Japan Training Trip Part 2

Alright guys, so my days are pretty repetetive and I start forgetting what I do on which days therefore I am not going to title my days as day 4, 5, 6 or something. Everyday my friend and I basically just wake up, a little bit of house work such as laundary, garbage, etc. We would head out and eat (mainly ramen) go to an arcade to play SF until the arcade closes then head home and take turns playing on XBL.

Long story short about my training. I joined one of the SBO qualiier with Kim1234 (M.Bison) and we got third. In the qualifier all I did was lost to Makotos...no idea how to fight that match up because there weren't any in NA's XBL, but man..she is so strong and dangerous in AE. It's like a stronger version of Abel that can deal 40% dmg with one combo...

After the qualifier tournament we went to Shinjuku Taito Station for more training. My ex SBO teammate Misse now mains Makoto and I had him play against me so that I can learn the match up. A lot of close games but I only beat him once out of like 5 games and it's hard to link to the player I want when there's like 10 cabinets linked together. The whole night all I played against were Fei Long, Yun, Yang and Makoto. There were only 2 Ryu players, including myself and Togawa which depresses me because all the players who were not a really strong player is now extremely hard to beat by using the twins. It also makes me really angry when I know that I am a better player than they are and losing to the twins with 1 mistake.

Me + Kim

The next day I joined another qualifier with Kim that was held in Chiba. We lost our first round to Kyoku (probably 2nd best Yang next to Nemo) and I was completely raped. It's not because I don't know the match up, but the match up is so hard that I am not even exaggerating (sorry I will not explain why right now nor going to write a guide about it in case a Yang player is reading my blog...just want to minimize my threats at evo.) Kim once told me that he thinks Yang is the best character in the game before I arrived Japan and now I can see why.......though he takes more skills to reach to the broken stage when compared to Yun, but once he is reached, the character is so retarded that you feel hopeless against him after a knock down (especially if you are a Ryu/Ken/Akuma user). After the qualifier, we all went to another arcade because it's cheaper and with more cabinets. Noticeable players at the arcade were PPN (Dhalsim), Haneyama (Yang) and Hanamaruki (Sagat). I actually did fairly good against PPN though I lost more then win, in fact I think I know the match up better now which I think it's not a 7-3, instead a 6-4 match up after all. I didn't have a chance to play with Haneyama and Hanamaruki because they were playing on my side, but I played Hanamaruki the first two days and I didn't have much problem against him. I also played Bonchan the night before though I still couldn't beat him, but every games were down to last pixel realizing I have improved just in a week.

Before dinner I went to Yokohama to pick up Justin (SupaDonkie) at Yokohama because he doesn't know his way around and of course, we ate ramen for dinner (LOL) then headed back to Seven Island arcade for more training. Bumped into some old friends Tasaki (Zangief), Periko (Dhalsim) and Awa (now Yang and he used to be the best Boxer players in Yokohama). They were all suprised to see me even though they have heard of my return. I beat almost everybody without a problem until I faced Awa's Yang....I think I only beat him once out of like 7 games and it's either I still haven't figured out what I should do in this match or he was reading me like a book. I honestly think this match up is as bad as versus Fei long or even worst. I was very frustrated and angry that I almost slammed my fist on the machine but I managed to hold it in and stopped myself. YANG IS FUCKING STUPID, ARGGGG.................

Today, (the date I am writing this post) Justin and I played at Shibuya instead of Shinjuku because I have to meet up with some friends for dinner. Before we meet up with them we played at Shibuya KaiKan and I was suprised to see Shiro there. I watched some of his games and I can see that he struggles a lot against the twins with Makoto though he won most of his matches. I played beside him mainly because I don't want him to have practice against me before EVO since he is going to be one of my strongest threat. With another 6000 bp I can become master grade with my Ryu and it's just one week....couldn't believe it took me over a year back then in "Vanilla" to reach master grade......-_-.

It was time to meet up with my friends and we ate at an Izakaya Restaurant. The food was delicious as expected, dismissed with my friends and Justin and I went to Shinjuku for SF training again. There was a grandmaster no name DeeJay with 18 win streak and I ended his streak going 1-1 with him in the end. Training here definitely changed the way I play and I think how I used to play with Ryu wasn't correct. I had several 5-8 streaks, however lost few games against FU*K YUN's (Yun) and quite a few to Yuu*'s (Yang) and you guys guessed right...I hate Yang more than Yun and no BS, my friend Reiketsu (#1 Vega Claw Player in Japan right now) told me that the match up vs Ryu with Yang is near 7-3 and he is positive because he uses Yang as an alt.

That's my recent training and on a side note, I found out that the Ryu player Jyobin is a kick boxer champion...pretty cool eh?