't do much except relax at home after work. Thursday, I hung out with Bill and we played a buncha Critical Blow and Vanguard Princess. Fun games. Fun times. After that, I went back home and chilled on the computer.

Obv not an exciting weekend, but it was really fun. I should have internet at home (as opposed to wireless leeching) next weekend. This weekend, I'm gonna relax and meet up with Dan and play games I guess or something. Not much aside from that planned.

-Rob

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Tokyo Trip part 3

2009-08-26T21:48:00.001-07:00

Ok time for part 3. I'm not really in a writing mood, so it's gonna be shorter and less detailed/more boring than usual. Bear with me.

Friday – I woke up to Kara calling me about getting her some camera lens in harajuku or whatever. I don't really remember much about it cause I wasn't really awake when I talked to her, but I got up and went to JCB Hall, where SBO is located. I ended up not seeing her so I just hung out with the other players instead. I talked with some guys, and ended up finding out that I had to play Inoue first round in BB! I got kinda hyped and from them, started prepping myself mentally for the match. Anyways, I saw the Kansai guys there, Kunai, Az, Reno, as well as Arturo and Ameriken. We just kinda chilled for a bit and when it came close to starting time for SFIV, I went and watched. I cheered for my friends, but all the US players ended up losing first round, sadly. I stayed and watched the prelims tho. Once that was over, I met up with Dan and we went to Akiba and walked around there for a while. Once we were done there, we went back to JCB hall and they were still doing Tekken matches. Since Tekken takes a long time, they were way behind schedule.

In the meantime, there was a huge hyped up crowd gathered around the SFIV machines. It ended up kinda turning into like, US on one side, Japan on the other side. Then the fun happened when money matches went down. 2/3 rounds 1 match for like, 1000 yen. It was really cool, cause that thing would NEVER happen in Japan normally, but once you get people like Sabin and SCOTT POPULAR involved, a lot of things happen. It was cool tho, but they had this one boxer player called Aojiru Guile and he was tearing things up, beat just about every top US player in a 2/3 round money match. The SBO officials came and saw what was going on and said we had to stop it, but it was fun while it lasted. Anyways, casuals came after that and it was soon time for SFIV finals to start anyways .

Instead of sitting at my seat, I went up with Dan and sat on the 3rd floor, which were far far cooler seats. We watched the SFIV finals, and they were pretty hype. Right after that, however, we had to dash out of there so we could meet up with my friend Mayumi in Shibuya. Mayumi was one of the Japanese students who studied abroad at DePaul during my senior year. We met up a couple of times in Osaka, but she just got a job in Tokyo a few months earlier, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to meet up, since I obviously don't go to Tokyo very often. We met up with her and went out to eat at this izakaya type place (izakaya is like, a place where people go to drink and have food and stuff). It was kind of expensive but it was nice talking and stuff again. After that, we had some ice cream and then went to Karaoke. We went to Big Echo, which isn't the usual place we go. Sadly, we didn't get free drinks, which is absurd as far as I'm concerned, so it made the already expensive karaoke experience even more expensive. It was a lot of fun though, Me and Dan did a lot of the same stuff, but yeah, we got to hear Mayumi do some songs, too, which was cool. After Karaoke, Mayumi headed home and me and Dan went to the Vegas arcade for a little. Nobody was playing BB, and this one Asuma scrub was playing DB. He beat me one match, then I beat him 4 in a row. He then played Dan after that, and Dan was only just trying the game for the first time, so Asuma scrub ended up winning and Dan was like “whatever” and we headed out. Instead of taking a quicker way back to my place, I went most of the way with Dan and we chilled for a bit more before I headed back.

When I got back, Kara was already asleep, so I went in the lobby and read the tougeki guide and ate some snacks until I decided to head to bed.

Saturday – I slept until like, noonish and then met up with dan in Akiba. He wanted to go to comiket, so we went there. Getting there wasn't too bad. When we got there, there was kinda a big crowd to get in, but it was still not TOO bad. Then we got in, and it wasn't nearly as bad in the halls as it was last year when I went with Ryan. We looked around for a while, then watched some cosplayers, and then when we went to leave, there was a line like, 2 blocks long for the train station. We were like “oh crap...” and so we walked to the next station and took that back to Akihabara. We got there, and while it was crowded, it wasn't too bad once we got to our station and switched trains. We ended up back in Akiba, so we hung out there and went to Try Tower and Dan played BB while I played Senko no Ronde 2. Afterwards, it was time to meet up with Andy in Shinjuku. We met up, and he was eating and stuff. Around the same time, everyone else was meeting for Yakiniku in Shinjuku, too, so I met up with them. They had extra seats, but Andy didn't really feel like going, so he went and watched people play games at Shinjuku Sportsland instead, and Dan came with me and like, 15 other guys for all you can eat/drink Yakiniku.

The Yakiniku was a ton of fun, all the kansai guys were there, as well as a buncha guys who live in Japan, plus a few guys who are visiting. We were there for 2 hours, and it was just a ton of fun. Probably the highlight of my Tokyo trip, to be perfectly honest. After that, I met back up with Andy and we went to Shinjuku Club Sega to the BATTLE ARENA. A buncha guys played SFIV, and I played a lot of Senko no Ronde 2 against AdverseSolutions. Afterwards, everyone was going, so me and Andy headed back to the hotel (andy stayed with me for the night on the floor) and I got back, and Art was already there along with Kara. We played a bit of SFIV and then went to bed.

Sunday – I got laryngitis for some reason. Andy got up earlier than me to go to Last Chance Qualifiers. I got up around 8ish, showered, and walked to JCB Hall. I got signed in, and kinda wandered around for a while. It was time for the BB participants to gather, so I went to the area and waited there. Once it started, they brought everyone out, and I was talking a bit with Goryu's and Inoue. I watched the matches and then it was my turn. I got owned the first round against Inoue, then ALMOST won the 2nd but barely lost, and that was it. After that, I met up with dan and we watched the rest of the BB matches. After that, we went BACK to Akiba again and walked around/played games and hung out. We got back with plenty of time to spare. I played some casual BB matches, and met up with Art and stuff, and we watched BB finals, AH2 finals, and then GG finals, with each match being more hype than the previous one. They announced AH3 aftert hey presented the winners with their swag, and me and Art got really hype and were like OMG!!! It was awesome. After that, we went to Takadanobaba for food. Dan had to go back to Fukui-ken, and Andy had to go, too. After that, we ate at this ramen place. It was decent. Then we headed over to Mikado. I played some BB, and art played some SFIV, and then we went and played a ton of AH2 against each other. That was a lot of fun, and then it was getting close to closing time, so we headed back.

Mon – I slept late and Ryan came by and after much preperation, me, Ryan, and Kara went to Ueno to eat at this ramen place. We were gonna go to this arcade that has a ton of shmup games, but we decided that we were almost out of time, so we headed to Game Safari instead, and I played Tekken there for a while. Once we were done, we went to Akiba and played Demon Bride at Try Tower for a while. Once we finished, we headed to the Post-SBO party. SBO qualifiers got in for free, so I got in for free, obv. They had SFIV, VF5, 3S, and GG setup. I played a bit of SFIV, and then I saw Ryan was talking to a couple JP guys. They were Tekken players who did really well in the tourney, and were apparantly really gdlk. They were cool guys, too, so it was nice talking to them, but I still had laryngitis so it was kinda rough. I just hung out there until it was over, and then me and art went with Justin, Ari, Henry and a few other guys to go play crane games at the nearby Akiba arcades. I took them to a couple arcades that they didn't know about and they ended up playing a ton of crane games. They even got me hype and I ended up playing a crane game that had a small plush doll of Ayu from Kanon. Ayu, being my character in EFZ, made an appealing plush. So Justin had them set a doll, and he tried to get it for a few credits, but he wasn't able to. I tried for it, and thanks to Justin's help, I was able to get it in like, 800 yen. Yay! Art hung out playing SFIV at Tokyo Liesureland while everyone else headed out to Big Box. I stayed with Art and we went back to Iidabashi. We got a phone call from Ryan saying that his friend was at the station and he was gonna house her, but then stuff came up and like, he was unable to.
We met up with her, her name was Christine and she's also an ALT, but she just finished, and was going on a trip to China. Me and Art didn't feel like going back to the room, so we just walked around a bunch and hung out in this one park for a while, until like, 2AM. I was mad tired, so we headed back and I went to sleep for as long as I could.

Tues – I woke up, got packed, and we checked out. I went and bought myself a bullet train ticket for Kobe, and said bye to Art and Kara. They headed out, and I took the bullet train home. I got to Kobe, and was really glad to be back, and took the bus from Sannomiya back to Ono. I got back home, unpacked, and used the computer for a bit before going to bed and starting work again the next day.

There you go! Kinda brief cause I didn't really feel like writing it, but yeah, if I don't write it today, I'll be MAD behind. So yeah, that's all! Hope you enjoyed it, even if it was hastily written.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL season 2 - Tokyo Trip Part 2

2009-08-23T22:32:00.001-07:00

Blog Part 2:

8/10 Sun - The day started off with me sleeping in and then meeting up with Andy at 10:30 or so in the lobby. We got ready to go, and me, Andy, and Ryan headed to Akiba and walked around a few stores. We went to the arcade PCV stores and looked around at all the cool stuff they had there. I don't have a supergun or any way to even play these arcade games, but it was still cool looking around at these stores. Me and Andy got some Cocos Ichiban for lunch, and I got to show off the deliciousness of the cheese curry. Ryan played at Try Tower while we were eating. We met up with Ryan, I played him a bit in Blazblue and then we headed out after we finished playing. We went to Alpha Station in Shinjuku after that for a blazblue 2v2 tournament.

We got to Alpha Station a bit early. I played against this Litchi player for a bit, got a buncha wins against him, and then beat a hakumen player a couple times. I think I ended up getting like, 10 wins total on 2 credits, not too bad, but the players weren't all that great imo. After I lost, I played some AH2 against Andy and Ryan, and then me and Ryan played some Demon Bride, but we ended up losing to this one Shiffon (little fairy on clown head) player. We were up soon in the tourney.

There were 17 teams or so. We went against a Rachel/Noel team. Since Carl does bad against Rachel, I went first against the Rachel, and I beat him. The Noel player was a bit better, but I still managed to win. We then played a Rachel/Jin team after that. The Rachel was Aoniku, an SBO player, and I don't know who the Jin was. Ryan played first, but got beat by the Jin. I do really bad against Jin, so I got owned, too. After that, the Noel player told me he was a fan of me, and so we talked for a bit. It was really cool that even in Tokyo, I have people who know who I am. After that, we headed out of there, and Andy headed back home to Gunma. So Ryan and I went to Harajuku to meet up with BAS and the others. (BTW Ryan and I went out to eat with Bas, and a buncha other guys the night we got here, but I forgot to write it in my blog last week, oops). We met up with a group of guys, too many to name, but because of that, anytime anyone went in a store, it took forever. The clothes in Harajuku aren't really my style, and I can't justify the cost of clothes (or anything) there, so I didn't do any shopping there. After a while, BAS left and everyone else went to Shibuya to go eat. A buncha guys wanted to eat Kaiten Zushi (revolving sushi) and I wasn't feeling it, so me, Haunts, and Magus went to Coco's right next door to eat there. I have no problem eating cheese curry twice in one day lol.

After that, we went to the Vegas arcade to use their washroom facilities, and I ended up playing some Majhong. Everyone was heading back to Big Box, but me and Ryan decided to just head to The Hub in Shibuya, which is an English Pub. We got there, and for a Sunday Night, it was pretty busy. I'm not gonna go into huge detail here, but it was fun. Around 11ish or so, we headed back to the hotel and passed out pretty quickly.

8/11 Mon, we woke up and since we had to check out to move hotels, we were out of there around 10:30 or 11 or whenever checkout was. However, it was pouring! Luckily, right when we got ready to go, the rain let up just enough for us to get to the station with all our stuff without it getting TOO wet. We took the train to Iidabashi station, which is apparantly pretty close to our hotel. We wandered around for a bit, and asked for directions, but we eventually found it. I got a bag together for my night of sleeping at the capsule hotel, and then I headed out to Akiba to meet up with my friend TalimJP. He's an old school Soul Calibur player whose been living in Chiba (next prefecture over from Tokyo) for a long time. We hang out whenever I go to Tokyo.

We met up and the first thing we did was eat some Burger King! It was kind of expensive, but TJP treated me, which was really nice of him. Regardless, it tasted JUST LIKE BK back home, so I was really happy to have some American style fast food, which I love so very very much. After that, we walked around a bunch of random stores in Akihabara. I was looking for a BerryZ Koubou CD that has the song Dschinghis Khan on it. So after a buncha searching, I found a single for like, 600 yen, but I decided to check a buncha other stores, too. We eventually checked a store that had a TON of H!P CDs, so I ended up getting their 5th album which had that song, as well as like, 10 others that I don't have for like, 2000 yen. I was pretty pleased with the purchase. We went to the Mandarake also, and I found a copy of Asuka 120% Burning Fest Excellent or whatever for like, 1050 yen, which is relatively cheap.

After that, we hung out at Try Tower and played some tekken/demon bride. It was fun, and once we were done, we walked around some more. We eventually stopped off at the EXELSIOR cafe or whatever it's called, and got these peach smoothie drinks. They were really good, and we just sat there chilling. I managed to leech a bit of wireless, well, enough to get a phone number and a small map of where I needed to go for the capsule hotel. After that, it was getting late, so I walked to the subway station and took it to the stop I needed to get to. Once I got there to Asakusa (where the capsule hotel is), I walked to the nearest hotel and just asked for directions to the capsule hotel. They gave me good directions, and I got to the capsule hotel no prob. It's only 2400 yen a night, which is super cheap! I got there around 8ish, and got in my capsule. This one was diff from most. It was bigger, but there were no lockers for your stuff. Thankfully, I didn't have a suitcase, only a small bag, so it fit on the shelf that was there no problem. I got free wireless in the capsule somehow and so I spent the night talking on the internet. I used the bath before I went to bed, too, and then slept for a long time. I woke up in the middle of the night to a small earthquake. A bit unsettling, but disaster of that magnitude doesn't happen to me, so I didn't sweat it. Once it stopped shaking I went back to sleep. I probably got 10 hours of sleep that night, which was great.

8/12 Tues – I got up and went to the bath, and got out of there. It was about 9:30 at that point. There was a 10 min 1000 yen haircut place closeby, so I decided to get a haircut while I was there since I felt like my hair really was getting too long. The haircut wasn't anything special, but the barber was nice and talked to me a bunch. I had to wait for like, 20 min, but it was cool because I was reading this one majhong manga while I was waiting. Recently, I've been big into reading majhong manga, so I was enjoying it.

After I got out of there, I decided to walk to the Ueno area, which a guy we met at the bar on Sunday night suggested that we go for interesting things in Tokyo area. It was relatively close (for me), so I just looked at a conveniently placed map and started walking. I ended up walking in the wrong direction for a bit, so I had to kinda turn myself around. Once I figured out the way, I was doing fine.

I ran into a book off, and went inside just to browse. I found the Usagi Majhong first 5 volumes for 100 yen each! Sweet! I've been reading that because of the Usagi arcade game which I play, but I've only got the chance to read it at a manga cafe, so it's nice having it at home to read, too. I walked up this stairway that reached around Ueno station, and there was this group of 5 guys on the overpass getting photographed or something. I guess they were famous, but I had no idea who they were, and I just kept walking and looked for where to go next. I ended up seeing a sports clothing store with a clearance sale, so I ended up getting a couple of shirts for work marked down from 60 bucks to 10 bucks. I then went to a nearby arcade I spotted trying to find a bathroom. I finally did, so I used that, and I saw that they had the new JuBeat! Plus it was only 100 yen unlike most places which had it for 200 yen. I played that, and then I headed out of there. I walked around America-town there, and picked up another shirt for 500 yen for work. After wandering around there for a while, I got some food. After that, I realized I was right next to Ueno Park. I didn't really know what it was, but I've never been there before. It was a big park but it had a lot of other stuff there, statues and stuff like that. The weirdest part is that I saw a guy who looked EXACTLY like my cousin Michael. Like, I've seen people that look like other people, but this guy looked so much like my cousin, I seriously thought to myself “Wait, is he in Japan right now?” It wasn't him, but wow, for everyone reading this, just realize that somewhere in the world, there might be a clone of you, too!

Anyways, they had a zoo there at the park, but my bag was already heavy from carrying so much stuff, and entrance was like, 25 bucks, and I didn't quite feel like going on my own. From there, I just decided to walk back to Iidabashi from Ueno because I had time to kill before I could check into my room. I navigated my way back and I finally made it. It was a bit earlier than check-in time, but they said that since the room was ready, I could check in. I checked in and used the computer, and just relaxed for a bit before going out again. I walked around a bit and explored (but with a lighter bag load this time) and decided to just head to Big Box/Mikado again, where I figured everyone would be. I met up with Ari (floe) and Ricky there, and we got some McDonalds. We just chilled there and ate and stuff. Big Box was absolutely packed though. There must have been at least 75 people crowded around those machines. I couldn't believe the sheer amount of people for just a random night that didn't even have a tournament. I just spent the rest of the time chilling there and then I headed home when it got late.

8/13 Wed – I woke up, and since I had to pick up Art (Sabin) and Kara from the station. I just hung around and talked on IRC until they finally showed up around 5 something along with Art's friend Micchi. After that, Art and Kara got showered and whatever, and then we went to Big Box. Art takes forever in the shower so it was like, 2 more hours after that. We left around 8 and got to big box pretty soon after. I ran into Ryan when we got in, and me, him, and Micchi went out walking around. We ended up at the Hub in Takadanobaba across the street. We ended up getting some drinks, and then Art and Kara come walking on in unexpectedly. Jonlo, Ryan's roommate at the new hotel also came, so we all just kinda hung out for a while until it was time to go home.

8/14 Thurs – I ended up not sleeping well at all because Kara stole the one blanket that we were sharing (we had to share a bed since Art took up too much space on his bed and snores and stuff) like, 4 times, after pulling it over to my side, it would end up completely over her), and since the AC was up too much, and since Art was snoring really loud, it was literally impossible to sleep. I ended up going down to the basement where it was warm right near the laundry room and just slept there. I'm surprised staff didn't kick me out, but whatever. I got back up, and I ended up getting a sore throat from sleeping with no blanket with the cold AC on me for like, an hour or so (before I wasn't able to fall back asleep). I asked for another blanket to be delivered to the room, and it was, no problem, but sucks that it had to be crappy for even one night.

Anyways, after everyone was up, the three of us plus Ryan and Jonlo went to some pasta restaurant, and it ended up being surprisingly good. After that, we all went to big box again. It was around that time that I met up with Dan, who just got to the station Big Box is at. We met up, and while everyone else went to Big Box, we went to Mikado for blazblue and stuff. We ended up meeting up with Tushar (Hellfromabove) and we played a buncha matches and stuff. Ryan showed up at Mikado too, so we all ended up playing for a while. Tushar got hungry, so him, Dan, and myself ended up getting some Yoshinoya before playing at Mikado some more. I played against Ryan for a while in Demon Bride as well, until he had to go, pretty much. After that, me and Dan wandered over to Big Box to see what was up.

We got to Big Box just in time to see the American team lose. Apparantly there was some controversy regarding the teams and stuff, and the American team got screwed over because they had to re-do sets they already won for no reason, but whatever, not getting into it. Anyways, the guys on the team were pretty annoyed and just wanted to get out of there. We went back to their hotel for a bit and then we decided to go to Shinjuku and get some food. The group that went ended up being: Me, Dan, Justin, Ricky, Peter (flashmetroid), Henry (censei) and Hsien. We found this small place that had Yakitori, (chicken on a stick). We ate there, and when we finished, we went to some random arcades and the guys played some UFO catchers. They're pretty hardcore about it, and while I wouldn't spend the money on it, I really enjoyed watching them play. Afterwards, everyone headed back to Big Box, and we met up with Kara there. Daigo and those guys wanted to do purikura (Print Club) with Kara, so they did that, and then me, Kara, and Dan went to Shakeys and had some dinner there. After that, we headed back home and played art in some SFIV and eventually went to bed or something.

Ok that's all for now! I'll detail the actual SBO tournament next blog entry! Then after that, I'll go over this past weekend. I've got plenty of free time at work, so it's all good, lol.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Tokyo Trip - Part 1

2009-08-19T03:57:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, I'm not gonna waste time with a long intro:

8/6 Wed - I went to work, and pretty much packed up and went straight to Kobe. I got there a bit early, so I went to McDonalds, got some food, killed some time at the Tekken arcade, but people stopped playing me, so I had some time to kill. I walked over to Magical Space (keep in mind this is with my luggage) and guess who's there? Andre. We ended up talking for a while before I headed out. I got on the bus and began my long long journey to Tokyo. It wasn’t as long as last year’s trip by local trains, but it was a long night bus ride. I took some Dramamine to help myself fall asleep, and I had earplugs, but the dude sitting next to me was kinda up in my business, so I woke up a few times from that. Overall tho, I ended up sleeping “enough”. Those random rest stops really helped, though, getting something to drink, using the bathroom etc. Def not the most comfortable form of travel, but for only 4250 yen, it was totally worth it. Finally I ended up in Tokyo…

8/7 Thurs – I got to Tokyo, and I have my evo bag with stuff in it as well as my big suitcase about half filled. I took the train 2 station to Akihabara. It’s about 8AM at this point. I walk to the 24 hour McDonalds, get a free iced coffee (the ticket came with the bus ride). I’m not a coffee fan, but throwing enough sweetener in it made it bearable to drink. I tried to connect to a wireless connection, hoping McDonalds would have one, but nothing. I ended up walking around and finding a manga café and just getting an open seat for 3 hours. I got in the manga café, freshened up (shaved, brushed my teeth), and just used the internet for a while. I’m currently reading the Saki manga, and I bought vol 1-2, but they had 3-5 there at the manga café, so I read those. I’m still waiting to see what happens in volume 6. After killing time there, stuff was now open around Akihabara. I went to a few arcades and stuff (kind of a pain because carrying my suitcase around to these places sucked). I played a couple random games, but not too many people were playing. I decided to head to Harajuku to get the concert tickets for myself and Andy (Capps). Walking through that place is annoying enough, cause theres a ton of people. Walking through there with my suitcase was even more annoying.

I ended up finding the ticket place. They had these great 1st floor seats for 10,000 yen, but they didn’t have 2 tickets next to each other, which would have made it pointless. It was either 20,000 yen 1st floor seats or 9,000 yen 2nd floor seats, so I went with the 2nd floor.

After that, I decided to walk to Shibuya, which was only one train station away. It was pretty hot, and dragging my luggage was a pain, but I didn’t have anything else to do. I went and played some Tekken at this small arcade in Shibuya called Vegas, but right when I sat down, Ryan (Fubarduck) texted me and said he was on his way. We were supposed to meet at this station called Ochanomizu. I played a bit more and found my way there. I waited a bit and Ryan showed up. We met up and found our way to the hotel.

Unlike a normal hotel, the hotel we decided to stay in was a Japanese-style inn called a Ryokan. It seemed decent enough, but I wasn’t too impressed with it at first. We got in the room, and dropped our stuff off. We both took showers and got ready. We headed to Takadanobaba station after that, and proceeded to go to “Big Box” arcade, which is pretty much where all the top SFIV players hang out and play. I met up with various peeps, and then pretty much hung out there all night, and then headed back to the hotel and got some sleep.

8/8 Fri – I woke up and used the public bath at the hotel. However, it was quite possibly the worst public bath ever. The washup places on the side were subpar, no water pressure, couldn’t really set the temp of the water. Plus, there were no towels there or anything, I had to go back and get my towel from my room. No toothbrushes there, etc, like all the capsule hotel public baths have. Then, there were 3 small baths there. One was outside with lukewarm water, making it not worth going into. The one that had hot water had all this rust just chilling on the bottom of the bath. It was really gross, and there was a ton of rust around that bath, too. It was pretty much like they never cleaned that bath, which makes me question the water itself. The third bath was all cold water, and I definitely wasn’t messing with that. Oh well. This day was pretty relaxing for the most part. I managed to find a way to walk to Akihabara from the hotel really quickly. Ryan got back really late the night before, and apparently drank something he probably shouldn’t have, so he was feeling pretty bad. I hung out in arcades for a while and then once Ryan woke up, I went back to the hotel and we met up. We went to Royal Host and had a small lunch before heading out. We went to big box again, but there was like, nobody there, I guess they were already at this big “God’s Garden” tournament or something. I went and found Mikado, and ended up playing Blazblue, Arcana, and Demon Bride for a while. I went back to Big Box to check what Ryan was up to, and he was pretty much on his way out, cause most people were gone at that point. I said bye to him and headed to Shinjuku to meet up with Andy.

I got to Shinjuku a bit early, and figured I would just kill time at the arcade where we were gonna meet. The thing is, I completely lost my sense of direction there (which almost NEVER happens to me in Japan). It took me about 40 minutes to get somewhere about 10 minutes away. I also really had to go to the bathroom, so I went to this taito station. It was 6 floors, and had a bathroom on like, the 3rd, 5th, and 6th floor. I went to the 5th floor, but someone was there. The 6th floor bathroom was a urinal only, and then finally I went to the 3rd floor bathroom and relieved myself. Anyways, after searching for what felt like forever, I finally managed to find my way to the area I needed to be. I went to the “BATTLE ARENA” at Club Sega Shinjuku, and waited for a bit. Nobody was playing BB, so I decided to play some dude in Demon Bride. After I beat him, nobody played me, and I beat the game, and then right when I finish, these 3 guys go and play. I guess they knew they would get scraped and just let me finish my game. Oh well. I got some ice cream from the vending machine there (Ice cream vending machines in summer are gdlk), and right then, Andy shows up! We go get some food at McDonalds and then head to Mikado. There, we end up playing Arcana for a while, and then some Blazblue and a few other games. I met up with Kyle, one of the US qualified for SBO. After a while, me and Andy headed back to the room and slept for a while. Ryan got in around 7AM and woke us up and pretty much kicked me and andy out of bed so him and his friend could sleep there (even tho he said he was staying at his friend’s place in Shinjuku). I was kinda annoyed that I got kicked out of the room I paid for, especially since had I known I was getting kicked out at 7AM, I would have went to bed earlier than 2:30AM, but I let it slide and used it as an opportunity to hang out with Andy.

Saturday: After getting up, showering, and whatever, we got the inn breakfast. It was ok, Japanese style, and there wasn’t a huge variety. None of the food was that great imo, but it was worth going and getting once. However, it was far too early and I valued sleeping in during my vacation far more than breakfast for most of the time. After that, we walked to Akiba and went to the 24 hour McDonalds and got some drinks. We chilled there until arcades and stuff opened at around 10. We went to a few arcades and killed some time. After that, we went to Nakano where the concert was. We got some food beforehand and then walked to the concert venue. We waited in the line to buy stuff (I wanted to get glowsticks for the concert), and so we got in the long long line. I noticed a sign that said in Japanese “Except for Wotas (Wota = idol otaku), free copies of Morning Musume’s newest single”. I asked Andy if he had a copy, and he didn’t, so I told him he should go get one, they gave one to him, and asked me if I wanted one. I told them I already have it in Japanese, and they were like “huh, he speaks Japanese?” I guess I kind of confused them, lol. It was cool though, because Andy got a free CD. I think it was one of those guys who bought a ton of copies trying to get the promo tickets for a handshake event or something.

Anyways, after waiting in the line for a bit, the guy kinda keeping tabs on the line said that anyone on the 2nd floor gets to go in first, so people waiting in the goods line can get first dibs. Me and Andy switch to that line where there’s about 10 people in front of us at most. Now the way the other line worked was that there were a buncha steps, and at the top, was the goods line. However, that was inside the building, so there had to be space between the building and the outside line for people to walk through, so only when the inside line would shorten, would the guy in charge start letting other people wait. But at one point, the line got too short, and a ton of random people just started walking inside without waiting in the long line like they were supposed to. And like, one guy did it, and then like, at least 50 people followed him. This whole time, the guys in line behind were going absolutely nuts. I thought there was going to be a riot because 50 random people just walked in and avoided this really really long line. Eventually, the guy in charge (who was busy trying to do other stuff) comes back and tells those people that they have to go back. It was pretty funny while it lasted though, especially watching from another line.

Anyways, we got in, and walked right to the goods booth inside, waited a total of 3 minutes or so while Andy figured out what he wanted, and then we got our stuff and got our seats. The way the seats were was the first area of the balcony had to be people sitting only, because I guess if they jump and fall, its dangerous, so no standing or anything. However, since we were in the back part of the 2nd floor balcony, it was ok for us to stand up. We were in the first row of the back part too, so nobody in front of us, and the people in the front section were all sitting, so I was able to see with absolutely nothing in the way (tho it was still farther than where I wanted to be).

As far as the concert, it was awesome. The only problem was that it wasn’t JUST morning musume, it was all the groups of Hello Project, and while that’s cool because I’ve been listening to BerryZ Koubou a lot recently, it felt like everyone got practically no time. However, it was still a lot of fun, I just kinda wished I knew more of the songs, as opposed to the morning musume concert where I knew most of the ones they did. But yeah, it was still really fun, and I’m glad me and Andy were able to go together.

After that, since we were in Nakano, we decided to check out the area. We went to this shopping area, and there were a ton of anime stores and stuff. We also found this idol store, but since I was only looking for one specific CD, I didn’t buy anything. They had a ton of stuff tho, tons of photos, and random shirts, towels, etc. It was like my morning musume store back home, but not as charming, haha. We were looking for TRF, the arcade where famous players played 3S and other games. It ended up being on the 4th floor, but when we went there, it looked like all the stores on the 4th floor were gone, and our feet were mad tired, so we ended up just stopping. We did find this one good Tekken arcade which had like, 10 back to back setups, it was ridiculous, but not being in the mood to play (especially with a ton of godlike players already there), we just headed out. We went back to Takadanobaba and hung out at Mikado and Big Box for a bit, before going to Shakeys to eat some pizza. I’ve seen Shakeys around, but I’ve actually never had it before. It’s pretty much just like American Pizza. It was awesome, and I’m really glad that I can get affordable American pizza in Japan (since I know of one shakeys location in Osaka).

I don’t quite remember what we did after that, probably hung out at Big Box until we decided to head out to Akiba, where I had to find a capsule hotel for Andy. I went to the one that saved my life that one time last year, and since it was a Saturday (special day I guess), it was only 3000 yen instead of 3700, which is a great deal. He got checked in, and I walked back to the hotel, which was really close to that place actually. I was really tired from lack of sleep, so I went to bed right away.

To be continued…

Save the arcades - Arcade UFO

2009-08-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

Hey all, small update.

My good friend Ryan owns an arcade in Texas called Arcade UFO. He's part of a contest led by stride gum, as found on the site here:
http://savethearcades.stridegum.com/

What you do is play a little flash game, and afterwards, you can donate the points to an arcade. The arcade with the most points at the end gets $25,000 to use for their arcade.

So what you can do is play the flash game, sign up, and then donate the points to Arcade UFO. It's an easy game, and if you're bored, it's something to do. But yeah, help out my friend and his awesome Japanese style arcade! Thanks all!

-Rob

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Moving and stuff.

2009-08-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

Ok guys, it's time to update this thing, since it hasn't been updated in a while.

The first thing you might notice is the layout change. I decided to go from my old template and change to the new current one. Quite a bit of contrast, but it's for the better, I think. As for the banner, it's temporary, and you'll either “get it” or you won't. If you don't get it, it won't be funny/interesting anyways.

Anyways, I had a busy week. I pretty much did all my packing last tuesday. I got almost completely ready. I decided that since I had thursday off for moving, I could go out to Kobe on Wednesday night and play some Demon Bride. So I got home from work and went to Kobe. I got some food and then checked out the two main arcades, the Sanx and the Magical Space. Nobody was playing at the Sanx, so I went to Magical Space. They upped the round count from 2/3 rounds to 3/5 rounds (thankfully because 100 yen for 3/5 rounds is bad enough, but 100 yen for 2/3 is absolutely redic outside of a loc test environment). I played for a bit and beat a couple guys and ended up beating the game. I left and got food, and then decided to walk around Sannomiya. I went into the “Labi”, a big electronics store, and I saw that they had a small netbook for 30,000 yen discounted. It has a long battery life, comes with a case, a mouse, and has a decent sized screen, and the keyboard is big enough for me to use and not make errors when typing. It was very much an impulse buy, but I felt it was worth it, and I was happy to get a 2nd computer I could take wherever. After that, I went back to Magical Space, I played more DB for a bit and beat a couple guys, then this one Jin player that I play against in Blazblue was there and played me. He uses Asuma, and does redic damage with combos. I beat him a couple times, but he got 5 wins in a row on me. During that time, Andre showed up! This is the 2nd time I've randomly run into him while at arcades in Sannomiya. We ended up hanging out for the rest of the night, and I caught the last train back. I finished up my packing and went to bed whenever.

Thursday, I woke up, and just chilled on the computer until it was time to move. I got all my stuff moved from both the apt and from the basement of the board of education building in like, an hour. Right after that, I went and got my foreigners card changed because it's illegal if I don't change it since I moved. After that, as I was coming home, I ran into a friend of Bill's that was staying for a couple weeks. We went to 7-11 and I headed back to Bills place and hung out there for a while. At about 4PMish, I went back home and started unpacking and getting things set. I managed to unpack everything and do my laundry and it took about 2 hours and 45 minutes. However, I threw all the empty boxes, plus all the random garbage in my tatami room, and I still haven't cleaned it up cause I'm lazy and stuff. One of these days, ill deal with it. I also made a small mound of stuff I'm going to sell, and I'll deal with that soon, hopefully. I took my netbook over to the community center and just sat down and used their free wireless. I didn't have word/excel/ppt on that computer, so I downloaded Open office for free. Yay. I got home and had a hard time falling asleep due to being in a new place or sleeping late or something. Oh well.

Friday I got up, went to work, did my last day, and came home. I decided to go to Kobe after work, and I went there, and hung out for a while and then played some DB that night. That same Jin player was there again. I played against him a bunch. While I mostly lost, I won every once in a while and felt like I was getting better.

I stayed in a manga cafe that night, read some more of the Usagi manga (manga about majhong). I went to Osaka after I woke up. I stopped by Monte Carlo and nobody was really playing anything. I did play a round of Higurashi majhong, though. It was a lot of fun and I totally owned my opponent. It was a teacher of them or something, and my “prize” for winning was seeing the teacher laying across some school chairs set out with like, curry on her stomach, with the implication of eating it off of her, and she was babbling about how embarrassing it was, and how as a schoolteacher she didn't think she would be doing that sort of thing or something. I thought it was really funny though, so I'm glad I won. I'll pick a diff character next time and see what kind of redic thing the other characters are forced to do when they lose.

I went and played Tekken for a bit, and I played this one Feng player. He demoted me, and then I beat him 3-0 the next match. He then switched to Mokujin, lost the first match, then played the next match and beat me, but did like, charging up after he won (which is like, really cocky and pretty much saying HAHAHA I BEAT YOU). So instead of playing him more, I was just like “well, he can have fun playing the computer then.” I wasn't really mad, but him thinking it would get me playing more was wrong, and it ended up being counter productive for him. I decided it was time to head to Ko-hatsu anyways. I got there and Tall Litchi Man was already there. I didn't enter the Rumble Fish 2 tourney going on, instead I played a buncha BB against TLM. Andrew (Reno) showed up, as well as Mich and her friend. A couple Tokyo players came, too, Dekka-cho and Chomi or something like that. Me and Reno teamed up. We played the Mich team first, and we both lost, haha. Then we played Dekka-cho's team in the RR. Reno lost to the Kilik player, and I beat that guy, then got to the last round against Dekka-cho, but lost to some unblockable I've never seen before. Oh well, so we were out of the tourney. Dekka-cho's team ended up winning, so grats to them.

Next was the BB tourney. I didn't have a partner, so I put myself down for singles. I got partnered with a Carl player who goes by the name Aruto. He's a decent player but does poorly in tournies for the most part. He did win the tourney last week, but I wasn't there to see it, but I was hoping he could do well, but wasn't counting on it. 13 teams total (26 people), and the last game of the “ko-hatsu matsuri” which is why there were so many tournies in a row.

We got a bye and so it took a while for us to play. The way the brackets were set out, there were a buncha randoms and mostly average players on one side (plus Mekasue, who got partnered with Reno, even tho Reno has only been playing for like, a month), and then except Mekasue, all the really good players on the other side. Our first round matchup was Galileo (who beat me last tournament with his super solid Tager) and his partner, who's prolly the top Osaka Hakumen. We played RPS. If we won, we would have put Carl vs Tager, and me vs Hakumen. However, we lost, so they put Hakumen vs Carl and me vs Tager. The Hakumen player owned my partner. I played Galileo, lost the first round, but somehow won the next two. I then played the hakumen player. Same thing, lost the first round, but won the next two! Phew, we were still in! However, we had to play the Tsukasa/Tall litchi Man team. They won the past 3-4 team tournies they played in, so they were favorited to win this, too.

We played RPS again and I lost again, so instead of putting carl vs Nu (generally the better option), they put Tall Litchi Man vs the carl instead. It was looking grim, but he managed to win! I had to play Tsukasa next. I got perfected the first round. I won round 2, though. Round 3 was really close, and I had him post burst. He did his normal DD4DD thing, I blocked it and went (wait, if he does it again, I can counter assault after the first one, and hit him before he recovers). He threw a sword at me, I went through it and killed him! We beat the team favorited to win! The worst part for Tsukasa is that I don't think he's ever beaten me in tourney before, even tho he does better than me generally, he still hasn't beaten me in tourney play yet.

Next was the finals. Since the other side of the bracket was weird, I felt like it would be easier than the match I just had. Mekasue actually lost to this turtling Taokaka player, though. I was super surprised, but it meant I didn't have to play Mekasue in the finals. Anyways, The team was turtle Taokaka and random Nu. We lost the RPS AGAIN, and they actually put the Nu against Carl. My teammate won again, though! W00t! So this means that if I beat the Taokaka, we win the tournament. I win the first round. The Taokaka takes the second round, and I end up perfecting him in the last round! My partner was really excited and we did a double high five, lol. Unlike most Kohatsu tournaments, there were actually prizes for this one! Me and Aruto got a poster, and we got to choose from a box of prizes. They had an idolm@ster figure I already had, a couple quiz magical academy figs, a Lucky Star figure, a big body pillow of some character (dunno who), and a Fate (from nanoha) figure. I took the fate figure for the Nana factor. I was really happy to win. After the tournament, they turned on their Demon Bride machine at Ko-hatsu. I played that a bunch with the other guys, and learned a lot. After a while, everyone left to go get drunk, so I just got a beef bowl at Matsuya and then headed to Namba.

In Namba, I went to Athena for a bit, beat one guy, and then he left after I beat him in DB. I just beat the game after that and headed to the capsule hotel. I wanted a shower and a place to stay where I could get a decent amount of sleep, so I figured it would be the best solution. However, the guy in the capsule RIGHT near me was snoring really loud. Since I now use an Evo bag and not my old Adidas bag, I forgot my earplugs. They were selling them there, but for 3 bucks. Ugh. So I paid the 300 yen and got the earplugs. I slept well after that. I woke up, hopped in the hot tub, and headed out. I was gonna meet up with Andre again at like, 1PM. It was about 10AM when I got outta there. I started walking, and this one old guy was crossing against the light, so the car beeped at him. The old guy got really mad and all up in the driver's face and stuff, even though he was clearly in the wrong. Good times. I went to Athena, and Rajio, the bang player that tries to use a ton of diff characters was there, and he was playing against Braces Noel Kid. I said hi to BNK and then after he lost, I played against Rajio. I got 15 wins in a row against his random characters. Keep in mind, the first time I played this guy, he got 10 wins in a row against me, and we tended to just go even after that. So getting a ton of wins in a row against him felt really good. I gave the poster to BNK because I wasn't gonna hang it up and I def didn't feel like bringing it home with me. He was super happy like he just got the best present ever, and was very thankful, so I'm glad I was able to make his day.

After that, I played Rajio for a bit, and then the final score was around 23-3. I left to go to Kobe after that and said bye to BNK.

I met up with Andre at the Magical Space and we walked around Kobe just talking and stuff and picking up stuff. I bought a pair of headphones since my other pair just died. After a while of hanging around and stuff, we got some food at Cocos. I got a salad and a small cheese curry, and Andre tried the recommended Cheese Curry. He said it was good but not like, OMG. After that, we went to Magical Space, and I played some DB, pwning the n00bs as usual, and then out of nowhere, Plaid Jacket Man shows up! He plays the same character as me in DB (as I saw in his vids), and I was talking to him for a bit. We played, and I got a few wins against him, and then he got 2 in a row against me. Andre wanted to head out, and I was done, too, so I said bye and GGs to Plaid Jacket Man, and went to the bus station to catch my bus home. The thing is, it comes 2x an hour, so I JUST missed it. I decided to go and check out the RASHABANG to find the Saki Manga that I've been looking for. They had it there, so I picked up vol 1 and 2. I walked back to the bus station and by that time, it was just about time for the bus to leave, so I got on and it left shortly after that. I got home and just goofed off on the internet for a while.

Yesterday was my first day at my new school. It was...kinda similar to the other one, lol...

anyways, I got home, took a nap, and then just messed around on the internet again. I did get my credit card in the mail, though, so I can buy that new netbook that I've been looking at. I'll prolly do it sometime after my Tokyo trip.

Anyways, I just have today and tomorrow before my trip. I'm really excited for it, and I'll do my best at SBO. Hope to see as many people there as possible! Take care, all~.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL - Season 2 - Chance Encounter

2009-07-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

Ok time for my blog again.

Friday night I stayed up late playing BB and stuff.

Saturday I slept till about 10ish or so, took my time in the morning, and headed out around 1ish or so. The bus to Kobe only comes once an hour, and I forgot to check the time, and kinda just left whenever. I stopped by the ATM and walked to the bus stop, and conveniently, I got there about 2 minutes before the bus showed up. Not too bad for not being careful.

I got to Kobe around 230ish or so. I stopped by Game in Coo and checked out their DB setup, 100 yen for 2/3 rounds, eew. I played against some guy who was about to lose to the final boss. I used Nina, and left after I lost to the final boss. I went to this one katsudon place across the street and got a katsudon. The one I got had 2 eggs on top, and it was really good. I finished the whole thing. I checked out Magical Space after that. It was 100 yen for 2/3 rounds too. I went to the Sega arcade across the street, and like usual, it just so happened that there was a BB event going on. It was a freeplay thing, and then a tourney. I got there 15 minutes before the tourney.

The tourney started, some notable players that were there were Naaga, a Nu player who beat me the first time I entered an SBO qual for BB. This Jin player that also beat me at the last tourney I went to, and mashy Noel was there, of course. There were 15 people total. They made 3 pools of 4 people, and 1 pool of 3 people.

I was in a pool with a ragna, a litchi, and a taokaka. I played the Ragna first, and beat him pretty bad. I played the taokaka next, and beat him pretty badly too. I then played the litchi last and ended up double perfecting him. He kinda had this like “wow I just got owned” look on his face.

The top 2 from each bracket went onto the single elim 8 man bracket, and the bottom 2 went onto the “consolation bracket”, another single elim 8 man bracket. I played the ragna I played first round again and beat him 2-0. Next, I played this Rachel player and beat him 2-0. After that was the finals against Naaga. I beat his nu 2-0, so I just won the tourney…without losing a single round…

Anyways, Mashy noel somehow managed to mash his way to finals. It was looking grim, but he managed to mash his way to victory. I was mad surprised, but Mashy Noel took the consolation bracket victory! He was really happy, especially when everyone clapped for him. I talked to him for a little and told him it was cool that Noel won both tournaments. Especially since in most tournies I enter, there’s only 2 Noel players, me and him.

I played some demon bride against the BB guys after that, it was 100 yen for 3/5 rounds, which is tolerable. I played Nina and I got a couple wins, but I felt like I peaked with her already and the game has only been out for a very short time. After a bit, I left and headed to Osaka. I stopped by this one small arcade that has like, 2 demon bride machines in High Def, and it’s 3/5 rounds 2 credits for 100 yen. I played one credit as Noah, and one as Yui. I couldn’t decide which I liked better.

After that I went to Athena, and they only had one machine there, and it was a Saturday night so it was crowded, so instead of waiting, I just played AH2 against this Fiona player for a while. After that, I played some BB. I beat a nu player and then this Hakumen player challenged me like, 8 times in a row. As I was sitting there playing, this dude came up to me and was like (in English) “Are you Rob?” I was like “yeah?” he was like “I’m EvilLinkz, I read your blog!” I was like “oh snap”. It was really random that he showed up. He mentioned that he was coming to Japan, but for him to go to Athena and just kinda come up to me and be like “Hey are you Rob?” really threw me off. Anyways, apparently, him and his friend were walking around Namba for like, 2 hours looking for their hotel. They had the name of the place (Semba Toyoko Inn), but no directions, no closest station, no address cause they forgot to print it out.

So I left Athena and went with them to a convenience store, but they had never heard of “Semba”, so we went to the station. I looked on the subway map, and there was a station called “Sembashi-oosomething”. I figured it was worth a shot, so we went there. It was way out of the way, took about a half hour to get there. I was wondering why they got a hotel in such a remote place, but we went through with it. I went and asked the station guy where the Toyoko Inn was around there, but this guy, contrary to normal train guys started like, spazzing out and yelling really fast in Japanese something like “THERE ISN’T A HOTEL HERE YOU HAVE TO GO TO PLATFORM ONE AND GO TO MORIMACHI STATION THERE ISNT ONE HERE DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!” I was like “umm…ok…” and then I just went to the manager’s office and asked them. They checked their computers and found no toyoko inn’s in the area. They said the only 4 in the area are:
Higashi Umeda, Juso, Shin Osaka, and Temmabashi. I called Higashi Umeda’s Toyoko Inn and they said they had no reservation. I called the Temmabashi one, and they said the same thing. Just then, one of the guys came out saying they have the # for the Semba Toyoko Inn. I thanked them, called them and they had the reservation. I asked what the closest station was, and they said “Honmachi on the midosuji line”. That stop is literally 2 stops, or a 4 minute train ride from where we started in Namba. Ugh.

We took the train a half hour back, and got to Honmachi. I knew the area pretty well, and it turns out the Shinsaibashi walk that I used to do all the time has an area at the beginning called “Semba”. Ugh. I wish I knew that earlier. Oh well. So we get to the hotel and they check in, and I head off. In about 15 minutes, I managed to walk to the 8 hour internet café. I got the LAST mat booth, and went to sleep for a while.

I got out of there around 8:30. I went to Athena, and there was a dude playing! He was using Shiffon, the fairy on a clown head. I used Noah and won a game, then switched to Yui after he beat me. I won like, 8 games in a row with her, but I had to go so I let him win. I walked back to the hotel, picked up Kevin and Kelvin, and then went BACK the direction I just came from. We walked through shinsaibashi, but they didn’t want to stop anywhere. We got to Namba and went to the Taito station to kill some time. Kelvin wanted to play the gundam pod game, so he played it, and thought it was cool and stuff. They recorded some vids of it and then we left. We went to Matsuya and got some beef bowls. After that, we walked around the Den, but they didn’t buy much of anything, nor did they spend much time looking. They bought a couple things, but overall, not much. I was getting tired and wanted to play DB, so I went to Athena and they followed me there. I proceeded to play DB, arcana, etc. I could see they were bored, but I guess they didn’t know how to get back, so they waited for me to leave before they left. I left around 3:45 to go to my friend Andrew (Reno)’s place in Nishonomiya.

I said bye to Kevin and Kelvin. Apparantly they’re in Osaka for like, 8 days, but have no plans except Spa World on Monday. Makes me wonder why they’re even here, but whatever, not really my problem. Hopefully they find interesting stuff to do otherwise I dunno how they’re gonna spend 8 days without ANY idea of what they’re gonna do in Osaka, or kansai in general. So much cool stuff, but they really don’t have any idea what they want to do, seems like a bit of a waste, but hopefully they found good things to do like, go to Kyoto and see temples, go to Nara and see the deer, go to Kobe and eat some kobe beef, check out himeji castle, etc.

Anyways, so I went to Reno’s place, we chilled and played some SC2 for a while. It was nice to just hang out. He had this Chun Li wallscroll that his GF didn’t like, so he gave it to me. It is kind of otaku tho, so I dunno if I’ll hang it up or not…lol…after that, his friend Ayako came and we watched The Dark Knight. I’ve never seen TDK before, so it was nice to watch it. I liked it, tho I thought it was a little too long. After that, I headed home and began my next week…

Lets see, today is Wed, so I move tomorrow, and might not have internet for a while...this weekend I've got a tourney on Sat for SC3 and for BB at Ko-hatsu. Sunday I don't have plans. Next week Wed begins my Tokyo trip for about 2 weeks. I'm really excited for it.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Evo 2K9

2009-07-22T18:40:00.001-07:00

Hey all, time for my weekly update:

As you know, I went to Vegas for evo.

Wed, I had my last day of work before the trip. I was really tired, so I took a long nap right after work. I hung out and played some TvC and HnK against Bill. I remembered that we sessioned in HnK a long time ago, but I completely forgot all of my Rei combos and stuff, so I was just messing around with Mr Heart, too. It was pretty fun. I left after a while and went home and stayed up late getting ready and stuff, playing games online, etc. I went to bed around 6AM, and woke up around 10:15. I got ready and left close to 11. Caught the bus and went to Sannomiya. It was about 12:45ish when I got there, and I caught the 1PM bus to the airport. That took about an hour 15, so I got to the airport around 2:15. I got checked in, and since my flight didn’t leave until 5PMish, I had plenty of time to kill. I found a good spot to sit, where I could plug my computer and a lan cable in, and just pretty much sat there on the internet talking on IRC for a couple hours until they started boarding.

We boarded and I began the looong plane flight. It was around 10 hours and 15 minutes. It would have been about a half hour shorter, but some Japanese dude said he was “sick” and couldn’t stay on the plane. So we had to turn around, get him off the plane (tho apparently he was ok, just didn’t want to fly or some dumb excuse like that), and then go back to where we started. Then his friends apparently wanted to get off the plane too, but the crew was like “no”. Eventually, we started going. I have a hard time falling asleep on planes, so I was kind of in the half awake half asleep state for most of the trip. Too tired to do stuff, but too awake to be asleep. It kinda sucked. Finally I got to San Francisco. I was finally in America! It was just the airport, but it was still kinda neat. I bought a sudoku book to kill time, and then took my domestic flight to Las Vegas. I got there, got my luggage, and then I just sat down and used the free wireless at the airport to get in contact with Jason (AATOMIC), so he could pick us up. I went to the bathroom, and as I was walking out, I was about to call Colin (KaB), but I saw him going down the escalator just as I was walking past. We met up, got Colin’s luggage and I used his cell phone to meet up with Ryan (fubarduck). We met up with Jason and he gave us a ride back to the rio/gold coast. We checked in, dropped our stuff off, and hung around for a bit playing games.

After waiting a bit for some people, we went to this awesome Chicken Finger place. They had great chicken fingers (been a long time since I’ve had any), along with this awesome sauce that goes with it. It was really really good. After that, we checked out gamestop, but I didn’t see any games worth getting, so we just left. We went to Target right after that, and I got a bunch of stuff. New socks, sunglasses, a ton of slim jims, candy, toothpaste, etc. I spent about $130 on stuff, and it was well worth it.

After that, we went back to the room and played some BB. Me and Colin decided to head to the pool after that, though. We hung out there for a while, then went in the Jacuzzi for a while. We headed back to our room and just chilled there until Nas, Bell, and HFBlade came. We played more BB and just took it easy. We went to bed around 2ish. I had a hard time falling asleep, and not only that, I kinda felt a dull pain right where I had my kidney stones like, a couple years ago. I thought that I might be getting them again, so I went around and drank a ton of water and just walked around for a while (until like, 6AM). I finally fell asleep for a couple hours and woke up, and I was fine, so thankfully nothing happened, but I was still kinda worried. I woke up around 8ish for the tournament. I showered and went down to the convention center with Colin. Aksys said that they would start signups at 9AM, but they were nowhere to be found. It took them like, an hour before they even got close to being set up. They finally started taking signups and when it ended, they had 189 people signed up for the tourney.

They started it at about 12:30-1:00. Then, the beginning of the slowest tournament at evo started. The good things about the tournament:
-6 tournament setups
-190 people (lots of interest)
-really strong start
-lots of good players and hype
-no technical errors

the bad things:
-190 people takes a LONG time
-It takes even longer when people leave
-It takes a LOT longer when the tourney organizers don’t disqualify people.

What they should have done was have 1 person taking care of 2 tvs. One person is in charge of making sure that matches are played on one of the 2 tvs they’re in charge of. They should have one person with the bracket, one person with a megaphone (that actually works), and one person with the little whiteboard. 6 people or so, and it would have been way more organized. More than that, they should have DQed people after they didn’t show up for 5 minutes. I even told them once that one dude left the BUILDING to eat, and they still had his name on the board for another 15 minutes waiting on him to show up. I’m not dissing any of them in particular, because 190 people is insane, but because of that, you HAVE TO DQ PEOPLE. When there’s THAT MANY people waiting to play, telling the people who are doing it right and waiting there that they have to wait more because of people who AREN’T there is pretty insulting. That’s essentially catering to those who aren’t showing up rather than to those who are there.

That, or they could have done it in pool format, but that’s a lot harder with no prep time.

Anyways, the tourney went fine, and finally when it was all over, I was able to go out and eat. I went to TGIFridays with the #arcana crew, and just had a great time hanging out with them. After that, we went back to the room and pretty much went to sleep. I woke up around 4AM and couldn’t fall back asleep until 6AM, so I just listened to my ipod to keep myself entertained while laying there. Woke up at 8AM again, went to the main hall, watched SCIV pools and joined the team tournament. Thankfully, the BB team tourney was single elim, so it was a lot shorter. Our team got to finals, yay. Anyways, after that, Latiff wanted to play some GNT4, so we did an FT5, and I barely won 5-4. It was fun, and he’s the most solid player I’ve ever played against.

I went and ate at the buffet with Ryan after that, it was super good, and I had a buncha great food that I can’t eat here. After that, I went and gambled $1 worth in the penny slots. It was fun for the $1, and then Ryan played some roulette. It was pretty cool. After that, we went back to the room, and I met up with Mike Z, and I wanted to MM him in order to play him more because of how badly he beat me in the team tournament. I hung out there for a while playing and then I went back to the ballroom. I watched the 5v5 for a while, and then I went with Esom and Luke (Koichi) back to play SC2 in my room. I called Colin and told him we were coming. First off, I forgot my room number. Second off, I knocked on the door for like, 10 minutes, and Colin STILL didn’t answer. I was pretty pissed, so we ended up just going to TGIF again and ate some cheap appetizers. I went back and knocked again but at least he answered. I don’t know where he went, but that kinda sucked because I was looking forward to playing SC2 with those guys, but because I didn’t have a cell phone or a room key, I was “boned”. I went to bed and stayed asleep until like, 10AM.

I got up and headed over to the ballroom for SC4 finals. I watched GG finals, and then T6 finals before SC4 finals started. I watched that, and then went and played some SC2 against a couple of guys, and then went and played some more GNT4 against Latiff. I went back to the ballroom because I thought we were playing soon. Turns out we weren’t, and I ended up watching the dogface show and the HD remix finals. After that, we played our finals, I did my interview, and watched SFIV finals. It was good times. After that, we ate yet against at TGIF. Jason took me around to a grocery store so I could pick up some more stuff, and I got a slurpee at 7-11, and then went back to my room and played BB and poverty games for a while. I got packed and then around 5:15AM I headed out and went to the airport. I ended up seeing Aaron (AKA) and Travis (Klaige) at the airport, so we got some food and talked for a while, it was cool. I then got on my plane to SFO, but I was in a middle seat and had a hard time sleeping. I got on the plane to Osaka after that (tho I was ready to pass out hardcore), and apparently, I sat down, put on my blanket, and just passed out for 6 hours. That’s over half the flight right there! I just chilled for the other half of the flight and got to Japan, got my bags and took the bus to Sannomiya. That was another hour 15, I stopped by Cocos and got some cheese curry before heading home. I took the bus home, and just stayed up until 11:30 or so (to not have jet lag) and got up at 7AM the next day for work. Good times. It’s good to be back

I didn’t feel like writing much, and this was prolly really boring, but evo was fun. I won enough money to pay for my trip, so it was really worth going. I’m glad I decided to go through with it. SBO is in a couple weeks, so I’m gonna train for that I guess. Dunno my plans for this weekend, so I guess we’ll see. TTYL

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Change of pace part 2

2009-07-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

zzz…I mean, hi guys! It’s Monday and I’m surprisingly[/sarcasm] not too busy at work right now. This weekend was pretty fun overall. The past week I spent most of it playing Blazblue and mtg online. I get so annoyed at online players, but I know I’m getting better, so all that anger feels worth it because I need to be in the best shape possible for SBO.

So Friday I decided to do the fun thing and stay up late since I could sleep late. Midnite came around and I was doing fine. 1AM, still doing good, playing blazblue and then mtg vs dan. Around 2ish or so, dan had to go to bed. I ended up playing MORE bb online (not a good idea at 2:30 in the morning, but im too addicted). 4AM rolled around before I finally put down the controller. Then I decided to go online. Again, not a good idea because it took another hour before I was able to tear myself away from the computer to go to bed. So around 5:30 I was able to go to sleep. I woke up around noonish and played a bit of BB and went on the computer for a bit. I showered and left around 1:30 to meet up with EmptyShiki around 4ish. I got lucky and caught the trains going to Osaka right when I got to Ono station and to the station where I change trains at Shinkaichi. It saved me at least 15-20 minutes of pointless waiting. I ended up getting to Osaka around 3:40. I went to Subway and got a sub really quickly and then waited for EmptyShiki. I said 4PM, but since it was his first time to Namba, I expected it to be closer to 4:30 PM when he would show. I was talking to Dan a bit and while I was texting him, EmptyShiki (Case) showed up. He was actually a minute early, a nice unexpected surprise. So we walked around namba a bit, stopped off at a book off, a big tiger, sofmap, etc. Then I had to go to Athena for a 2v2 BB tourney at 6, so we went there.

I partnered with Abeshi again. There were 16 teams, and it was run in a format with 4 Round Robin brackets of 4 teams. The top 2 teams advance. The SBO players there were the first guy who qual’d with Arakune, Tsukasa with Nu, Ribaia with Nu, and myself. All 4 of us were on different teams. So I ended up in the D bracket, so we didn’t even play until like, over an hour after it started. The A bracket winner was the SBO Arakune team, 2nd place being Galileo’s Tager and Eesuke’s Carl. B bracket winner was Ribaia’s Nu and Jagar’s Rachel with 2nd place being Nyamo’s bang (actually beat Ribaia in the tourney) and another Nu, but they lost to the Mashy Noel team somehow, so they ended up in 2nd place. The C bracket winner was Tall Litchi Man and Tsukasa, with a Hakumen/Tager team in 2nd place. The scrubby Tager player that I hate playing against was there and got partnered with one of the guys who works at Athena who uses carl. Scrubby tager got OWNED tho, and I was happy to see that.

So next was the D bracket. The teams were two Taokaka’s, both were decent. A Nu/Arakune team of guys who recently started playing I think, and then a team of a Taokaka player who just started and a Litchi player who was actually pretty good. We played the Tao/Litchi team first, I beat Taokaka pretty badly. Abeshi owned the Litchi the first round, and then lost the 2nd round. He went for an astral the 3rd round, but missed, but still ended up winning the match, thankfully. Next, we played the Nu/Arakune team. The Arakune was the same guy I beat at the last Ko-hatsu tourney, and I beat him pretty bad this tourney. Abeshi owned the Nu player pretty hard. Next was the Taokaka battle. The lesser of the two players went against Abeshi first, and Abeshi barely won, but he still won. I then beat the other guy pretty bad and got a really cool airthrow near the end. So we won our bracket, and the other players played and Taokaka x2 team got 2nd. The Litchi player wasn’t bad, but his partner was worthless and couldn’t ever finish off 2 other guys, even if he beat one.

Next, the 2nd place teams put themselves in the bracket. The first place teams then, based off card order, got to pick where they wanted to put themselves in the bracket. Tsukasa/Tall Litchi man team put themselves against the Hakumen/Tager team first. We got to choose next and we put ourselves against the taokaka team again. Arakune team went against Bang team, and that meant Ribaia’s team was against Galileo’s team. We played our first match, and this time, the opponents switched who they were using vs who. They put their stronger guy against Abeshi. Abeshi looked like he was about to lose but made a huge comeback in the third round and won. I beat the other taokaka player without too much of a problem. Ribaia’s team BARELY beat the Tager/Carl team. It was a stupid match though, Nu just turtled away forever throwing swords that Tager can’t do anything about. Eesuke’s carl beat Jagar’s Rachel surprisingly, but then lost to Ribaia pretty badly. Oh well. The bang team beat the arakune team, with Nu taking down arakune, and bang taking down taokaka. Tall Litchi Man/Tsukasa team owned team Hakumen/tager.

Next was me vs Ribaia team, but Abeshi disappeared YET AGAIN, so the other team went first. Apparantly he went to the bathroom but didn’t tell anyone. Not a huge surprise tho. Anyways, Bang team lost to Tall Litchi Man team. So TLM and Tsukasa are in finals. We play Ribaia team. Abeshi beats Jagar. I play Ribaia and I fail miserably. Abeshi plays him and ALMOST beats him, but Nu recovered like, 1 or 2 frames too quickly and blocked Ragna’s super from mid screen (when it looked like she should have been hit). We then played Bang/Nu team. I played the Nu player and beat him 2 rounds in a row. Abeshi beat the bang player with a clutch blood kain at the end. So we ended up getting 3rd place!

Tall Litchi man then played Jagar’s Rachel. He was down by a ton of life in the last round, and then Jagar bursted at like, 90% hoping to turtle with like, 30 seconds left and then ended up losing at the VERY end. It was awesome, everyone went nuts. Then Tsukasa vs Ribaia ended with like, the whole “LAST HIT WINS” and Tsukasa BARELY got it. So there we go, Tsukasa/Tall Litchi Man team wins the tourney!

Anyways, they give us prizes and stuff! So me and Abeshi each got a bag of stuff for 3rd place, we got like, a small kurone keychain, a niconico song sounddrop type thing, an asuka figure in bloomers from eva, and a small higurashi figure of the green haired girl. We also got a buncha free credit tickets, and Abeshi gave them all to me as a thanks. Somewhere near the end of the tourney, Dan showed up. Because Dan talked a lot to ribaia last time, Ribaia started talking to us. He got a prize bag too, looked at it and gave it to dan saying something along the lines of “it’s a pain to bring this home, so you can have it”. Inside of it was a gode geass figure, a mikuru in a bunny suit figure, and a lucky star cake thing of some sort? Afterwards, we said bye to everyone and then went to Coco’s to eat. There, we divvied up the prizes because there was stuff I didn’t care for that Case or Dan wanted or whatever. We got some curry and ate. Case then took the ice that was in the pitcher and put it in his thermos, spilling a buncha ice in the process. The staff is gonna check it and be like WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR ICE?!

Anyways, so we left and went to some other arcades. We pretty much ended at sega avion. Case played some Garou against this one dude for a while, and I played a couple matches of Tekken. Case played some BB and is learning Nu. After he lost, he went to play TvC. The thing is, it was this one old dude playing on one of those machines that had two sticks in one machine. Generally, nobody ever challenges you when you’re playing on those, but since it was the only TvC machine there, Case wanted to play. So he kinda hovered around the old dude for a while, and the old dude was trying to ignore him, then he kinda like, reached around and put 100 yen in and pulled up a chair, and the old dude kinda gave this WTF look, and they played side by side. It was pretty funny to watch, cause it’s not something that people normally do. After that, I went and played him in TvC for a while until like, 11:30ish, when it was time to head to the manga café.

We got to the 10 hour place and got 3 mat booths all next to each other. We drank a buncha free drinks for a while and then we just chilled in our rooms watching vids on youtube or whatever. I read some more of the Usagi majhong manga and then went to sleep. The thing is, our seats were right under the air conditioner, so even with a blanket, it was pretty chilly. Oh well, I still slept well enough I guess. Anyways, we got out of there and stuff, and then headed out.

Our first stop was the Axe tower right near the manga café. They had a blazblue machine, so Case could practice some Nu. I played a bit of tekken, and then went and played the Usagi Majhong game. I got owned a couple times in a row, but then I ended up making it to like, the 4th stage or something, which was really good. I love the reactions when you get a winning hand, like, a surprised face shows up, and like, an exclamation mark pops up after that with some intense sounds. So good. After that, we headed to McDonalds and Dan and Case got some food. We then walked over to Denden and started to walk around various figure stores and whatnot. I don’t really remember too much about this. We just walked around stores for a while until Toshi called. Then we headed over to Athena to meet up with him. They played a bit of blaz (I played some Arcana), and then we headed out and did some Karaoke. It was Case’s first time going Karaoke, so he didn’t really have any songs to sing or had much of an idea of what he wanted to do, but now that he’s gone, he has a good idea of what it’s like, and says he’ll prepare stuff for the next time he goes. It was fun though, we did a buncha songs, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been karaoke, so it was fun, too.

After that, we went to the one arcade that has like, no FGs except BB and the gundam game, but they have BB for 4/7 rounds 2 credits 100 yen, so it’s technically the most play for your money. Case played this one guy who was playing Tao and owned him, then the guy switched to Jin and just spammed ice slide and started winning. Toshi beat him after a couple tries and then Case played Toshi and started losing to arakune nonsense. I tried Arakune for a bit, but he feels too weird for me, and I didn’t know how to do stuff, so I was getting owned. Toshi eventually lost, and I played Case with my Tao. Since we had to go after that, I purposely let dan play Jin next against him. After that match, we headed out to meet up with Andrew (reno) to go to this meetup that he suggested we go to. We met up with him and headed there.

It ended up being in this little bar called “the hub”. It was still happy hour when we got there, so drinks were really cheap. I got a 260 yen big glass of rum and coke. Since I’m not a fast drinker, it lasted for a while. Right before happy hour ended, I got a mojito because I heard good things about them. It was good, and I was starting to ease up. I ended up just talking to a buncha various Japanese people (mostly in Japanese with some English). People were switching seats a bunch so I got to talk to a lot of different people. Everyone else kinda headed out one by one, Dan first, then Andrew, then I left with Case to show him how to get back to the station, and then Toshi left after us. It was nice to just meet new people and talk a bunch. It was a good change of pace from the usual “hang out at the arcade all night and then go home” without meeting people. I’ll probably end up meeting with some more of those people again sometime, but yeah, quite the opposite from what my normal schedule looks like on a normal weekend, lol. Either way, Dan agreed that it was nice to change things up.

Anyways, I walked case to the station, and someone dropped a penny on the floor. I THOUGHT it was Case, so I was like “oh, you dropped that” and he picked it up, but I think some other dude dropped it and just kinda watched as like, he dropped a penny and Case just picked it up and walked away. Pretty funny. He headed off and I went back home, making it back around 11:30.

Monday night was the ALT farewell party for the two leaving ALTs. I went there, and a few of my students were there, but similar to at school, they ignored me. I ended up being a wallflower with Bill and with Cameron (another ALT). It wasn’t too bad, I got in for free and got some free food, so it wasn’t a huge loss. It was just kind of boring. It could have been worse, but I’m glad Bill was there cause otherwise I would have been really bored I think. I headed home after that and got all packed and ready. I just have to pick up a few things from the basement of the Board of Education building and then I’ll be ready.

That’s all for this blog. I leave for Vegas in a couple days, and I’m reallllllly hype. Only a couple days moreeeeee (+10 hour flight). I’ll see all the cool kids there at Vegas!

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL COMMERCIAL BREAK - Interview

2009-07-07T02:07:00.001-07:00

Hey guys, I got interviewed by Dark_Vincent of the Brazilian Gaming blog website, http://www.portalversus.com.

Anyways, the interview is here:
http://www.portalversus.com.br/index.php/06-2009/exclusiva-versus-10-perguntas-sobre-blazblue-2288

It discusses Blazblue to many different degrees. Obviously it's been translated, as I don't speak any Latino languages of any sort. He sent me the original in English, and I figured I would post it here. Here you go:

"Versus Exclusive - 10 Questions about BlazBlue
Blazblue approaches its official release on console in North America (it's out today!!) and avid fighters around the world are eager to get their hands on the game while others seem skeptical about it for one reason or another. However, nearly everyone are at least curious about it. Even though it's already out there in Japanese Arcades since November last year, few outside Japan had the chance to try it out personally. Here in Brazil it's not known of any place that has access to this version.

With this in mind, we at Versus got in touch with someone who not only plays BlazBlue since its release, but is possibly the best western player in this game. We are talking about Rob, also known as HeartNana or 'XCTU', the only American to qualify for the BlazBlue tournament at Tougeki 2009 - Super Battle Opera (SBO), one of the biggest fighting game competitions in the world that happens every year in Japan.

It's with great honor that I present you Portal Versus' first exclusive interview, with HeartNana.

- by Thiago "Dark Vincent" Leite

Dark Vincent: What would you consider BlazBlue's strongest attribute that differs it from other fighting games out there right now?

HeartNana: I think it's the fact that it's extremely pretty, as far as 2D fighters go, and it's quite easy to get into.

DV: The Guilty Gear series, Arc System Works' previous work, was perfected over the years and is still played competitively to this day. This is a strong legacy that only the best of the best out there have achieved. From a high-level player perspective such as yours, do you think BlazBlue is solid enough to remain competitive and played in big tournaments over the next years?

HN: As a standalone game, like most other games, I think it would die out, but if Aksys does what they did with GG and keeps making upgrades to the system, and adding new characters, and just making it really fun, I think it can keep going over the years.

DV: You told me you didn't play Guilty Gear before BlazBlue. Why not?

HN: Well, I used to play GG a bit during #reload days. I would go to tournaments for that, but I was never that great at it. As far as Accent Core, I played it a BIT in Chicago, but that was really only because other people were playing it. The main reason I didn't play it much was because there wasn't a character in it that particularly stood out to me. Normally, in fighters, I like a character based off either looks or playstyle, but there wasn't either of those in AC for me, so I had no motivation to play it.

DV: Ok, this leads me to the next question. Many players out there hold onto the "spiritual successor of Guilty Gear" catch-phrase to justify their expectations around the new game. Some think that since they know everything about GG, the transition to BlazBlue will be seamless and they will have a big advantage over those who didn't play ASW's old franchise. Some others, however, think that since they didn't like Guilty Gear or couldn't get used to its gameplay, chances are BlazBlue is just "more of the same" in a negative way. In general, I feel the game looks a bit intimidating at a first glance with so many gauges and whatnot to keep track of and a dozen different maneuvers to learn in order to at least move around properly. Anyways, how do you envision these point of views? Do you have anything to say regarding your own experience learning BlazBlue?

HN: Well, more than Guilty Gear experience, I think 2D fighting game experience overall plays a huge part in getting good at Blazblue. The top GG players are just good at 2D fighters in general, so it probably wouldn't be as hard for them to pick up as it is for someone who's inexperienced in games. I think people tend to confuse "being good at GG = able to be good at BB" with "Being good at 2D fighters = able to be good at BB". It is true that a lot of games coming out these days are "more of the same." They tend to be combo heavy, and have a lot of movement and CRAZY stuff going on. I will agree that if you don't like that style of game, BB isn't gonna change that point of view, but I still think that it's relatively easy to pick up. Though as you know, fun is relative. For my own experience in Blazblue, I went into it treating it like a new game, playing a new character that could do things unlike other characters in other fighting games. From there, I just kept on playing, and started off with gimped out combos and stuff, but slowly and slowly, I was starting to win, and I was able to understand what was going on. To me, it wasn't that intimidating because when I started playing, not everyone was using all the broke stuff, other people were figuring out the game, too, and so as other people improved, I just improved with them, without really thinking "OK IM GOING FOR THE GOLD!" I didn't want to lose, of course, but my mindset when going into it wasn't about "I GOTTA GET SUPER GOOD AT THIS!" That kind of just happened, and I don't think it really has any relation to anything aside from my previous FG experience, and the fact that BB, and more importantly, Noel, just really clicked with me.

DV: Some people are concerned that the character roster is too small, but at the same time I can't help but remind them that for most FGs with a big character selection, only a few are played in a competitive way. How do you feel about this in regards to the BlazBlue characters? Do you think the 12 characters are well-balanced for competition at all levels or are there any discrepancies that should be looked out for?

HN: I think that 12 characters is a good start. As the series progresses, there will be more, and they're surely not going to take out characters. However, as far as balance goes, for the first iteration of the game, I'll say it's pretty good. However, as a whole, I think it's actually quite unbalanced. Some of the matchups in the game are ridiculous, and I do believe some of the characters require very little thinking to pull off high damage and easy setups, while other characters have to work really hard for the chance to even hit the other character. It may seem obvious but the characters that can have a ton of stuff on the screen and attack with stuff that isn't their own body are the ones who are dominating (Nu, Arakune, Rachel). I will admit that it's very frustrating sometimes, especially against Nu, because not only can she hit me hard from full screen, but she can run away so easily, has high priority normals, and some of the highest damage in the game. I'm hoping that there's an upgrade soon that makes it more balanced because it's a really fun game aside from the obvious "top tier being too good" problem.

DV: Who's your main character in BlazBlue and why did you pick him/her? Do you have any secondaries?

HN: My main character has been Noel from day 1. I saw the preview art for her, and I loved her character design. I've been playing gun girls recently in fighters (Petra in AH2, Shion in MB, Saki in TvC, and a few donjon games where there's girls with guns, too), so Noel fit in perfectly. She just looked really cute (and I love cute!), and I also really like her beret, that was the selling point for me, haha. However, that only goes so far usually, because after PLAYING the game, I end up changing characters a lot because I find a better character to suit my playstyle, but it just so happened that Noel was not only pretty good for me, but absolutely perfect for how I play. As far as secondaries, I'm using Taokaka on the side, but I'll never pull her out in tournies, because it got to the point when I was at the arcades and there were people playing me, but not only were they "kinda" bad, they were REALLY bad, as in, learning moves from the movelist on the cabinet, so I decided I needed another character i can just mess around with against lower level opponents. Taokaka's combos look fun, and I like her design, too, she's hilarious, so I went with that

DV: What is your recommendation to new players getting into the game, in terms of character choice?

HN: I recommend to play the character you want to play. A lot of people think that they can learn an "easy" character and then just switch to the harder one when they get used to the system, but I think that's the wrong way to go about doing it. I think that if you play the character you want to from the start, then it'll be easier to understand the game from the perspective of someone playing that character. A lot of times, people will play an easy character, and then they'll try to switch to a harder character, the thing is, when they switch, they'll start losing A LOT. It's not like SFIV, the characters are way too different, combo-wise and move-wise. There's way more situational combos and everything in BB, so if you can't pull off the situational combos, then you're losing a lot of damage, and if you were just playing that character from the start, you would understand the situational stuff a lot better. So after they start losing, they'll just realize that the character IS hard, and knowing the system of BB doesn't really make it easier to learn a hard character, and they'll end up just sticking with the easy character that they may not even really want to play. If you're not even playing the character you want to play, then why play the game? That's how I see it at least.

DV: How many hours a week do you put into the game in order to keep your skills always at a high level?

HN: Well, before console release (5 days ago), I played pretty much on weekends only. I work 5 days a week, and the closest arcade is probably about 2 hours travel time each way, so it's not really worth it to go to the arcade at 4:30, arrive at 6:30, and leave at 9ish to catch the bus/train back. It's expensive to do that, and I'm too tired from work to do that often anyways. So I generally only play on weekends. Depending on the weekend depends on how much I play. I say I would average 8 hours a week. There were some weeks where I barely played, due to other things going on, or being sick, or playing other games, and there are weekends when I've spent entire days just hanging out at the arcade.

DV: Despite being an Arcade player, are you excited for the console release of BlazBlue? With the game being fairly new, do you expect that reaching a broader audience around the world will help revealing some sort of untapped potential that Arcade players haven't found out yet?

HN: Well, console release is out here already, and I was definitely excited for it! Because I can only play on weekends at the arcade, it gives me a lot of time during the weekdays to be able to play! Just recently, I played a long set (over 30 games!) against Ren's Jin. He lives in Tokyo, and because of the console release, I was able to play him. It makes a huge difference for me to be able to play people online, because not only do i get to play the game during the week (there were times it would be a random tuesday or wed night, and I would get the craving to play, but I couldn't because it was too far away), but it means I can now use my weekends for more than just playing Blazblue. If all I had was the arcade, then I would be spending my whole weekend playing, and wouldn't have as much time to do other stuff. As far as console reaching a broader audience around the world? Yes, I think it does that, but I don't see the level of play getting higher than the arcade scene. There's so many people still playing it in arcades, and currently, the Japanese are the strongest at the game, I would assume, so I think that for other countries to overtake them because of online is highly doubtful. Arcades with lots of competition are really just too powerful. It does help me, personally, because I can learn matchup stuff on weekdays as well, but I don't think that it's changing much for the other Japanese players aside from saving them money from not having to pay to play, and convenience from not having to leave their place to go to the arcade.

DV: As I've told you before, the fighting game scene is relatively small in Brazil, even more so if we consider the next-gen price barrier placed on most people here. A PS3 can cost up to 900 dollars in some places and that's the cheapest console here, just so you have an idea. However, even with all that, we have some very dedicated players, some of which actually have made appearances at big events such as EVO World. Here at Versus we promote several events of our own as well as support initiatives such as EVO South America. So with all this said, I would like to ask you. Do you have any word of advice to aspiring Brazilian BlazBlue players who want to reach "Tournament Level"?

HN: I would suggest that if you're serious about it to just not give up. A main problem that a lot of players have is that if something is overpowered (ie, Nu), they'll just call her cheap and complain and get discouraged, but without doing anything about it, and without putting effort into learning the matchup. The top players of the lower tier characters here don't give up, they stick to their character through good times and bad times. So if you're serious, stick to your character and don't just switch to a top tier because it's the "easy" option. While it's nice to have a second character, if you're counter-matching someone and switching characters, you're not really thinking nearly as hard as if you were playing your character. In the end, because you're so used to having to work so hard, you'll really get better overall, and everyone will improve.

DV: Thanks a lot for your time. We at Portal Versus will be looking forward to your showing on SBO. Good luck Rob, from all Brazilian fighters.

HN: Thanks, I hope you guys enjoy the game, and thanks for always rooting me on!"

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL - Season 2 - 2 hours of no sadlife!

2009-07-06T18:34:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! It’s time to update my blog again!

Last week Friday I stayed up really really late playing Blazblue and MTG with Dan. Good times as usual.

Saturday, I woke up and I played some BB online. I wanted to just stay at home and play but I figured it would be good to get out, so I got ready and headed out to Sannomiya, Kobe. There was an SBO qualifier at the Sannomiya Sanx arcade. It’s the very last one, and like, EVERYONE who didn’t qualify was there. Tsukasa was there, too (prolly came along for the trip with like, Tall Litchi Man and whoever else). Naaga (nu player) and Kanimuso (I think that’s his SN, Hakumen player) was there, too, and they both play at the Magical Space a lot, so whenever I go there, I usually see them. I’ve actually lost to both of them in tourney before, so they’re pretty solid players. Anyways, the way the tourney was setup, they had 4 people RR brackets, and the top 2 from each bracket would make it into the finals. It took a while to finish, but there were a lot of interesting matches. Sadly, all the players I was rooting for from Osaka got last place in their bracket (Tall Litchi Man, Galileo, Taoshizu, etc) but Naaga and Kanimuso got first place in their brackets, which was cool. There were 7 pools, so 14 people advanced. The only Ragna player in the tourney won his pool, but lost to a Eru’s Rachel. Eru is part of the Kobe GG crew it seems, and hangs out with like N-Otoko and stuff. There was even a cute girl there playing Nu, and she was doing pretty well. Kanimuso beat a Tager player first round in the top 16. Naaga lost to Den’s Bang. Cute Girl made some crazy comebacks and beat a really good Carl player. The top 4 ended up being Cute Girl vs Kanimuso, with Kanimuso winning, and Eru’s Rachel vs another Hakumen that I see at Kohatsu. Eru’s Rachel won. Finals were Eru vs Kanimuso, and Eru Rachel’d his way to victory. Oh boy.

Right after Eru won, he was all like YES, I DID IT! And was super happy and stuff, and then someone was like “dude, you have to play another match” and he was like “WHAT? I DIDN’T KNOW I HAD TO PLAY AGAIN!” Owned. So then they took pictures etc and began the final match. It was Azuo’s Noel vs Eru’s Rachel. Azuo missed some clutch combos and Eru managed to take the match, so Eru was the next SBO qualifier. Yay, another Rachel in SBO. Anyways, I was wondering why Azuo missed such easy combos, and then I tried playing on those sticks, and like, NOTHING came out. Those were quite possibly the worst sticks I’ve ever played BB on. I played 100 yen worth (2 credits) of BB and then I stopped. While I was playing, I noticed Andre (Ronin-dre, who I met at Azrael’s last gathering) was sitting there watching. I played my last game, lost, and then talked to him. We hung out at the Sanx talking for a bit, and then he went to go get a haircut. I went with him and then just hung out outside listening to my ipod after that. We walked around Sannomiya for a bit after that, and then he went to the Gym. I went to Magical Space and played some Arcana and BB there. BB’s B button was only coming out about half the time, and the stick sucked there, too, so if I wanted to do jump, barrier, I got jump A, and when I wanted to do a clutch j.B, I got empty jump. Games just aren’t as much fun when what you do doesn’t come out, so I just stopped after that one because it wasn’t worth it to continue when I was gonna lose for reasons aside from my own skill.

Andre showed up and I was playing the Fiona guy. I hate playing him because he’ll always win by like, a pixel of life. It’s just really annoying to lose like, EVERYTIME when it’s down to the very end. Anyways, after that, we went out to eat at this Yakitori beef bowl place. It was really good, and I got some soup, too, but it was really strong. Like, imagine an olive garden breadstick, now imagine you take out the bread and just take the grease and put it in a bowl. That’s what the soup tasted like. It was good, but it was very…strong? Anyways, we left after that and walked around for a bit. We stopped by this coffee shop and sat down and just relaxed for a bit, and then went outside to the middle area and sat there. One gaijin dude was inhaling helium and then talking to his Japanese friends I guess, and they might have found it funny, I unno, but I just found it incredibly dumb. We chilled there until about 12:40, when I had to go to an internet café to sleep. I went to the @wan next to magical space, but they ran out of mat rooms, so I said I’d go somewhere else. I went to the @wan about 5 minutes walking from there, and they had one mat room left. I got that room and chilled in there. It was smaller than the other ones, which was actually kinda good because not as many people being there meant it was a lot quieter. I found the majhong manga “Usagi” and I started reading that (first time I read manga at a manga café!). Eventually, I fell asleep and then woke up, and just messed around on the computer until it was time to go.

By that time, it was about 10:50. I walked over to some of the stores in that area, but didn’t really see anything of interest, so I took the train to Namba. I got there and went to Athena. I hung out there playing Tekken and BB until Toshi got there. Once he got there, we walked around Denden a bit and then went back to the Labi. My dad said I should try again with the credit card, and that the reason was that 1 cent/1 yen fees are rejected, but it turns out that they never even did a 1 yen test or anything. My card just simply doesn’t work there. I don’t know why, but that debit card is essentially useless for buying anything in Japan. Hopefully there won’t be a real emergency when I ACTUALLY need to use it, otherwise I’ll be pretty screwed. Anyways, so we tried it, and we waited for a while, and it failed, of course, so now I have to wait until I get a CC before I can get my computer. I was REALLY hoping to have it before my trip, but oh well.

After that, we walked for a bit, but I had to head to Sannomiya again because I had dinner plans with Andrew (Reno) and a friend of his. We met up at Magical Space and then waited in the center area for his friend. She called and we met up with her. We were gonna eat at this place called Torikizoku or something, 280 yen for everything, but they were booked, so we went to another place nearby that had everything for 350 yen. We got there and just ordered a buncha different kinda of food and like, drinks. We just talked about various things and hung out, it was a lot of fun. I had a cocktail and a beer, but I didn’t even get tipsy. I’m able to tolerate the taste of beer more and more, it seems. Sadly, it became 10PMish, and so I had to get going. We all left and paid for the meal and stuff. We exchanged cell phone information, and then we headed out. I ended up getting home around midnite, and I had to wake up extra early (6:15 instead of 7) because of a picture thing at school. So I didn’t get too much sleep. It was worth it, though, and I’m really glad I did something else that weekend besides just play games. It’s really nice to meet people, especially when I’ve been lacking in that dept.

Yesterday (Monday), I was really tired all day, and took like, 2 naps in the teacher’s room. I got home around 5:15, and then stayed up for about an hour before I took a “nap” around 6:30. I ended up waking up around 12:30. Instead of just going back to sleep, I decided to stay up for a bit. I got the urge to play BB at around 1:00 in the morning, so I played it for a bit…which turned into about 2 hours. After that, I was gonna go to bed, but then I ended up going online for another 45 minutes, and didn’t get BACK to bed until about 4AM, and it took me another 45 minutes before I fell asleep. So combined, I got about 8 hours of sleep, which is fine for a night, but I didn’t feel too great about the way I did it…ugh…

Anyways, it’s about 10:30 AM, and I’m not NEARLY as dead as I was yesterday, so hopefully I’ll be able to get stuff done today (like laundry). I’ll try not to stay up too late tonite though, but I can’t make any promises.

This weekend, I’m gonna attempt to meet up with EmptyShiki (chicagoland player), and I’m gonna meet up with Dan and Toshi, and it looks like we’re gonna do some sadlife Karaoke! It should be fun!

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - BB console

2009-07-01T20:58:00.001-07:00

Hey guys, sorry I’m so late in updating.

Last week I updated my blog. Last Wednesday, I borrowed TvC from Bill and went to training mode to practice some Rock/Morrigan stuff for the SBO qual. Later that night, I checked my phone and found a text from Mike (Elvenshadow) saying that BB is out already! I went over to Wing, which is about 3 minutes away by bike at 10:40 at night. They had it indeed! I bought it and biked back home REALLY fast. I ended up playing online until about 1AM and then I was like “aww, I HAVE to go to sleep, so sad!”

I woke up the next day and went to work. I purposely didn’t bring a lunch (it’s finals so no school lunch), and around 2ish, I asked the vice principal, “Can I go eat lunch, and then go home?” and he was like “sure”, so I did that. All the students already left at that point anyways and there was LITERALLY nothing to do, since I did all my lesson planning and stuff during the 6 free hours I was at school that day already with nothing to do. I went home and just played BB all day pretty much. I got to the #1 spot on the leaderboards at one point, and then I took a break. I figured I wouldn’t be playing it enough to do that again (having a job and going out on weekends and all), but it was nice to be 1st for at least a short while. I played against this one Jin player online who was completely destroying me, and it turned out to be Ren, a Tokyo player who qualified for SBO about a week before I did. I talked to him a bit and friended him after that. I stayed up way too late on Thursday, also.

Friday, I went to work, and it was the last day of finals. They had a long cleaning session, and then club activities for like, 3 or 4 hours, ugh…I stayed until 4ish and then went home. I had an enkai (party with coworkers) that night that was themed around like, the sports tourney coming up and so I had to go to that. I went home and napped for a bit and then headed out. It was pretty much a waste of time tho. I was sitting in a spot where pretty much everyone around me was talking to people around them, and I was stuck in the middle with nobody to talk to. Of course it’s always sashimi and fish stuff at these things, which I’m not particularly a fan of. It’s also the fact that we have the same stuff at like EVERY SINGLE enkai. Always sashimi, and its always way too expensive (5000 yen, ugh). I’m not much of a drinker, so I can’t even really enjoy the unlimited alcohol either. Anyways, after that, I went over to Bill’s and played some TvC against him. It was a lot of fun, and Maria came home from her enkai, too, except she was completely wasted, so I had to go.

Saturday, I planned on going to Osaka with Bill and Maria around 4ish or 5ish. I got up, played Blazblue online, and ended up playing against Tsukasa a bunch! I was ready at about 3ish, and I called Bill, and he gave me the vaguest answer he could possibly give, so I wasn’t sure whether to leave or not. I decided to wait around and so I did my laundry and played more BB online. Right when I was about to leave, I got a message from a person I talk to online, asking me to get these concert tickets, but gave me the details all in JP, without any context. I biked a bunch to some convenience stores, but I couldn’t get what he was looking for. I came back, and he gave me the info I needed, but all in Japanese without really translating (and while I can read JP, a lot of the instructions were in kanji that I don’t really know). At this point, I was getting late meeting up with Dan, so I told him I had to go. The thing is, I didn’t write down any of the info that I didn’t think I needed, so after going a 2nd time, I ended up not having all the info. Because of that, I also JUST missed the train, making me even LATER to meet up with Dan. Ugh.

I finally got to meet up with Dan, I was about a half hour late. We went and got some cheese curry after that and headed to Athena. I played this one Tager player a few matches and Dan was on the other side and said the Tager player was getting all tight and muttering to himself when he was playing me. After that, I ended up beating the game. Nobody was playing, and so we walked to some other arcades like Sega Avion, Taito station, etc. After that, we went BACK to Athena and Dan found some people to play against, so I watched him play. Afterwards, we headed out and went to the manga café. We got the 10 hour deal, and took full advantage of the free drinks. I was exhausted tho, so I went to sleep and stayed passed out for quite a while. I woke up and we headed out.

We stopped by McDonalds but they still had their breakfast menu and Dan wanted a burger. He went to wendys, and while he was there, I went to Mr Donuts and cashed in my 500 point card for a stuffed pon de lion doll. I got a couple donuts, too. We went to Athena after we finished eating, and met up with BNK, who apparently couldn’t buy the console version because he has no money. He played against Dan and started losing, and finally Dan either lost to him or let him win. We headed out after that and walked around the Den for a bit. I picked up a few doujinshi as “presents” for some friends. I didn’t really buy anything else, iirc. When we were walking around the Den, Bill called and said he was at Avion, so me and Dan went there and met up with him. It was about 1PM at this point, but the tourney didn’t start until 3. We met up and watched some TvC and stuff. I killed some time playing T6 against this Hwoarang player. I mostly won, but the dude still got quite a few wins in. Overall, we had some good matches. However, it’s 100 yen a play at avion, not 50 yen like the other places, so I was hesistant on playing too much. Toshi showed up and stuck around for a bit but then went to go TV shopping with Dan at the big electronic store nearby.

We killed enough time for the TvC tourney to start. It’s the last kansai SBO qualifier for TvC. I played first against a PTX player who didn’t do anything really and OCVd him with Rock. After one more match, I was up again. This time, vs a Casshern/Polymar player. I beat that guy with just rock again, making it my 2nd Rock OCV. Bill played a Doronjo player who was really good and beat him pretty bad. I then played a Ken/Ryu player who just turtled with Ken and ran away, and I couldn’t do anything, so I lost. Apparantly that dude won the tourney, and he had a huge winstreak before the tourney, so I wasn’t really expecting to win. Anyways, Bill hung around and watched the rest of the tourney and then went home, and I went with Toshi and Dan to the electronic store and went to buy a Netbook.

After spending a buncha time talking to the guys, filling out the forms, etc, my debit card didn’t work! It’s a Visa, so I have no idea why it wouldn’t work. I was really bummed out tho, because I was really excited to be getting my netbook finally, but it wouldn’t go through. So I was kinda depressed for the rest of the night. We went to a Chinese restaurant to eat and then after hanging out there, we all headed our separate ways. I went home and just went to bed.

Monday, after work, I got home, goofed around on the internet and then went to bed at 7PM and didn’t get out of bed until 7AM. Tuesday, I played BB all night after getting home. Wed was a weird day. Ono has sports days where instead of school, the students have a city-wide tournament for their sports clubs (while the non-sports club students hang out at school all day doing whatever). Since I watch the basketball team, I went to the school where the basketball team was playing and watched there. So my morning was: bike 15 min to school, stamp the attendance sheet, tell the principal I’m going to the other school, and then bike a half hour to that school. Well, our school lost ALL of their games. The boys team lost their two games, and the girls team lost their 2nd year only exhibition match AND the tourney match. After the tourney match final buzzer went off, I was like “oh well” and went to go get lunch (since I didn’t eat yet and it was like, 2;45). But while I was walking out, the first year students, who barely know how to play basketball, started like bawling. Like, their life is over type bawling. I’ve seen people cry for pretty legit reasons, but “our middle school’s basketball team losing a game” does NOT qualify under one of those reasons as far as I’m concerned. During this time, it started to rain. So I biked to the nearest convenience store and didn’t really see any food I wanted. I was debating buying food I didn’t want and going back to the other school, but then I would have to deal with crying kids, so I just said “screw it” and went home, got some food really quick, and then took a nap. After I woke up around 5:30, I played BB and MTG all night, pretty much.

It’s Thursday today. This weekend is the last SBO qualifier for BB. I’m gonna go just because I wanna see who qualifies. Sunday, if my dad can get my debit card working again, I’m gonna try to buy my netbook, otherwise I might have plans hanging out with another friend. I’ll prolly play BB all night tonite, too, if I don’t nap, that is. We’ll see. Hope everyone is enjoying the console version as much as me! Latersz.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL season 2 - Kohatsu 2v2 tourney/ihateinconsideratepeople

2009-06-23T18:16:00.001-07:00

Ok, last I left off, was last week. Not much going on in Ono. I played some TvC against Bill. I started using Rock/Morrigan. I dunno how good I can get at the game/that team, but they’re fun, so it’s all good. Aside from that, I didn’t do much.

Friday, Bill wanted to play TvC again, but I already decided to head out to Osaka. Right when I got to the ATM to use it, some woman got there like, 10 seconds earlier, and of course, since there was only one machine, she proceeded to do her life banking on the thing, taking like, 15 minutes, when my transaction of taking out some $ would have taken maybe 45 seconds at most. It really annoys me when I have to waste my time because other people are too inconsiderate to care about a person waiting in line behind them. So by the time I got the money and bought my train ticket, I not only missed the original train I was gonna take, but the next one JUST left right before I got there. So I ended up having to wait an extra 15 minutes for the NEXT train. I hate waiting, especially when it’s pointless (such as, because a dumb woman was too inconsiderate to realize that she doesn’t own the ATM, and other people want to use it too). I took the train, and I dozed off, and sometime during that point, a group of 4 guys got on the train, and they were talking and laughing, which I don’t care about, but one guy had a super loud, piercing laugh, so I woke up to that and it scared the crap outta me. I couldn’t fall asleep after that, so I just started playing some DS majhong. I transferred trains at Shinkaichi station, and got on the hanshin line. I got a seat facing backwards, but for some reason, I started to get carsick and wasn’t feeling so hot. I kept my eyes closed most of the trip and got to the station where I switch trains again (Amagasaki). There, I got on the train, and was still feeling not 100%. I got to Namba and while I wasn’t feeling 100%, I still needed food. I headed to the Cocos in Namba, and had some cheese curry there. They kinda had a scared look right when I walked in, and the waitress nervously offered me an English menu. I said that I already knew what I wanted, so I just ordered. I ate it all up (so I couldn’t have been THAT sick, right? Lol), and then I walked to Athena.

I had to use the bathroom at this point, but when I got there, someone was in the stall. I started waiting and the dude was taking FOREVER. After a really really long wait, a dude came out holding an empty bowl of cup ramen. So I think that idiot went in the stall and took his sweet time eating ramen, instead of letting people who actually have to use the toilet go. What a douche. Yet another inconsiderate person that made me wait. So overall, I wasn’t too happy at this point, but after I used the bathroom, I went up to the 3rd floor and played some Blazblue. I don’t remember how Friday Night blazblue went, but it’s always good times. It started to die out like whoa around the end of the night. I went to the Axe tower and played a couple games of Tekken. I beat this one guy’s Kuma (barely), but then he played me again and got 3 rounds against me, and I got one, but all 3 of his rounds were perfect. I really hate Kuma. It’s not that he’s broke, he’s just a really annoying character to play against. I saw a couple guys playing BB, so I went and played them with my Taokaka. I won, and then they left, so I just used the time to practice combos. I’m KIND of getting the hang of it, but she still feels really weird to me. It’s nice to have a character I can use for when I play against scrubs tho. After that, I went to the manga café and got the 10 hour deal, taking advantage of the free drinks for many hot cocoas and nachan orange drinks. I slept pretty well. My alarm went off, and I woke up, and the attendant was like “make sure to set your phone to manner mode!” It’s like, well, it’s on manner mode, but I gotta wake up, sooooo…lol…

I got outta there and it was about 10AM. I was feeling fine, thankfully, but there’s really not much to do at 10AM. I went to Athena, and BNK (Braces Noel Kid) was there, as usual. I didn’t feel like playing against him, so I just kinda wandered around Athena, watching vids of a F/UC tourney. The weekend was a big weekend for F/UC players. Friday was a ranking battle at Athena, sat was a 2v2, and Sunday was the sbo qual. So Athena was all decked out with F/UC cabs and stuff. The 6th floor was the 2 blazblue machines, 2 ah2 machines, and 5 f/uc machines, and that was it, lol. Eventually, this one Rachel player that I recognized showed up. We played. Generally, we would play and like, someone would get 3 wins, then the other guy would get 3 wins, then someone gets 4 wins, then the other guy gets 4 wins etc. Rachel is just a huge pain to deal with sometimes. Stuff just randomly whiffs. However, at the end, I was starting to figure this guy out, so I ended up getting like, 8 wins in a row on him at the end, and then he had to leave. He thanked me for the games and said “good luck at SBO” and then he headed out. It was getting a bit late, so I left, too. BNK said he had to go too, cause he had cram school. I stopped at Family mart and got some food. They got these new round fries that were REALLY good. They put some sort of seasoning on them, so they were delicious and they went along great with the chicken. I went to the morning musume store and got a couple cheap berryz singles I didn’t have for 150 yen each, plus a couple t-shirts for 500 yen each. They’re both pretty big, but they’re good “sleeping in” or “working out in” shirts, and 500 yen is cheap, too.

Since the train station is right near the MM store, I took the train to Kohatsu. I got there and used the bathroom at the convenience store. I got a drink after that from there, because anytime I use a convenience store bathroom, I like to buy something from there as a “thanks, store, for letting me use your bathroom”. I went to Kohatsu and a few guys were there already. I played against Tall Litchi man and lost a close match. I played against Jagar a bit too and beat him a few times pre-tourney. The tourney started, and the format was 2v2 random teams. 13 people were there, so the tourney runner/announcer put himself alone on one team again, and just used two characters. I got teamed with Galileo, the tager player who won the last tourney. Tsukasa got teamed with a bang player, Tall Litchi man got teamed with a Taokaka, a good Hakumen got teamed with a Rachel, the Ragna who got 2nd at the last singles tourney (now using Jin, he also refers to me as “HeartNana-sensei”) got teamed with an arakune, and the Kohatsu Carl player got teamed with Jager (Rachel). In one half of the bracket was the first 4 teams, in the other half was me/Galileo vs Carl/Jager, and then the next round was the announcer. The Jin player ended up beating Tsukasa first round! His partner beat the bang. After Tsukasa lost, everyone was like GIVE BACK YOUR SBO TICKET!!! Tsukasa was just like “…” Then Tall Litchi man team lost to Hakumen team. The Hakumen player beat both of their guys. Next, the other team won RPS, so they put their carl against Galileo’s tager. Galileo won the first round, lost the 2nd, and won the third. It was intense, but I’m glad he did it. Then, I played Jagar. I won the first round, lost the 2nd, but won the third. Before my match, they were like “HeartNana has an SBO ticket, too, so we’ll see how he performs.” It was nice to win. Jagar won the last Kohatsu tourney, and he got a red ticket for SBO, too (lost to Tsukasa for the blue ticket).

Next, the Jin player beats both the Hakumen and his Rachel partner. He was playing super solid.

Our next match was against the announcer. First, it was vs Galileo Tager vs Tager. Announcer wins the first round, but barely loses the next 2 to Galileo, phew. Then, I played against his Nu, and I win pretty easily. He was like “man, Nu is such a weak character, right Tsukasa?” and Tsukasa was like “yeah, she is”. After that was the finals. You can watch them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrEw9u4iliA

Anyways, after that, he took our picture, which you can find on the kohatsu site (ko-hatsu.com). Galileo said that he was doing a tager-esque pose, so since Noel uses guns, I just did a gun holding pose. It looks pretty good overall, lol. I played some causals for a while until there were only a couple guys left, and nobody playing me. I headed out and at this point, I was actually deciding whether I wanted to go home or not. It was about 6PM, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play BB all night. I decided to head to Namba, and I walked around a little, and stopped by Mr Donuts and got some donuts. I finally have 500 points, so I can get one of those little stuffed lions! After that, I went back to Athena and caught the tail end of the F/UC team tourney. A buncha people were there, so I played against whoever. Kouji was there, too, and I ended up actually going about even with him (surprising, considering my Tager weakness)! There were times when he would get like, 3 matches on me, but they were all pretty close. I ended up getting like, 3 wins on him at the end, and he stopped playing. I played this one Litchi player, beat him. Nobody was playing me after that, and since it was about 10:30PM at this point, I left and headed for the capsule hotel.

I got to the hotel and unlike last time, douchebag guy wasn’t there, and everyone was really friendly, which was nice. I got a coupon for a free “snack”, so I put my stuff in my locker and went to the food area to see what kinda snack I get. I had a few options, but I decided to get the fried chicken one. It took a while to come, but I just watched TV in the meantime. It came, and it was 3 pieces of fried chicken, and a pile of lettuce with some mayo on the side. Oh well on the mayo, but the chicken was good, esp since it was free!

After that, I washed up and then headed in the baths for a bit. After that, I went up to my capsule, and since I was really tired, I passed out pretty quickly. I woke up and even tho I got a decent amount of sleep, it still didn’t feel like enough. Oh well, I washed up again and took a quick dip in the bath before heading out.

I headed out and it was about 10. So I, of course, did the same thing as always, which is to head to Athena. Nothing was going on, so I left around 11ish, waiting for the cheese curry place to open. However, it opened at 11:30, oops. I decided to walk around the den and pick up some stuff for a friend of mine. I got that taken care of, and I just walked around a buncha game stores looking for other stuff, too. I was thinking about picking up some games or something, but I decided against it.

Next, I went to the cheese curry place and got myself a nice big plate of the good stuff. I ate all of it, and was completely full after that. I proceeded to spend the next 7 hours at Athena. I don’t think anyone cares about the details, but I played a buncha games of BB and AH2. I was doing good with Lilica in AH2, so I might use her at SBO over petra, but I haven’t 100% decided yet. I was doing ok in Blazblue, too. Can’t say I was doing GREAT, but I don’t think I was doing awful.

And it was about time to leave, so I just headed out after nobody was playing me and left my game. I went home and yea, that’s about it.

Monday I played TvC against Bill. Qualifier coming up on Sunday, so I’m getting prepped for it. Aside from that, I played against Dan in MTG online, and in SFIV. It’s pretty fun. One more day until BB. GET HYPE.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - SFIV and tons of BB

2009-06-16T23:42:00.001-07:00

This past week was pretty uneventful.

Last week Thursday, I hung out with Bill and we played some TvC. I started using Rock, because he’s crazy fun, but its still kinda hard to get the hang of it, esp without practice mode and esp if I’m not about to BUY the game, lol.

Anyways, Friday, I was gonna stay at home until Saturday, but then I really got the urge to play some Blazblue. I called up Bill and they were heading for Kyoto at the same time I was leaving, so I caught the bus that they were on. I got off in Kobe first. I wanted some cheese curry, and I wanted to shop around the used stores to see if they had this thing that a friend of mine online was looking for (which they didn’t). I was walking through the Toranoano store, and I either saw Abeshi, or a guy who looks EXACTLY like him looking at doujin, so I was like “yo, that’s way too awkward” and I just left right after that. Afterwards, I walked over to the game in coo, but they didn’t have anyone playing anything, so I just left because the only games people play there are vf, tekken, and gundam, and I really wanted to play BB.

I walked over to Magical Space, and they actually had a special deal! 2 credits for 100 yen for BB, SFIV, TvC, and KOF XII. I got there and a buncha people were lined up for BB. They only have one machine, and a lot of people were waiting, so I was waiting a while. Naaga, the Nu player, was there. Kanihiro, the hakumen who beat me in the sannomiya tourney was also there, and the Jin player who beat me in the RR of that same tourney was there, too. Naaga was about to play, but didn’t have his 100 yen ready, so I did kind of a douche move and went and played instead. I don’t think he cared, but it took a while for him to get the change, and I was really fiending for playing. I beat the Jin player and a couple random guys, then Naaga played. I beat him bad the first match, but then he beat me the 2nd and 3rd match BARELY. I let some other dudes play for a bit and played some MvC2. I got a few wins against random guys, and then I lost a couple matches, so I went back to blazblue. I played again and got a few wins against this other Noel player, but my stuff was messing up, and the dude wasn’t that good, but just played really annoying, and I ended up losing. I tried my Taokaka and barely lost there, too. After he got beat, I played another 100 yen worth and beat Naaga and Jin-man like, 6 games in a row before I lost one to Jin-man, and then won another 5 or 6 before I lost to Naaga. It was getting late, and I wanted to play more, but I wanted to head out to Osaka first. I said bye to them, and good games, and then I left. I took the train to Osaka and got there pretty quickly. It was relaxing, overall, and I just listened to the new music I got from the Morning Musume store the week before.

I got to Osaka and I really didn’t feel like walking all the way to Athena at 11PM, so I decided to just hit up a convenience store (got some mini oreos) and to head to the Axe tower, the small little hole in the wall tekken arcade near the manga café I stay at. Tekken was busy, but I saw a dude playing Blazblue and he seemed to know a few combos with Nu. I played him with Taokaka 3 times in a row, but never got a match. 2C 6C beat me too hard. I ended up just playing Noel after that, figuring he would play a credit or two and then leave. The dude ended up playing 21 games in a row against me after that, with me winning all 21. He used Nu for the most part, played like, 7 matches as Jin, and like, 4 matches as Ragna. He probably would have played more, but the arcade closed at 1, and they kicked us all out. I wasn’t planning on staying until 1AM, I was only gonna stay till midnite, but when I’m on a winstreak, I don’t always like letting it drop, especially if they’re good matches. Like, the guy was good enough to present a challenge, but not good enough for me to want him to think he was able to get a match against my Noel, haha. He did get close a couple times, though, but he was never able to get that last round. He left right after the last match, so aside from barely glancing at him when I came in, I didn’t get to see who it was. Those players are the types of guys that start off being scrubby, but then end up getting a lot better because they just play a bunch against players better than them and level up. We’ll see I guess. I headed to the manga café after that.

Manga café was pretty uneventful. I didn’t sleep that long, tho. It’s not that I slept BAD, I just woke up around 8 something, and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I stayed on the computer for another couple hours until my 10 hours were up. Looking back on it, that would have been a good time to go shower, but whatever. I got out of there and walked to Athena. I was gonna walk around the Den and hit up the MM store, but I realized that I had less than 2 hours before I had to leave to head to Kyoto, so I didn’t feel like wasting most of it walking. I wanted to just play BB instead. I went up to the 6th floor and saw the one dude I saw at the Athena SBO qual. I’m gonna call him “Braces Noel Kid” cause he’s only like, 18 or so, so he can be “kid” to me, lol. Anyways, BNK was there playing his Noel, and was losing to this Ragna player. I tried my Taokaka and failed, lol. BNK tried again after that, but picked the wrong button config, so just ended up picking Bang and pretty much letting the credit die. He played again and still lost, oh well. I played again and beat the Ragna player a few times. Pretty much, after this, people would just join at random times as I’m going through story mode. I was letting BNK practice combos and telling him what worked and what didn’t and gave him some advice and stuff. 12:45 rolled around, so I left him with my credit to go head for Kyoto. He thanked me for teaching him, and I thanked him back and said that it was fun.

I was a bit late going to Kyoto, I forgot to factor in the walk from one train to the other at the station where I have to transfer. So instead of getting there at 1:53PM, I got there around 2:03PM, 3 minutes after the scheduled meet up time. The train I was on had a buncha students all going to various sports events and whatnot. They all seemed to get off at the same stop as me, so I had to fight through a wall of slow loli’s in order to get to the exit. I got there and met up with Jeff (Azrael) and Eddy (Kunai). Andrew (Reno) showed up about 20-30 minutes after that, so I don’t feel too bad about being 3 minutes late. Next, we headed back to Az’s place and just played a buncha SFIV. Jeff bought some Doritos that were really good, and at one point, he had to go pick up Andre (Ronin-dre) so it was me, Andrew, and Eddy. Eddy ended up beating both of us a bunch, but like, when we lost, we would just grab the chips and start eating, and we were like, “well, you may have a winstreak, but at least we have chips”. After Kunai finally lost he was like “yes, I can get chips now!” It was pretty funny overall. Andre came back and the 5 of us just hung out for a while, playing SFIV, and then we ordered some Pizza Hut, and one of them was a pizza that had like, little hot dogs baked in the crust. It sounds good, but it wasn’t as good as the regular crust to me. We watched the SFIV dvd where it shows the 2/3 match of Iyo vs Kindevu in the SF tourney. It like, took every little tiny part and analyzed it, which was kinda cool, but I know if I was interviewed about that, I would have been like “yeah, I just kinda threw that out and figured it might work…and it did” or “yeah, I just kinda threw that out and figured it might work…and it didn’t”. We played a bit more SFIV, but Eddy and Andrew had to head out, so we all left too. Andre got on the same train as me toward Osaka, since he lives in Sannomiya, Kobe. It was about time for Dan to get here, too, so we met at one of the main stops. We took that until we had to transfer, said bye to Andre, and then went to Osaka.

We stopped at the Cheese Curry place first, and after we ate, the owner was like “Why do you always get cheese curry?” I was like “because it’s delicious” and then he started talking about how Americans and Australians really like cheese curry. Me and Dan just told him that cheese is just really good, and it works really well on curry. After that, we hit up Athena. Me and Dan just played some BB until the place was closing pretty much. Ribaia showed up, and I told him congrats for making it to SBO. Then I told him that I knew that he would make it, and that me and everyone else who said “You’ll be fine” and “Don’t worry, you’ll make it” were right. He played his Ragna for a bit and beat a couple guys, but then he played Dan, and Dan was able to turtle well enough when Ribaia pulled out the Blood Kain that he was able to win a couple rounds. In the very last round, Dan was at like, NO life, but had full bar. He did Jin’s 623D, but instead of letting it go, he held it ALL THE WAY until it became unblockable. Ribaia was just sitting there waiting for him to let it go, but it became unblockable and Ribaia got hit, and then Dan did Jin’s super and ended up winning the match! Ribaia was like “eh?” It was pretty funny. He was talking to Dan for a bit, and Ribaia asked Dan who he thought was the strongest. Dan said Rachel, but then Ribaia was like “yeah, but Rachel doesn’t stand a chance against Nu”. He then played me for a bit. Our matches were close, but I generally won. He didn’t pull out Nu at all. He headed out after a while and when the arcade closed, me and Dan headed out too. Dan got a text from Toshi saying that he’s stuck in Namba (since it’s past when trains stop running, he was stuck). He decided to just hang out with us for the night and do what we do. We met up with him and went to the manga café. We all got mat booths, and we hung out in Dan’s booth for a while. After a bit, I was getting really tired, so I went to sleep. I stayed passed out until almost like, 9:30. I got washed up, and ready for the next day. We all got out of there and headed to Athena right off the bat.

BNK was there again, and played a few against Dan. They went even for the most part, they’re pretty similar skill-level wise. I was playing Taokaka for the most part. I played a bunch against Toshi, and a couple against Dan (he owned my Taokaka the first match, but I won the 2nd match). Eventually I lost to Toshi after a bunch, and went and played Arcana for a bit. I was doing pretty bad, and losing to Karate Kenji’s Saki (he doesn’t play Saki). I just wasn’t doing well overall, so I was kinda tearing about that. After that, Toshi left, and once I was done with Arcana, me and Dan headed out. We walked around the Den, and got some chicken from Family Mart for lunch. We went around to all the stores, but I don’t remember buying anything except Otaku no Musume san 6. I just recently read it, and book 5 ended at a suspenseful part, so I wanted more, and I got another book! Yay! It must have JUST got released, but I was happy either way. I was in Kbooks, and Dan bought this little screen cleaner thing for his cell phone or psp or whatever, and I gave him my points card. Out of nowhere, some other gaijin came up to me and was like “so what do you BUY here?” I was like “well, I used to buy CDs and stuff here and sell them online a long time ago, but recently, if I see like, a figure or something I want, I just pick it up.” He was like “yeah, this kinda thing doesn’t exist back home” I was like “yep, it’s pretty different.” I was nice, but it was just kind of weird that he randomly started talking to me. Also, while we were in Kbooks, there were a bunch of girls looking at like, cosplay outfits and figures and stuff, and saying a buncha stuff was really cute and whatnot. Some of them weren’t that good looking, but others were decently cute. Interesting because back home, there were almost NEVER any girls that are attractive AND into anime and nerdy stuff like that, but there was a small group of them here. Pretty crazy.

Anyways, we went back to Athena and played for a while there. Scrubby Tager Guy (STG) was there. I watched a buncha vids and figured out some anti-tager stuff, so I played the guy. At first, he was just doing stupid stuff and it was working, but after a while, I got really used to playing against Tager and after a while, I got like, a 5 winstreak against this guy. I hate playing that matchup, but I was beating this dude pretty bad. He beat me once by luck, and then I obliterated him the next match and he stopped playing me. Rajio (bang player, got a red ticket for SBO recently, but lost to Ribaia) who I see every week, was playing his tager against me, but his tager wasn’t nearly as good as STG, so he wasn’t able to win at all. He played his carl for like, 6 matches, and lost all of them. He then played his Hakumen a bunch and lost with that, too. Eventually, some other people started playing me, and I was beating them. Then, Greying Taokaka Player was playing and he lost 3x in a row with his Taokaka. He then played Arakune and lost 3-0, but then won the next one because…well..it’s arakune, lolz. I had like, 20+ wins at that point, so me and Dan just left. We went to Subway and got dinner there. It was about time for me to go home anyways, so I left and went home, reading my manga along the way.

I got back home and stayed awake until like, 1AM like usual, and then went to sleep. I was super tired on Monday, but Bill PMed me on SRK to see if I wanted to play some TvC. I was like “I’m down” so I played him after I did all my laundry. We played for a couple hours, but my controls weren’t coming out as much as usual, so I was hella sad about that. It was a lot of fun, though, and Bill gets better everytime we play, which is good for his sake because he really likes that game. Tuesday, I went home and went online for a bit, but just fell asleep at like, 8:30PM and was out until 7AM cause I was just so tired. The worst is that at 7AM, I was STILL tired. Oh well. I’m not meant to be up before 10AM, lol. Anyways, today, I have no plans. I’m gonna go home, and just relax online and maybe play some games if I’m in the mood. This weekend, Dan says he might not be able to meet up. It’s gonna be the last weekend for me before BB is out on console, so I might leave Friday night and go play BB all weekend. There’s a 2v2 random select tourney at Ko-hatsu, so I’ll go to that for the heck of it (and because the guy who does the announcing of the tourneys asked me to when we all went out to eat last week). Aside from that, PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS. I had no comments last week, so I was sad. Please make Rob un-sad and leave a comment! It doesn’t even have to be a positive comment, you can just say “you suck rob” and it’ll be fine. Thanks. Much <3s to all.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL season 2 - Demon Bride Location Test

2009-06-08T22:50:00.001-07:00

Today’s blog will be pretty short.

Friday night I went right after work to Osaka. I stayed late at school due to basketball club, and by the time I got home, I was super sweaty, so I had to go take a shower. I left around 6 something, and got to the station just in time to catch the 7:01 train. Unlike a couple weeks ago, hardly anyone was wearing masks or whatever. I guess after they got over the swine flu scare, they stopped wearing them. I was hungry at the halfway point station, so I got a small bag of oreos to tide myself over for a bit. Thankfully, they still have SOME things that are the same as back home. Finally, around 9 something, I arrived in Namba. First stop was the cheese curry place. I got a cheese curry, and as usual, delicious as ever. Next stop was Athena. Den was there with his bang. Normally I beat him pretty bad, but he was able to steal 2 wins from me. After I played him a few more times, I got a small winstreak against him. Not much else was happening. I was kinda bored, and people stopped playing BB, so I went to the Axe tower and played Tekken until about midnite. After that, I headed to the 8 hour manga café. I like that one cause it has Orange Juice and free ice cream, but like, 10 hours > 8 hours, so I usually stay in the 10 hour one. However, I wanted to be up early for the Demon Bride loc test. At the manga café, I accidently went to the wrong booth and some woman was there. At first I was like “what’s someone doing in my booth?” then I was like “O CRAP” and I apologized and went to my booth. Oops, lol. I hung out on IRC and stuff until I fell asleep. I didn’t sleep too well, which wouldn’t be too bad normally, but the entire week, I’ve been lacking in sleep. Oh well.

I headed over to Namba Hills right away. It was like, 8AM, and there were already like, 6-7 people there! Mashy Noel was there, Guy-girl was there, as well as a buncha arcana players. The tourney was scheduled for the Saturday, but they changed it to Sunday. I wrote about it on the Demon Bride thread on SRK, so you can check out my impressions there.

After a bit, I got some subway, went back and played more. It got really crowded at one point, so I went around the den. I hit up the MM store, and got the new BerryZ single for 200 yen. I love that place, he buys a buncha singles for the event raffle tickets or whatever, and then takes those out and cells the mostly unopened and brand new cds for 100 or 200 yen, which is like, more than 80-90% off. So great. I went to Athena after that and played some AH2 and Blazblue. I played against the Time Saki that I normally see. I won the first match with mirror petra, but then lost the next one. I played Time Petra and won like, 3-4 matches against him, and then he won. I played my Lilica after that, and he won after like, 2 matches. I was gonna play him more, but then I saw Kechan playing Rachel in BB. I played Kechan’s Rachel for a bit, we went 2-2, then he used Nu against me. I didn’t really want to play his Nu, so I just played a couple matches and then lost on purpose so I could get back to Demon Bride.

When I was there, I ran into an Arcana 1 player from a LONG time ago that I met at ko-hatsu tournies. His name was “Toretore-mon”. He invited me to go out drinking with him and a buncha other players, but I said I was waiting for Dan. Finally, around 9ish, Dan came and while I thought he would say “I’d rather not, I’m strapped for cash” or something, he was like “alright”. So we got roped into it. We had a little bit of food and a little bit to drink, and after an hour or so of talking to toretore and the other guys, we headed out early. It ended up being 2500 for that little time we were there. It could have been worse, but yeah, we’re gonna have to be more careful next time, haha. I stopped by Namba Hills again and played another match, got a 3 win streak, but barely lost in the end due to a timeout. After that, me and Dan went to the capsule hotel. He got a burger from McDonalds along the way and ate while we were going there.

We got to the hotel, and checked in. Last time I was there, the dude at the front desk was kind of a douche. He spoke soft Japanese and even softer and unintelligible English. So I couldn’t understand what he was saying at ALL. I told him that Japanese is ok, and he was just kind of douchey about the whole thing, being about as unfriendly as you can get. Well, this time Dan had that guy, and he kinda did a similar thing, and was equally as unfriendly. Yeah, I may be a foreigner, yeah, you may be working on a sat night when you could be out partying, but tough luck. Having one bad day is one thing, but if it this is how he normally is, then he needs to learn how to do his job better. I worked in retail, too, so I have absolutely no sympathy for him. You do what you can to be as friendly as possible and try to make the customer feel like you appreciate their business, so making ME feel like a jerk for “bothering him” gives off the opposite sentiment. The girl I had wasn’t that friendly either, but she was far more efficient, so I didn’t mind. Maybe they’re all just banned from smiling or acting friendly in the slightest. Compared to how service is almost everywhere else in retail, I’m quite surprised.

Anyways, we got in, and went straight for the bath. We got cleaned up and then went in the hot baths for a while. Dan was gonna go in the sauna, but I wasn’t in the mood at all, so he decided not to go. Normally, I would tag along, but I was already really hot, and I didn’t think making myself even HOTTER was a good idea at the time. I felt a little bad, but not bad enough to go into a sauna when I didn’t want to. We got dried off and headed upstairs. We got some ice cream and then sat around the lounge are and talked for a while. Around 1ish, we went to bed. I fell asleep right away and slept pretty well. Dan got up around 9, but I stayed asleep until 9:15. I met him in the shower area and we got washed up and took another hot bath. After that, we headed out.

We went back to play Demon Bride. This time, a cute girl showed up, and she was playing. She didn’t know what she was doing at all, but it was nice to see a cute girl hanging out at the arcade. Around noon-ish, signups for the tourney started. Me and Dan signed up, and then since we haven’t eaten all morning, we went to the cheese curry place. We both got the usual, a large cheese curry. We both finished it and were suuuuuuuuper full afterwards. It was so awesome. Then we walked around the Den for a bit. Dan had to sell back one of his games that he bought. Toshi met up with us at the Sofmap while we were doing that. We walked around the Den for a bit, but didn’t really buy anything. After that, we headed to Athena and played some BB. I used my Taokaka and got a 6 winstreak. This one bad litchi showed up, but he was better than my worse Taokaka, so after losing 3 games to him, I picked Noel and decimated him. I got a few more wins, but all the good players are at the SBO qual tourney, im pretty sure. Around 3:15, we headed back to Namba Hills for Demon Bride. They started putting up brackets for the tourney.

While we were there, they had the crowd all stand in one spot, and they recorded us going “Demon BRIDE!” and like, putting one arm up. It was super geeky, but like, you’ll see a buncha Japanese people and then like, me, Dan, and Toshi. Pretty cool. The tourney started. Dan played a friend of the cute girl first round and won. Toshi lost to someone who knew what they were doing, sadly. I wrote up the tourney experience on srk in the demon bride thread. I’ll link to the post later because I’m typing this at work, but SRK is blocked here (gee, I wonder who’s fault THAT was, lol), so I’ll link it later if I remember. Anyways, after that, Dan headed out, so me and Toshi left at the same time, too. I got home and just stayed on the internet till like, 1AM. I was so tired yesterday, that I ended up sleeping for 12 hours (from 7PM to 7AM) until my alarm went off this morning. It felt good, and I feel really refreshed today, and I wasn’t falling asleep at all, which was nice.

Next week is SFIV at Azrael’s place in Kyoto, then blazblue or whatever on Sunday. It should be fun. TTYL, guys. LEAVE COMMENTS.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL season 2 - Meeting up with a Swede again

2009-06-01T18:44:00.001-07:00

What’s going on, all? I left off last week. As usual, my life during the week consists of going to work, then coming home and going on the internet all night. Friday night, I went over to Bill and Maria’s place, and she made Tacos. They were pretty much the best thing I’ve eaten in Ono. I couldn’t even believe how delicious they were. I had 5 of them, I’m such a fatty, haha. We watched a buncha youtube clips of funny stuff, and me and Bill played a buncha TvC and then we sat around talking for a while. I didn’t end up leaving until like, 2AM, and I went to bed around 3ish.

Saturday morning, I woke up to my doorbell around 10:45, and I saw through my little monitor that it was some Jehovah’s witnesses. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I answered the door. The dude gave me the absolute fakest smile the entire time while explaining to me about the witnesses. Being in a half asleep state and being hypnotized by his eerily plastic smile, I wasn’t even listening to what he was saying. But imagine talking and holding the exact same smile for a full conversation, and that’s what this guy did. After a bit I was just like “nah, I’m good, thanks anyways”. Since I was already up (and I didn’t want to wake up too late and screw up my sleep schedule), I showered and got ready. I headed out around noonish.

I went to Umeda and headed straight for Monte Carlo. I put in one credit and ended up getting like, a 25+ winstreak, and then I just kinda left my game because I wanted to go to the ko-hatsu tourney. The one Noel player I met like, way long ago from Monte played against me a bunch, as well as a buncha other players, like this one scrubby Rachel + a few other guys. Nobody was that good tho. I walked over to Ko-hatsu and there was a decent amount of people there. I played a game against Tall Litchi Man before the tournament and beat him. Then I beat this arakune player, too.

The tournament itself started and I went 2nd, right after the 0 round battle. 17 people total. I played against some Litchi player I’ve never seen before. He just turtled a lot, but he hit me with a lot of stupid stuff and ended up winning both rounds. I was more surprised than disappointed, but it’s 2/3 rounds one match, so whatever. I didn’t honestly feel like he was better than me, though, I felt like he hit me with goofy stuff and somehow managed to win. Ko-hatsu finally got a 2nd machine, so that guy put in a credit after he won (since it was gonna be a while before his next turn) and I played against him. I beat him that match pretty easily. I ended up playing the entire time while the tourney was going on, beating people who would play on that machine after they lost. A few good players went out first round. Tsukasa lost to Ribaia, Galileo (crazy good Tager) lost to Jager’s Rachel, and a decent Hakumen lost to a not-so-good Arakune. I played against all of them and ended up getting like, a 13 winstreak, beating the guy who beat me in the tourney 4 times in a row. Sigh. Anyways, Ribaia lost to this one casual Ragna player, which was really surprising, and Jager’s Rachel just ended up beating everyone else. After I lost to Ribaia’s Ragna in casuals, I headed out and went to Denden.

After I got there, I stopped off at the morning musume store. Didn’t see too much, but I hate going in and not buying anything since it’s such a small place. I generally spend a few bucks getting SOMETHING at least. I checked all the used manga stores I knew of so I could buy Otaku no Musume san for as cheap as possible. I found vol 1 for 100 yen in a bargain bin, but all the others were 350 yen. This one place had vol 4 for 300 yen. After that, I headed to Athena and played some BB. A few guys were there, a Taokaka player that I talked to a bit had a 20 winstreak, so I went and beat him after I got there. I got an 8 or 9 streak after that. During that time, a couple guys who were obviously new to the game played a guy on the other side of the other machine. They lost pretty bad, but they seemed to be having a lot of fun. This one Jin player talked to them a bit, and then beat the other guy, and the two guys were like, mad cheering him on and stuff. It was pretty cool, they were like “he’s so good!” and “ooh, so cool!” and stuff like that. They watched my match a bit and they thought Noel’s 6C loop was cool, too, but they didn’t really talk to me or anything. Finally, as I was playing the last round of the final stage, I saw a tall white guy on the other side. Dan played me for 2 matches, and then we left. It’s funny cause this one dude was standing behind all ready to play, but Dan just played 2 credits in a row, and then when Dan got up, I got up and left, too, so the dude was all =( I think. We went to the cheese curry place, and I got an extra big one since I haven’t eaten all day. I ate it faster than Dan did. He agreed that cheese curry is indeed amazing.

After that, we headed back to Athena. Those two guys were back. Dan was playing, and they were cheering him on if he won. It was really cool. The dude who was there earlier who wanted to play was on one machine using Arakune. I ended up trying my crappy Taokaka against him, but failed miserably. I played Noel against him and beat him 3 rounds in a row. The two guys cheered me on, too. It was hilarious. They left a couple matches later, and we waved bye to them and stuff. It was fun. We played until people left around 10:30 or so. Dan had to use the bathroom, so we went to Taito station. I played a game of majhong (since the bathroom is on the majhong floor). I had a winning hand, but I couldn’t ron because of no yaku, so I ended up finding the odds of drawing one of the two tiles I needed to be quite low. The turn after I changed my plan, I ended up drawing one of the ones that would have won. Next turn, I drew the other. ugh. The worst part is tho, not only did I not win, I got ron’d, meaning all my life points got drained and I was out of the game in only one credit. Oh well, that’s the breaks. We went to the Sega arcade and played a game of Taiko no Tatsujin 12. We playes Shuuchishin, Sakuranbo, and Kami sama no Birthday (from idolm@ster). After that, we headed over to the 10 hour internet café. Dan had a buncha stuff he needed to do on the internet, and those extra 2 hours are totally worth it. We got a bunch of free drinks and stuff, and just hung out. We got rooms next to each other, so we were able to sit and talk to each other while both doing our stuff on the internet. The computer didn’t have a Trojan like last time, so I was able to talk on irc. w00t. I fell asleep and slept decently well. We got up, got more drinks, and headed out around 9:30. We stopped by Namba Hills and played some freeplay Senko no Ronde. For some reason, I couldn’t always get my big ship to come out, which caused some problems. Same with Dan. I played a couple games of 3S. A Necro player was there. He beat my Makoto, so I used Chun. I beat his Necro. Some Ken player played me afterwards. I had the winning combo for a round because he messed up his super, but when I did b.FP, my super didn’t come out afterwards and I ended up losing the round and match. Oh well. It was about 10ish, so I headed out.

I stopped by the Bic Camera and got my pic that I’m sending into SBO printed out. We stopped by McDonalds, but they were still serving breakfast, so we went to Wendy’s instead. After that, there was still some time before Denden opened, so we stopped by Athena. We played some Blazblue and then headed out when I lost to the taokaka from yesterday (after like, 3 tries or so, he finally got me). We then proceeded to walk around the Den. Dan wanted an Xbox, and so we looked around for the cheapest one. We found one at A-too without the box or instruction booklet. I picked up the vol 4 of Otaku no Musume san from the store I saw it at for 300 yen. I then went to the Kbooks to get vol 2,3, and 5. However (I didn’t notice until I was on the train to Kobe), I mistakingly bought vol 2,3, and 4. This meant I had two vol 4s, and no vol 5. My mistake. We went back to Athena to wait for Toshi. As I was going up to the third floor to use the bathroom, I saw that they had the idolm@ster arcade game on freeplay! Wut? They were charging 200 yen per card (you need 2 cards), but everything else was freeplay.

I met Dan on the 6th floor and told him, and he was like “yo, let’s go! I’ve been waiting for this moment” and right then, he pulls out his idolm@ster cards that he kept from over 2 years ago when we played back when we went to Kansai Gaidai! I didn’t have my cards on me, sadly. I decided to start from scratch, especially since my username on the other card was messed up (I was HeartNa). I played and picked Chihaya. It was fun to play it again. I actually got a perfect communication with her! (It’s really hard cause she’s kinda hard to please, and I’m not fluent in Japanese, so it goes by REALLY quickly). My favorite was when I was talking to her, and I said something like “Going to auditions and stuff have no meaning if you don’t win, right?” and she was like “Exactly”. Wow, a girl who thinks like I do. Other girls would enjoy the “having fun” aspect of it, but Chihaya (like me) is all about business. Good times. We played that until Toshi showed up and then we headed out to check out more stores. We went all the way to one end of the Den, and the A-too 360 was still the cheapest. We went to this Chinese restaurant afterwards and I got a cookies and cream ice cream cone. Dan got gyoza and fried rice. Toshi went to order this one lunch set or something, but wasn’t at the right restaurant. What an idiot! Then he was like “wow, now you’re gonna put this online,” and yeah, it is true. Anything that happens pretty much ends up online if you hang out with me. Kinda interesting. Anyways, the waitress serving us was like, not friendly in the slightest. She would like, take our water and just like, put the cup on the table kinda hard and then walk away. At first, we wondered if it was because we’re foreigners, but no, she just seemed to be like that for everyone. Whatever, I was like “WELL SHE’S NOT GETTING A TIP!!” (note, you don’t tip in Japan), so whatever. I got my ice cream and that’s all that matters. Toshi, as usual, treated us. After that, we headed back to Athena.

At Athena, There was this one Tager player there who IMO wasn’t that great, but would win because of stupid stuff. If I had to describe his playstyle, it would be “he’s playing as tho his opponent wasn’t even there, and is just doing stuff regardless of what the opponent does.” I really hate the matchup because tager just randomly throws out super armor and it beats everything I have, or just backdashes through everything else. Lame. I was beating him, though, which is good. I got a small winstreak. Toshi headed out, and Dan played for a bit. After I lost to braindead Tager again, We headed out. Dan picked up his 360, and he had to leave for an early day on Monday. I went to the station and took the train to Sannomiya, Kobe. I realized the book problem, so I figured I would hit up the used bookstores I knew of in Sannomiya in hopes of finding it. I stopped by the Rashabang, and while I didn’t see the book, I saw that they had the alice fumofumo touhou plush for 3500 yen. I had a 500 yen off point card, so I picked it up for only 3000 yen! Such a good deal. It’s so awesome, too. Next, I played some tekken. I got a 10 winstreak, and then lost 2x in a row to this one Jin player. I wanted to hit up the book-off next, so I left. The book off didn’t have the book either. I was quite sad. They had the Arcana Heart vol 2 manga tho, for 350 yen, so I picked that up. Because I really wanted to know what happened in the series, I just went to a small bookstore and bought it new for 600 yen. So sad. I headed out after that and took the train home. I read about half the book on the way home. I got home, and stayed up too late reading the other half. Sigh.

Yesterday I went to this restaurant with Rai right near my apt. It’s a nice place, but honestly too expensive for not enough food. I headed home after that, and cleaned up and stuff, and yet again stayed up too late because I’m stupid. I have a buncha free periods today at work, so I’m trying to kill time, and what better way to do it than write my blog (which looks like work)?

That’s all for this week! Next week is the Demon Bride loc test/tourney, so I’m gonna get there Friday night and then go to the arcade as early as possible sat morning. w00t. LEAVE COMMENTS. <3

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Observing SBO qual tournies

2009-05-25T17:38:00.001-07:00

Hello, all. As usual, I don’t remember where I last left off. I remember that on Thursday night, me, Bill, and Maria went to get some ramen and then went to the used store and hung out there for a while. It was getting late, so I decidedto head home. Earlier in the day, somewhere along the line, I must have jerked my neck or something because it was kind of aching, and by the time I got home, it got to the point where it would randomly hurt REALLY badly. It only got worse as time progressed, and even laying down in certain ways caused it to hurt badly. I finally found a position that was comfortable, but then I forgot to get my cell phone for my alarm. It took a while, but then I got back up, layed back down. Then I realized I should take some pain medicine. I repeated the process and finally got in bed and slept for about 9 and a half hours. I woke up in the morning and while I could still feel my neck ache, it wasn’t the paralyzing pain that it was before, so that’s good. I went to work as usual and just relaxed Friday night.

Saturday, I went with Bill and Maria to Kobe. Game in Coo had an AH2 tourney at 3, so I figured it would be cool to go to that. We got to Kobe around 1:30ish or so, and we went to Coco’s for some curry. As usual, I had my cheese curry. After that, Bill and Maria went shopping for a bit, and I went to Game in Coo. I got there, and the guy said to wait until 2:45 because if nobody shows, then the tourney is getting cancelled. I went upstairs but nobody was playing BB or AH2, so I figured I would go to Magical Space for a bit and kill time until 2:45. On the way there, I saw people playing BB at the Sanx across the street, so I stopped there. It turns out that there’s a BB tourney at 3. I played some casuals there and was dominating for the most part. The tournament started and 8 people showed up. The format was a bit weird. It had two 4 person round robin brackets, with top 3 going onto a single elim bracket (with first place getting a bye first round). I had a hakumen player, kanimiso or something in my bracket, and a Jin player, as well as another Noel who didn’t know combos. Since I can’t ever beat Jin, I lost to that guy in the RR, but beat Kanimiso 2-0. The guys in the other bracket were all scrubs pretty much. The single elim tourney started, and we got to choose where we want to be put on the bracket based off number order from cards we drew. I picked #1 because I like going first. Kanimiso wanted revenge, so he put himself against me first. He ends up actually barely beating me by like, a pixel in the last round. I have trouble with Hakumen, too sometimes. And so I was out first round. Oh well. The Jin player ended up winning the tournament. It’s kind of disappointing that if I can’t even win an 8 person tourney in the middle of Kobe, then how can I expect to do well at SBO, but I’ve still got a few months to train.

After that, I met up with Bill and Maria again, and we went to this foreign food store. I got 2 jars of extra crunchy skippy peanut butter and a can of American cherry coke (saving for a rainy day). After that, we walked around some stores for a bit. We didn’t really see much of anything. We stopped by this store that had a buncha stuff for like, 400 yen each. It was a lot of goofy novelty stuff, and there were a buncha old sweatshirts there. There was a loony toons one that I could swear my Dad had when I was a kid. Seriously, this one rack looked like my dads closet. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it kinda gives you the feel of what sort of stuff this place had. They had a buncha other goofy things. Bill ended up picking up some yellow and blue belt. We were getting hungry again, so we down this ghetto looking back alley, where there were a buncha really small resturants (some were just a counter, you couldn’t even sit down). We stopped by this donburi place, which had big bowls of donburi for pretty cheap. It was decent. After that, they headed back to Ono, and I headed to Osaka. I went to Athena and played for a while there. I don’t really remember what I played or how I did, so whateva. I remember stopping by the Axe Tower and playing some Tekken before I went to the manga café to sleep.

Sunday was the day of the Athena tournament. I got out of the manga café and after grabbing some donuts for breakfast, I headed to Namba Hills to see if they have any more location test games. They had Higurashi majhong. It was 1v1 majhong, but you pick a Higurashi character to go against another character in majhong. I picked Rena because she’s cute and I like her hat. I picked some green haired girl to go against. The graphics were really good. It was done all anime style, of course. They had a chibi version of Rena on the screen, and of course, the view was of the opposing character sitting at a table or whatever. Anytime I would get a pon or a chi or anything, the opponent would be like “oh no!” And if the opp did it to me, Rena would be like OH NO. And when I got a pon or a chi, Rena would be like “Yay!” and stuff like that. Pretty cute. I lost the first hand, but I ended up winning the next 3-4, so I won the match overall. At the end, there was this anime scene, where it was the other girl running. She was in like, a bikini, and was saying stuff like “oh, I’m so hot, there’s so much sweat coming out!” stuff like that. The screen was kind of blurring, as if you had just run a long time and couldn’t see straight or something. It was super fan-servicey and since it was a location test, it was not only on my screen, it was on the screen that’s hooked up to the cabinet too, so everyone there was able to see it, haha. After that, I went to Athena. I was playing some BB, and after I lost, I sat down at one of the benches there. A guy who was sitting there watching ended up talking to me and asking me some Noel questions. I talked with him for a bit. He was all “Are you gonna enter the tournament today?” I was like “No, I’m not gonna enter.” He was like “Why not? You seem pretty strong at the game.” I then pointed to the blue blazblue SBO ticket on the wall and told him that I already qualified. He looked at that, then looked at me and went “EEEH?” It was pretty cool. At that time, I decided to go around the Den. I went to the morning musume store, and picked up their new single for 100 yen, as well as a few pics of BerryZ’s Captain. I went to the sofmap right there and saw that they had a couple 360 sticks. It looks like Hori reprinted a few. I called up Dan and asked if he needed one, and told him I would pick it up if he did and he can pay me back later because I knew if I didn’t get it, that they would be gone by the next week. I picked it up, and then headed back to Athena. The tourney was gonna start soon, and they were getting brackets ready. As everyone was waiting to see their name get picked, I played some people in BB until the tourney started.

The tourney started, and I sat down at the bench and watched from behind. A buncha good players were there. They had four 8 man brackets. The winner of each was Tall Litchi Man, Kouji (Tager), a Nu player, and the bang that’s always at Athena. Tall Litchi man was doing well against Kouji but barely lost round 2 and 3 after taking round 1. Oh well. Since Athena Bang has close to no Nu experience, he got owned bad. Finals were Kouji vs the Nu. Kouji keeps the pressure on and wins round 1. The Nu keeps him away and wins round 2. Kouji was able to get in on round 3, and that was it. Everyone was mad hype to see Tager win. Afterwards, the machines were on freeplay for an hour and a half or so, so I stayed there and played some freeplay games. I played a few more matches after the tournament, and headed out after that.

The week that follows was pretty boring. Because of swine flu scare, schools got shut down for a week, so I was at work bored with nothing to do, but my allergies were bad, so I just ended up feeling like crap for the week. Thursday night, Bill came over and we played some doujin games, like the Azumanga fighter and the Hello Project fighter. It was pretty fun. Friday, I slept late, did laundry and headed over to Bill’s and we played some more donjon games. We played some E’s Laf, Akatsuki Blitzkampfh, and like, a couple games of Gleam of Force (I didn’t like it at all, so we stopped after a couple matches), and like, one game of this really bad fighter called like, Hinokera or something like that. It was definitely a “Webster” game, it was THAT bad. E’s Laf was at least fun, but Hino whatever wasn’t even fun. After that, I went to the ramen place (so many cute girls working there) and then went back home and just chilled there for the rest of the night.

Saturday morning I went straight to Osaka cause the SCOT sbo qual started at like, 1PM, which is mad early for a tourney. I got there and watched it. There were again 4 brackets of 8 people. Tall Litchi Man won his bracket, but lost to Tsukasa. Tsujikawa (A GG player) who uses Taokaka lost to this carl player who I just started seeing more and more recently. Tsukasa beat the Carl player and then was set to play Kouji at 4PM. So with a couple hours to relax, I went to the morning musume store. I didn’t see anything new, but since it’s a small place, I hate walking in there and not buying SOMETHING, so I picked up a 300 yen set of Captain pics, which I ended up not regretting purchasing. I went back to SCOT and played some AH2. Nelson (I call him nelson because he has a large overbite that makes him look like Nelson from the simpsons) was there. His Yoriko is extremely annoying to play against, and he beat me like, 5-1. I got annoyed playing him after that cause his character is just not fun to play against, so I played some Blazblue, which was on freeplay.

At 4PM the final match started. Kouji won the first round. Tsukasa won the 2nd. Tsukasa dropped a combo in the last round (those sticks weren’t that great, to be completely honest) and Kouji ended up getting him in the corner. Tsukasa did a burst to get tager off of him, but Kouji saw the burst and did Tager’s spin super and won the match. It was mad hype. I was hoping Tsukasa would win, but I gotta give props to Kouji for winning with Tager, of all characters. After that, they left the machines on freeplay. I just played for a while and used Taokaka against scrubs and Noel against good people. Naaga was there, too (he lost to Tsukasa in the tourney 3rd round or so), he said he had no Nu vs Nu experience cause nobody plays her in Kobe. He wanted to get revenge on me for beating him at Game in Coo, he said, so we played at SCOT. I ended up beating him 2-0 pretty easily this time around. I guess all my Nu practice is starting to pay off cause I feel like I’m doing a lot better against her, even tho I still think she’s an unfair character. Taoshizu (Taokaka player) was there too, as well as a few other guys, Akamesu (Tager), another Taokaka player, etc. Eventually, only 6-7 people were there on two machines with freeplay. It was fun to be able to sit there and just keep on playing without having to pay. After a while Taoshizu was like “I wonder if they forgot that the machines are on freeplay” It makes me wonder too, because today would be like, the only day that a lot of people would play BB at SCOT, since it’s normally dead, but the machines are on freeplay, so they’re not even getting any money…strange…oh well, not my problem. Nothing that I’m gonna be worrying about, that’s for sure. Around 8:15, I got REALLY hungry, so I went to my cheese curry place.

While I was eating, some woman comes in and starts speaking English to the guy who works there. As someone who understands both English and Japanese (partially), it was interesting to watch. She got an English menu, and of course, was ordering in English, but the guy working there knew like, not very much English, and was trying to speak it to the woman. I felt kind of bad for him, but I was more entertained than anything. She wanted eggplant on one of them, but the guy didn’t know what eggplant was, so he came over and asked me what Eggplant was, so I told him it was “Nasu” and pointed to the kanji for it on the Japanese menu. I’m honestly more surprised he didn’t just look at me and go PLEASE TRANSLATE, but I give him effort for dealing with it. She wanted like, take out, and wanted to like, custom order her curry, which is fine and all, but doing it in a language that the guy working there doesn’t speak makes for an interesting interaction. I paid and left after that. I stopped by Taito station and used the bathroom there. Nothing interesting there. Checked Avion, too, and they had 2 credits for 100 yen day because it’s the 23rd, which I guess is a special day each month. Nobody was playing anything I would play tho, so I just left and went back to Athena. Tsukasa and Tall Litchi man were there. I played Tsukasa’s Nu. I was doing ok, he got a 3 winstreak and a 5 winstreak at one point, but aside from that, we were pretty much going even. He left after a while, and I headed downstairs and watched some Tekken. This one Baek player was there, and when he would win a round, he would sometimes do a move with baek where he busts out a cup of coffee or tea and drinks it. After the baek player did that and won a close round, I heard the other guy hit the machine. I thought it was pretty funny. I wanted to play Tekken after watching, so I went to the Axe tower and played there. I was doing ok, except I was losing to this one guy’s Kuma, who was just doing tricks for the most part. I hate when people play like that, but whatever. I finally won. ScatroVageena showed up, and played me for a bit. It was around midnite, so I went to the manga café. I tried to log into IRC there, but mibbit wouldn’t let me because it said that the computer had a Trojan or something. Oh well. I just posted on SRK and stuff, and watched youtube videos until I fell asleep.

After I got up, I headed to the import food store. I got a jar of smuckers concord grape jam. They don’t actually have grape jam/jelly in this country, so now I can make PBJs and confuse my coworkers (America is like, the only country in the world that does PBJs apparently). At the new arcade the opened next to it, they had the majhong fight club game for 100 yen/2 credits. That’s cheaper than anywhere else, so I played a game of it while listening to my ipod. It was surprisingly relaxing. I went to Athena after that, and Athena Bang was there. I played some AH2 first tho against the Yellow Petra player that qualified for SBO, Karate Kenji. He beat me 5 games in a row before I decided to go play Blazblue. Athena Bang was using Carl, so I tried Taokaka, but that didn’t go too well, so I used Noel. I beat his carl twice in a row, his hakumen twice in a row, then he switched to Bang. I completely destroyed his bang, badly. I won like, 8 games in a row before he barely got one. It felt good. I remember the day I lost to that guy 7 times in a row or something when I first played him, so it felt good to beat him.

I just played BB all day pretty much. I got another small winstreak (15 wins or so) but a good ragna player beat me. I haven’t seen him before, but he was really solid. I beat him once, but he beat me the 2nd time he played me. Kechan was there too, but used only Nu against me, and I didn’t lose a round to his Nu all 3 times he played me. I played his Rachel after he played Rachel against Ragna man, and I wasn’t able to get a round. I need more practice against Rachel, I haven’t played a good Rachel recently, so I’m getting rusty against her, I think. Ragna man beat me again, but then I played him again and beat him. I played a buncha people after that, and ended up losing to this one scrubby tager after beating him 5 times in a row or something. Tager is the kind of character that even if you do the “scrubby” option, it might work, especially against Noel because she has no choice. He has invul on his backdash, and whatever that doesn’t beat, his super armor will beat. It’s a really annoying battle because of how much damage he can do, and how little damage I can do to him. Oh well. I played some AH2 after that, all the good players were there. I played against some not-Kouya/guy girl players, but still lost everytime. I’ve either gotten really bad or everyone else has gotten really good. Or both. Not a big deal cause I don’t play it much anymore, but I’m surprised at HOW bad I was getting beat. There were a few other guys like me there who also couldn’t win. Eventually, one of them one a match, so I played him, and won. I got like, an 8 winstreak against the other scrubs, thus making me KING SCRUB for AH2 at Athena that day, haha. I eventually lost and played a few more matches before leaving. I went to subway and got some food. It was still a bit early, so I went back to the majhong place and played another couple games worth. After that, I headed home. Not much else to say. Dan is in Kyoto now, so if all goes well, we can meet up this weekend or something. Good times. LEAVE COMMENTS.

The Misadventures of Rob #ReloadFULL Season 2 - Reimu Plush

2009-05-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

Ok so I left off last week Wednesday. Last Thursday and Friday I just went home and relaxed. Got some ramen with Bill on Friday night, that was really good, but after that, I just hung out at home. Saturday, I went back to Osaka. Before heading there tho, I decided to stop at Kobe first. I got some cheese curry and checked out the stores in the area. I saw that they had a set of the touhou plushies (Reimu and Marisa) for 8000 yen. I had a $5 off coupon for the place, and if I bought the dolls, I would have just about enough points to fill up my NEXT point card for another $5 off. I figured that I could probably sell the Marisa in Denden and just get the Reimu for cheap. I played some Tekken to contemplate this for a bit. After I lost, I went and decided to go for it (and not make the same mistake as last time of passing up on them). After I picked them up, I headed to Game in Coo for a bit. I played Blazblue there against someone, but after one game, they stopped. Someone else played me, but they were obviously new to the game, so they stopped after one try. While I was in the middle of playing, the game in coo staff came around with baskets of snacks and a basket of drinks. They were giving out 3 snacks and one can of like, coke, coffee, sports drinks etc for free to everyone there. I was like “sweet!” Such an awesome arcade. I got a Petra mug for 2nd place in a 4 man tourney (with 100 yen entry fee), and now im getting free snacks? Too good. They were having a F/UC tourney when I was there. I would have stuck around to watch it, but I had to head to Osaka to go to the Ko-hatsu tourney.

I took the train to Osaka, pretty uneventful. I walked to Ko-hatsu from Umeda and got there around 4:40, 20 minutes before the tourney started. A bunch of the regulars were there, Tsukasa, Tall Litchi Man, Taoshizu, Ribaia, etc. I played a bit of casuals beforehand, but not too much. The format for today’s tourney is 2v2 random partner. I got partnered up with Tsukasa. Ribaia got partnered with this Tager player that I beat at the SBO qual that I won. Tall Litchi Man got partnered with Nyamo’s bang. This purple color Bang got partnered with Black Carl, Taoshizu got partnered with a Blue Arakune player, and the announcer dude was on a team of his own and used Tager and Nu.

First round, we played the Tager/Ribaia team. I lost the first round to Tager, won the 2nd, and screwed up a juggle in the third round which lead to my doom. I was pretty bummed about that cause I felt like I should have beat the guy. He ended up beating Tsukasa’s Nu also! WTF!

Tsukasa went first against 3 of the other teams and OCVd them, so I didn’t play. I do better against Carl, so I played the carl/bang team and 2-0d them.

The only thing we had to worry about was tager/ribaia. In the final match, it was Taoshizu’s team vs Tager team. Because they got 2-1d a couple times, if the Tager player lost ONE MATCH, then we would get a re-match. First up was the arakune player. He knew a few juggles, but his defense was pretty bad. He got one round, but lost the match. Taoshizu went. He looked like he was gonna win, but then the tager made a huge comeback and ended up winning the 2nd round. Tager then barely won the third round too. Thus, Tager/Ribaia team wins the tourney. Pretty much, the tager player didn’t lose a SINGLE MATCH in the whole tourney. Not much else to say about that. It would have been nice to get a rematch, but the dude didn’t lose at ALL, so he deserved to win the tourney. Afterwards, I stayed there and played against random people until everyone left but me and the announcer. We just played a ton of Noel vs Nu matches until like, 11PM. I generally won, but there were random times he would get like, 3 winstreaks against me. It would be like, I get 3 wins, he gets one, ill get 5 wins, he gets 3, I get 4 wins, he gets one. I didn’t keep track, but it was prolly around a 4-1 ratio for me. I still hate Nu tho, I think that match is awful for Noel.

I got a beef bowl after that at Matsuya and headed to Toshi’s place after that. We stopped by the 100 yen store, and I got a big bottle of generic cola. We got back to Toshi’s place, and played some random XBL arcade games for a while before Toshi’s wife and Purple Shirt Guy got there. After a bit, we played some Majhong. I won a lot of the hands, surprisingly. I got really lucky a few times, but it still felt good. I think we all won at least once, which was cool. At about 4 something, I headed to bed.

I woke up around noon, hung out for a bit with Toshi and then headed to Denden. I got to denden and played at Athena Only scrubs were there, so I got a winstreak, but wanted to leave, so I let this one tager player win. He didn’t notice that I let him win, which was good, cause he was really happy to get that match, and his buddies were cheering for him. That’s my good deed for the day. I wanted to sell back the Marisa plush, so I went to the Rashabang/RASHOUMEN/HOUSES store. I waited around a bit, but I finally got to sell it, they gave me 3500 yen for it, meaning the reimu I bought was 4000, which is fine by me. I went to the Morning Musume store, and I got a couple pictures, Mano Erina’s first single (she’s the new main solo-ist of HELLO PROJECT, the idol company that owns MM, Buono etc), and some stickers for the bottom of my joysticks, lolz.

After that, I took the train to Challenger Ababa, where the SBO qual was taking place. However, I forgot the exact station to get off at. I ended up overshooting it by a station, wandering around for about 15 minutes before figuring out the way to go. I got there around 4:30, and it JUST finshed. Meka-sue’s Carl beat Ribaia’s Nu in the block finals. I like Ribaia, but I’m glad Mekasue made it in. The machines were on freeplay for a while. I played a buncha games against random people. I was doing ok. I played Tsuaka’s Nu a bunch, and couldn’t get rounds for a while. I got close another time, and then finally I won 3-0. It’s still a stupid matchup. I played Ribaia’s Nu. I got close one match, and lost the other. It’s a dumb fight where Nu can just lock Noel down from far away. Noel really needs Petra’s bouncy shots, lol. I played against the tager guy, too. I won a few but he was beasting pretty bad. It feels like when I’m in the corner, it’s auto-win for him. The red Noel player who usually shows up to tournaments (I think he goes by Ashibe or something, I forgot) was there. He knows counter matchups better than I do, but his basics aren’t as good. I played him twice and beat him 3-0 both times, but when he played against the Tager player, he knew the fight better, so he did better. I picked up some stuff tho, and I think I can beat Tager the next time I play him. I didn’t feel like I did all that great, but I learned a lot about fighting Nu, Tager, and a few more. I’m started to get really annoyed at the game tho. Hopefully a revision that balances it comes soon after SBO. I’m not holding my breath, of course, but I can hope.

After that, I didn’t want to leave, but I had to, so I walked back to Umeda and took the train from there. I stayed up way too late (1AM), so yesterday at work, I was falling asleep like mad. I ended up going home yesterday, going on the internet for a bit, falling asleep around 6:30, waking up around 10:20, staying up till about 1:30, then sleeping till 7. I’m a bit tired today, but I’m def not falling asleep in my chair or anything.

I opened up the reimu plush and put it on my bed. She’s so awesome. I love the expression. Plushes are so much cooler than figures in the sense that you can kinda just put them wherever, and you don’t have to stand them up on a shelf or anything.

That’s about it. Not an exciting week, but now that I’m in SBO, I feel like I have to level up like crazy because the level of play of the Tokyo players is never something to be underestimated. As for next weekend, there’s an arcana tourney at game in coo saturday. Maybe 4 people will show up for that one, too, and I’ll get another prize lol. After that, the SBO regional qual is at Athena, so I’ll be there for that tourney to watch.