I found people worse than me at Melty Blood!

Jun 19: I need to get my own Internet connection...

This morning I got up to voice chat with Mom and Jiuna, but my net connection was so terrible again that I wasn't able to, and had to instead text chat with them. D: I think that seals the deal along with the missed Father's Day call; I need to get my own Internet connection.

After Mom and Jiuna had to stop chatting for dinner, I decided to go into Akihabara again today. :D I am very happy with the service between Yokochuu and Tokyo, as it's quite fast and the limited expresses seem to come fairly frequently. I just wish the bus to and from my house was a little faster and ran more frequently... Oh well you can't have everything, and I think the thing for me to remember is that I'm 10 minutes away from my work, when other people are an hour or more. D:

For lunch today I tried a chicken gobo pita from Vie la France outside Akihabara station. It wasn't terribly memorable, but the gobo and chicken went well together (there may have been konnyaku in there too...). I then proceeded to walk up and down Chuou street for a bit, as the entire road was pedestrian only because it's Sunday. I wandered around looking for LAN gaming centres to see if ANYONE knew what StarCraft was, but the only one I thought looked promising I decided to check out later and then was never able to find it again. I don't have much to say about my walk up and down Chuou street, because I didn't really shop (I have nothing I need to buy, except maybe SC2 once I get my own net or find a LAN cafe with it). Today it really struck home that I'm missing out due to my poor Japanese ability, so I will be studying in the evenings now. Apparently there are also volunteer-run Japanese schools nearby, which doesn't surprise me given the number of foreigners in the area.

I also checked out some more arcades, two Taito ones and one called HEY that I don't recall made much of an impression on me. Apparently the Taito arcades are the place to go for non-Project Diva rhythm games, as they had WAAAY better selection than the CLUB SEGAs. They're also the place to go to play danmaku (top down shooters like Raiden Jet) games as well. I was also relieved to find a DDR machine in the Taito arcades, showing that it's not completely extinct. I played DDR in the Taito arcade for old time's sake, and actually managed to pass Drop Out, something I haven't done in quite some time. They have rescaled the difficulty ratings, which is really stupid and annoying, though possibly a good idea, as 8 feet could mean anything from "you will almost full combo this on your first try" to "you will wish you were never born, RJ". ;D At first I didn't realize there was a rescaling, and I was like "UHHHH" when the guy who was playing before me was flipping though all these songs that were 5~7 feet on basic and 11~16 on maniac. Since one of the songs was Capsule's More More More, I was highly suspicious, since I'm pretty sure you can't make an (old scale) 12 foot song out of More More More. I think Drop Out is 13 or 14 on maniac now for reference, but I can't really remember (some reference). The Taito arcades also had Jubeats and that Reflec Beat game I saw in Ikebukuro.

After playing DDR I moved back to the CLUB SEGAs and bounced between them for the day. I actually won some in Melty Blood today. Apparently on Sunday even the noobs come out to play! I am also getting more comfortable with the arcade stick, but I still can't do my bread and butter (basic combination attack string) consistently. I also played a crescent-moon Ciel mirror and got my face destroyed by the other guy. He "kindly" demonstrated that I need to look up a new bread and butter, as he was doing like, 4100+ per string to my ~2700. D: I do NOT look forward to trying to learn a new bread and butter in the arcade, but playing was so much fun that I think it will be worth it for the sake of winning a bit more haha. I'm actually so bad that people don't want to play me, and after I've kicked whatever poor soul who's worse than even me off the machine, no one ever sits down at the other end again and I end up finishing arcade mode. D: Oh well in arcade mode I got lots of time to get familiar with the stick under no pressure, and I also got to rediscover that I am unable to do Ciel's simplest high/low wakeup mixup. D: For now I'm letting myself believe that it was patched out of the game due to Ciel imba S+ tier shenanigans in Act Cadenza, but since I got the setup to work now and again, maintaining external blame for my inability to perform said mixup is requiring much willpower. ;D

After all the noobs left and I was getting dangerously close to getting triple perfected again I went for Project Diva at CLUB SEGA 1 (adjacent to pockets). CLUB SEGA 1 is also where the better Melty Blood players are, as well as the heavier smokers and the more slovenly washroom users. D: For these reasons I spend much of my time at CLUB SEGA 2. Today, however, CLUB SEGA 1's Project Diva area was smoky, even though it's a non-smoking area and was not smoky yesterday. There was also a lineup much larger than last time, so I ended up returning to CLUB SEGA 2, where it wasn't smoky and there were more machines servicing the same lineup. In a sick twist of fate, I frequently ended up playing on the cabinet that has a rather large TV attached to it and extra speakers. Please, universe, my fellow nerds do NOT need to see me fail to pass Moon 4 times in one afternoon (who the hell requires 80% for a pass anyways!?). Unlike the PSP version, the arcade cabinet has a bar at the bottom to show you just how far you are from dreaming of getting a "Clear" on the song you are currently using to embarrass youself. D: Oh well I enjoyed myself and it wasn't smoky, so I may not even get sick! :D

For dinner I went back to Time for Homemade Curry and had the Kurobuta katsu curry again. The curry itself was again underwhelming and the katsu was again delicious. I didn't think about the possibility that my second observation may lie at the same coordinates on the Euclidean plane, so I may have to go back a third time before I am able to draw the line of best fit, as currently the system does not have a unique solution. ;D

As I was walking back to CLUB SEGA 2 after dinner, I heard someone say "Hey! RJ!" What!? I turned around and there were some of my fellow co-ops! They were all in a group and we chatted for a bit, and I was shown an alternative curry restaurant to Time for Homemade Curry, which is quite a lot cheaper, and also underground. >_> I think the co-ops communicate via mobile phone, so I will not be joining up with them until I have one. They also were all like "Oh man! MAIDS! RJ do you go to MAID CAFES HERE!?" Um no. I was actually quite pleasant, I'll have you know! They weren't terribly concerned with arcades, and I had been to five already today, so I don't know how good of an addition to their group I will be. XD We'll find out I guess. They are startlingly nice people, as far as I can determine, which is a little unfortunate because I remember none of their names (one of them might be Raymond). They hadn't eaten supper yet, so we went our separate ways at the entrance to the curry restaurant.

I spent the rest of the evening playing at CLUB SEGA 2 (I even played Virtua Figher 2! Yes, they have it, and yes it was nostalgic in the extreme). My trip back to my dorm was highly uneventful, so there's not much to say about it, other than that riding in a relatively quiet train in a window seat through Tokyo and its nearby cities at night is a lovely experience. Not glitzy but very peaceful, and it reminded me that I am in a different country, which with my sheltered dorm life is often a little easy to lose track of.

Oh! I thought of something I need to buy! Earbuds. The cord on mine is too short to put my music player in my pocket OR my hand properly, so I have to walk around like the Hunchback of Dasaiyashi or have the left earbud constantly tugging in my ear (which is really, really uncomfortable). I didn't honestly walk around hunched over, but constantly fiddling with how it was seated in my pocket was really annoying. Do Jiuna or Nat have any suggestions on where to look for earbuds? I haven't examined my spending rate yet and compared it to my income, so I haven't got a price target, but are there any places that are good to just shop for that kind of thing in?

Now I really need to go to bed. It was an appropriate time to go to bed when I started this blog. Now it is DEFINITELY past my bedtime. 'Till next time!