speaking of that, is it true that his Urien is better than RX’s?
Awesome thread, simply that.
its cool to hear everyones stories from playing in japan 
hope more gets added, very interesting =]
word…cant wait to add some of my own. I already decided i’m going before the year is out.best part is that you can see the progression in aku’s and ryan’s skill level just from their stories. amazing. props to you guys for going out there alone with the language barrier though
kofiend, li joe and flare have shared some of their stories in person with me also. everyone reiterates that a trip to Japan is a MUST for any 3s player. i’m rolling out this year guaranteed
Ryan’s the biggest Japanese 3S success story here. Say what you want about Chun-Li, but being able to get to Mousa rank in Tokyo is just nuts. I went against a lot of strong players in Fukuoka, but except for the guys I mentioned and a few others like Yuusuke, Tokyo’s supposed to be way better. That’s just frightening to me.
I know a lot more about the game and improved quite a bit since 2006-2007(I’m sure hold dat remembers me from C3…remember Johnny rainbow? lol), but I still have a long way to go.
Language barrier eventually didn’t become an issue to me since I managed to get fluent for the most part. I also picked up some fighting game terminology thanks to nicovid and translating those Japanese articles, so that helped out too.
But you’ll definitely love it there, hold dat. I just wish you could’ve gone earlier so you me and Anthony could play. Then again I couldn’t even meet Anthony because he was in the middle of Kyushu. haha
id love to be able to go to japan for a few months but me being 16
how would i stay there by myself and the language barrier is a big thing .
is it cheap to play in the arcades in japan ?
id love to be able to play players like rx, etc etc
would be an honor .to play them.
It depends on the arcade. Some machines will let you play for like 30 yen or so, while others will be set to either 100yen for two games, or 100yen for just one game. It can get expensive if you’re on a budget…which is why I eventually started going to arcades less during college.
i wonder if there is any type of street fighter arcade machine in ireland 
there is like no arcades in the country and the ones that are have shitty games
long post in the pipeline
all of this and much more i have already written but in italian so let’s see :
been to japan 3 times so far
first time was in january 2004,osaka
but i wasn’t playing third strike back then - only started in mid 2005 :
i remember watching a few matches @ sega avion in namba or @ monte 50 in umeda though
but…yeah
so fast forward to summer 2009 = loads of epic third strike moments
tokyo
going to mikado asap , straight out of narita , tired and jet lagged
immediately noticed match practicing crazy infinites @ gekka no kenshi 2
(btw,many third strike players are well into kof,real about and various snk fighters)
he then moved to the third strike area ;
my and my friend couldn’t really touch him (stupid standing mk) and left after about 14-15 tries
going to versus for the first time,playing kuroda,nuki,mester,etc etc
playing a long set against ysb @ shibuya kaikan
5on5 @ clubsega shinjuku , teaming up with the french guys and izu
you can see part of our match here
managed to win a round off that yun and didn’t do too bad
later discovered that yun was naitsu
like ryan said about the 5on5 in 2008,apparently every japanese third strike player known to man was there
after years of third strike videos it’s like "so they actually exist ! whoa is that rx over there?"
pretty overwhelming
we managed to enter the last chance qualifier @ jcb hall
it was good to be part of that and we got to see all the crazy action of the qualifier
but my best moment was @ the first godsgarden
yes,it was a sf iv event…nobody’s perfect
so nuki and kokujin are there chilling and selling those kokujin shirts
you know " そういうげーむじゃねえからこれ！！"
yes,i know it’s not that kind of game but why ? i want to know the answer !
problem is i don’t speak japanese and kokujin doesn’t speak english
so i ask a nice guy we just met there (from sweden) to help with the translation
he said he was in japan studying japanese and all,right?
problem is he’s been living in japan for about 5 days so my japanese is probably better anyway
the other guys there don’t really understand english so they call itabashi zangief
his english wasn’t super hot but good enough to comunicate a little
i was getting mad confused though . english,japanese,italian,etc
i remember at some point i was asking things to itabashi in italian
in any case,after a couple of minutes,don’t remember exactly how or why
but i ended up saying what i think "sf iv is horseshit,we should be playing third strike RIGHT NOW"
so itabashi apparently translates this and kokujin is like ultra happy to hear that
he jumps out of his chair (no joke) and runs towards me to shake my hand and all
osaka
couldn’t find the top players in the usual game centers
so i annoyed aurik (australian player) enough until he took us to their hide-out > game space vegas
we go there and there’s a tournament and chinta,umezono,haitani,casa,afro,ABE,etc etc . very cool
then after the tournament one of the spectators decided to sit down and play and it’s fucking hayao
i was so glad to be able to play him again and watch his hugo again
hayao is probably my all time fav player,he’s my third strike hero since…well,2005
i thought he had retired and back then there was no dan’isen video from space vegas (obv)
so nobody knew what the hell was up with him
i later discovered he had moved to america to dance or something crazy like that
(you can see videos of him dancing in his niconico account,btw)
2010
ok,only tokyo this time but for a month
again,too many epic moments and i gotta sleep asap so…
taking part in a game bingo tournament (that was MANDATORY because i was such a fan of their videos),teaming up with ryan,meeting again pherai and the rest of the american guys again (+ all the other foreigners like the french team etc) winining a beginners tournament @ mikado ocv-ing the other team (5 people),visiting gamer’s vision,the kuroda kumite @ game newton (where i tried to explain kuroda that he’s godlike),the usual pre-tougeki tournament but @ mikado this time,explaining to saru that i love osaka and i root for them (uragiri no hoshi team ftw),meeting saru again during tougeki and talking yun stuff with him (linguistic barriers ftl - but he drew this 移動虎撲子 tutorial for me) > http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5215/dscn3596u.jpg
playing against dbkoopa (sp?) the korean player who was raping me in 2009 and finding out i was actually able to annoy him and get a couple matches off him,reaching dan 4 @ game versus,etc etc
2011
!?
Damn I can’t wait to go especially if I call myself a 3s player, I wanna see the skill gap difference in person so I can have dreams about it, lol.
tokyo game centers that are important like game spot versus and Takadonobaba Mikado are 50 yen. theres tons of club segas and taito stations etc, but no good players play at those places. 100 yen at all those corporate places.
Shinjuku sportsland is 100 yen but you get 2 plays so it balances out. The owner of shibuya sportsland (rip) Toyama-san works here now. Some random good comp at night times, and its right next to Kabukicho, its my favorite “random” game center. I love to hit up the convenience store nearby, chill and drink 3 tallcans, then go play vs random medium level players.
Every sign is in english in tokyo, i lived there a year and never had much problem. luckily i started picking up on the language, but its really not necessary.
hold dat hit me up if you want inside tokyo 3rd strike player tips. I know how to live with minimal money spent on food and housing, and maximum savings for partying and 3rd strike lol.
tbh most of my fondest memories from my sbo trips aren’t even 3s related, so not sure how interesting that is to people, and some aren’t very forum appropriate either hahaha
just being together with a huge crew of 3s friends in tokyo whose only interests are games and gettin rowdy is like being in a dreamworld. even little shit like standing outside a convenience store at 4 AM drinking tallboys, smorkin hella cigs, wearing sandals and bathrobes i am super nostalgic about
This was me almost every weekend at one point when I used to go clubbing in Japan…yeah including the bathrobe and sandals :V
Japan is a must for 3S players at one point, but it’s Japan! Gotta have some fun there with everything they have to offer. I have a lot of stories outside of 3S to talk about too, even though some of them I can’t share here. haha
Those stories are like the best to me TBH, shit that happens after or before the actual games.
im fucking dying at the thought of hayao being an american dancer
im def going next summer tho
no questions.
Hey man, if Hayao wasn’t such a goofy otaku nerd, I would totally believe that story. He is an AMAZING dancer.
Hayao(middle) “street dancing” to “Yaranaika?”:
Hayao dancing to the IIDX song, Daisuke(he mimics this routine with insane accuracy):
EDIT: vvvvv Yeah, Hayao is the one in the middle, with the blue shirt.
HAhahaha the other two in the yaranaika video just seem like they were roped into it. Especially the guy on the right. Neither of them is as into it as hayao (assuming since I’m pretty sure that is what I remember him looking like).
When Pherai got arrested in Japan.
playing 3S in Japan= MONEY,BABES, ALCOHOL MWAHAHAHAHA!!
no.hayao is king of dance. do not outshine hayao or u will suffer