Japan Training Trip Part 1

Day 1:

FEELS GOOD TO BE BACK IN JAPAN!! I will be training in Japan until the 25th with my friend "SupaDonkei", and we will be eating sooo much ramen (it's my favorite food). First thing we did of course was drop off our stuff at where we stay (where i used to live that is called a "guest house" which u share all the facilities but having a room of your own) and then off we go to my home arcade "Seven Island" located in Yokohama to play AE and meet up with my Japanese friends.

We got there and it was great to see all my friends. Right away I played some games with them and suprisingly I won most of my matches when I thought I would have a hard time against them especially using Ryu in AE. My friend "Naruo" who is also one of the best players in Japan thinks Ryu is still strong in AE and does decent against the twins. I do agree and this is one of the reason why I stick with Ryu, of course also mainly because I want to play who I enjoy playing.

After couple hours, my homie "Kim1234" finally arrived and good to see him again. We then went for some ramen along with some great talks about AE and life. We ate at this really famous ramen restaurant called "Ichiran", its rated one of the best Ramen place in Japan with over 50 stores in the country. It was so delicious that the noodles in Vancouver are not comparable at all @@.

Ichiran's Ramen

Once we finished our meal, we head back to Seven Island for more games. I played against Kim1234 who used to be my training partner and teammate when I lived in Japan, and I will not post the results here, therefore stay tuned for videos @ my youtube channel. We stayed until the last 15 mins until the arcade closes and went back home by subway. (Arcade closes at around 11:45) Anyways, my training was not over for the day because I brought monitor and XBOX just to train after the arcade closes, MUHAHAHAHA...and here is one of the match of the day on XBL.



Day 2:

Woke up pretty early because of jet lag....head was aching but no matter how hard i tried, can't get back to sleep :(. "Supadonkie" and I got dressed and then we went to eat our first meal, ramen! Right after that we got on the train to our training destination, Shinjuku Taito Station, where I was told that it has the most competition in Japan right now. We got there pretty early, around 3 pm, there were a lot of players, but no top players. However, there was a no name Ibuki player who was having a long streak and he was very good with his mixups and footsies. We were trading games until I fully adapted his style then I beat him 4-5 games straight, though he was an unknown, but it was really good practice and I believe I know the Ibuki match up much better now.

Tsukemen

Sexy guy eating noodles

 

At around 6, Kazunoko (current #1 Yun) and Daigo were having a 1 on 1 mirror. I was playing my game so I didn't watch their games, but according to my friend Kazunoko won way more. Also, I remember my friends telling me that Kazunoko is the better player and in case nobody knows where the hell Kazunoko came from, he is a top Guilty Gear Player who every knows, so he's not a random. I forgot when, suddenly all the cabinets were filled up with top players. Just to list a few, Daigo, Mago, Kazunoko, Bonchan, Yuu*, FU*K YUN, Jyobin and I forgot.....I didnt get to play Daigo or Kazunoko because they were playing on myside. I did better than I thought against whoever I played except Bonchan's Sagat....I didn't beat him a single game...he's too god like against Ryu -_-...however, FU*K YUN is actually a player name...I heard he is new to SF and he is a 90k bp Yun (#6 in ranking), and I beat him every game....I was suprised.
Later in the night Tokido also showed up and he was struggling against Yun even against some unknown ones.

Anyways, Daigo went up to me and was suprised to see my existence (same goes with Mago and Tokido...all came at different times and asked me the same questions that Daigo did, lol.) and then asked about my purpose of this trip and who I main..-_-. I forgot what lead to this conversation, but I told him that everybody in this arcade uses Yun, Yang, Fei Long, I couldn't practice against other match ups. Daigo then said Ryu is actually one of Yun's hardest match up and I actually think it's not that hard for Ryu though I am sure it's in Yun's favor. I guess it's a 5.5:4.5 match up in Yun's favor.

Anyways, Togawa who I was told the best Ryu in Japan right now showed up and I learned quite a few new things from him when against the twins and Daigo did lost a lot of games to his Ryu........

Again, I stayed until the arcade was about to close and I repeated what I did last day, go home and played on XBL for a bit and then went to bed. The level on XBL is not comparable to arcades....from what I see, the top players play @ arcades more.

Day 3:

This day I woke up much later and Justin "SupaDonkie" was still sleeping. I turned on the xbox and played untl he woke up then we got ourselves ready to go outside for food and the arcade. We had to go to Yokohama Seven Island because I am going to meet up with my classmates for dinner. Around 4 pm we arrived and there were only scrubs.....I mean they are decent but they weren't on my level, therefore I had like a 3X win streaks until everybody left -_-. My classmates finally arrived then we left the arcade for food at this Japanese "Western" cuisine like Denny's, and it was really good. A little disappointed about my training today, I sure did learn some match ups that I wasn't familiar with, such as Juri, Deejay and Adon, but it felt like it wasn't productive enough.

God like Hamburger

Right before I was writing about day 3 of the training trip, I got raped by Sasaki's Cody (aka dnm3rd)...I think I only won 3 games out of like 15? He was extremely strong...I can say that I am not too good at this match up, but there were some sets that I was raped.....however I learned a lot playing against him and hopefully I can get more practice with him right after I posted this post. Cody's low short buff def made the match up much harder now..and the damage output is so high @@....