Since im temporarily banned on wow for botting i got time to write up some about our trip to japan and evo finals.
First off I have the greatest respect for most of their players. They not only showed skill but were very polite to us and treated us as equals among their group when we talked to them. Nekohashi i think his name is speaks english so we talked to a large group of their top players throughout the sbo event outside in the ‘smoke break’ area. We got to know some background about the osaka crew of st players and we let them know where we came from and how we got good at st as well. Gian is an awesome player hands down the best in japan imo.
When me and alex first arrived after a long flight we were jet lagged and worn out from travel but before sleep we hit their arcade, it would have translated to 6 am pst if we were in the US.
When we arrived at the arcade we immediately saw them doing stuff we know wouldn’t happen in the US since our players lack the ability to pull off such complexity in regular play since ST takes such timing and precision. We also realized their speed was slower by choice, speed 2 japan. The controllers were different which we expected and attempted to adjust to. We didn’t do so well at first but we played alot id say the ratio was 5 wins to 30 losses or something for each of us. We decided to get sleep that first night after that, one thing we did learn even with the lack of sleep, controllers and speed, is that we could beat them.
Next day we woke up and decided to learn to use their sticks so we went to mikado early in the morning when no player was there and practiced for a solid 2 hours against computer, not each other. We both familiarized ourselves with the speed and the sticks in this time to the point where we were able to somewhat play well. We left went sightseeing and returned in the evening. During the evening we played alot of matches with them and did very good compared to the first night, we were knocking out wins against some big names cause I saw some of their surprised reactions. My vega took out a few CE guiles that were pretty damn godly at the game so I was happy. My brother’s ce bison was shredding people. He had some top players hitting the machine, which was no surprise to me. We also ran into Bob and he introduced himself as an old US player so it was nice to meet someone who spoke english yet knew the scene and we talked for a while and he told us about Hyper Mania 4 on saturday, the current day was friday. We all decided to have a 3s team together, myself, bob and my brother alex.
Saturday morning we woke up had some mcdonalds breakfast where alex couldn’t figure out how to throw away his trash cause they had no trash can only recycle stuff, so he was forced to finish his half eaten hash brown. It was pretty funny since he was making fun of me the first day we arrived because I couldn’t figure out how to leave the bathroom at the airport and was stuck inside for almost a minute. That evening when we arrived at the arcade it was pretty busy since hyper mania was that evening. We practiced alot with mixed results, a cammy for example got 21 wins in a row on me. I came to the conclusion that balrog actually has a hard time vs her and i tried my vega. Gian walked up to me at some point in the evening and asked if we were the USA team for SBO, he also asked which sticks we preferred and I asked Alex what we were gonna use and he said japanese sticks is fine. So we chose to play on their sticks, Gian made a call and let them know we wouldn’t be using american sticks. Keep in mind me and alex NEVER practice on japanese sticks at all. This would be completely different than our normal play in the US.
Hyper Mania 4 was at mikado arcade of course and it was pretty exciting to watch. Alot of big names were there with amazing teams. We watched Daigo’s team and others play and do pretty good, was also our first time seeing Daigo since we talked to him at last years evo. He didn’t seem very social this time though. We played our first round and Bob played his first match and was close but lost to that Cammy player who beat me 21 times, was my turn to play the Cammy. I picked Vega and sat there. He would approach I’d do low strongs, he jumped or did the air grab move thing and I would flashkick him. It was simple and the announce said ‘something something USA something’ I assume he was letting the crowd know we were USA players or team USA or something about our funny US style of play. In either case I laughed it off but I managed to beat the cammy. I was pretty happy considering my record with him earlier before winning. Then I faced a Ryu player on his team, I beat that player and I forgot our third opponent but he managed to knock me out, then my brother came in with CE bison and cleaned up.
Round 2 Bob wins his first match then gets beat, btw bob played old ken. I play my match and I’m kicking my opponents ass then get him dizzy and space out dont ask me what I was thinking but I started ducking to charge my off the wall grab AFTER he got up dizzy. Honestly I wasn’t taking the tourney too seriously. I guess I shoulda but in either case it cost us the set and we were out. Watching Muteki’s wife play was pretty insane considering our country has no female st players nor one that is extremely good at the game and not looking like the wicked witch of the west.
After that we went to SBO on Sunday. When we walked into the Ariake stadium I had butterflies in my stomach cause it was a huge place and there were so many people. I knew if I didn’t get rid of the nervousness we had no chance. So I kept thinking ‘you are the one they’re scared of, they don’t want to be the first to lose to the USA team’ cause I knew they saw us doing good vs them at mikado and every one of them knew we were able to hang. I was watching Komodo Blanka and knew he was nervous, he was so nervous in fact he couldn’t stand , I notified my brother about this and purposely acted less nervous to make them think we were confident and break their own confidence even more, this included me telling alex jokes and making loud laughter to make them think we had no worries, I of course had been thinking and laying out how I’d play otochun for the 4 hours before our actual match and thinking of everything I knew and expected to occur.
Our first match went through and I took out otochun or otuchun first round pretty solidly and I was pretty pumped up that second round I demolished him. Alot of people were surprised including kuni who was watching right by us. I told my brother some positive motivational words then he played and won his match using a ce bison lock I’ve only ever seen him use and no other player. It was a great victory for us to beat the best blanka and chun. I can’t describe the feeling of beating one of their top teams first round in their own top tourney. I can say this though that we knew we didn’t go out like scrubs and that motivated us. Next match was rough for me, I lost my match and my brother had to clean up and beat them both. Third round I think me and alex were just not totally there but the other team picked a real bad counter matchup for us and wrecked me then my brother. In either case we had gotten 5th place so we were pretty happy when we heard Daigo and Gian both got eliminated first round, we had done quite alright. We also felt like we had a hard bracket so it wasn’t a lucky 5th it was an earned 5th.
Anyway If any of you read all this I hope you enjoyed it. I REALLY hope someone posts my match vs gian here or youtube. I talked to SRK Staff im pretty sure it would be ok since its not day 2 videos.
Graham
http://picasaweb.google.com/thewolfe/Japan?authkey=zwKDsBQ7HlQ
click on that link for pics of our trip to japan, We took a few pics with Daigo, Muteki and a few other top japanese st players.