Life in Japan - Part 2

Hokay, so finally I've come along with a little bit of time to finish off part 2!  It's been hella beautiful here in Vancouver so I've just been out and abouts alllll the time enjoying the sun and the great weather.
Anyways so here it goes!

Living like a cheapass.

Mr. Air and I were staying at a guesthouse in Tamaplaza (between Yokohama and Tokyo).  It's a very small town thats away from the big city.  According to Kenny its a town for rich people to live, I did see alot of nice cars and super nice looking houses near the guesthouse.  Our guesthouse, however, is a hella ghetto building. 


The street we lived on. Roughly 10 mins walk to the closest train station.




For those who don't know, a guesthouse is a building where you rent just the room (a tiny ass room at that, if you're coming from N. America), and share everything else.. such as bathrooms... showers... kitchen.. living room.. etc..  Alot of foreigners stay at these places because the rent is reletive cheap for longer stays.

The building that we lived in is called "ElDorado", owned by an old Japanese guy named Joe (who can speak some english).  This is my 2nd time staying here, the first time being 2 years ago when I went to Japan to visit Kenny, that time I stayed for almost 1.5 month I believe, that was training trip 1, and this time is #2.  (yes, I go to Japan just to play street fighter and eat ramen, what? :p)



ElDorado, the front door



I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but unlike Mr. Sponsored, I had to pay for the whole trip on my own, and having Kenny being the jewbag that he always is.  We were ALWAYS watching our budget.  The flight ticket was retardedly expensive, for it is high season.  But Kenny san has to train up for EVO so I figured "fuck it, I wanna train" and tagged along (I didn't even go to EVO, which I hella regret, I'm so going next year).

So we're staying there for 2 full weeks.  That is 14 days.  We had planned to spend as little as possible each day.  That means sticking to ramen and cheap ricebowls (which are VERY delish btw, and affordable, I love that shiz to death) and staying away from "nice" restaurants. 

We didn't have any shopping to do either, other than some small things Kenny had to pick up for his girlfriend at Harajuku's "Halloween Street" *I don't know what it's really called, but it's a strip with a ton of shops that sells small gifts and such, total tourist area.  We just call it "halloween street" cause of the amount of scary looking mofos that travel back and forth there (pork chops, tatted up and full of piercings shop employees.. etc, weird people :p)*

Traveling cost (within Japan) was high as well but we only make single trips out to the game stations early in the day then ride the last train home everyday, so we kept train rides to a minimum.   Thank god everything in Tamaplaza does not have the tourist markup, especially on food and daily needs and such.  We are able to aquire snacks, cup noodles, and drinks usually at around 100yen (roughly a dollar CAD) a piece. 
I had this most ultimatly badass ice cream waffle I got from a conveinence store there for a dollar, it was SOOO GOOD (Sorry, I devoured it within mins so didn't have a chance to take picture, that's how good it was :p)



100yen gigantic iced tea that usually lasts me from 1am - 4pm the next day when we leave the house.  Cheap FTW!

Of course, being Chinese and all, we did not forget to cheap out on daily supplies.  Shampoos, bodywash, and toothpaste... etc were aquired from various different stores depending on which one had it the cheapest (most asians are born with the ability to do this :p). 
To top it off, if possible, we would buy the "refill" version of the shampoo and bodysoap, which just comes in a non-resealable bag, and then we would just pour dat shiz into empty drink bottles. INSTANT RESEAL CAPABILITY! (genius? I know)




INSTANT RESEAL CAPABILITY!?  Hell yes!!

 Anyways, that's all that I can think of right now to write about on this trip.  I am missing that awesome country a shit load right now, even though I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world (but its just so god damn boring here).  I am definitely looking to go back again for another training trip hopefully... next year? :)  I truly hope so!

Cheers and thanks for reading gais,
Justin

First Post

Alright guys, so I have been wanting to start writing a blog in the last few months.  Mainly just for myself to try and solidfy parts of the many thoughts that comes across the mind.  Who knows, it could be interesting. :p

So, I actually got down to it.  I made an account on the same site that my gay buddy Air (not gay with me, just gay) cause I'm too lazy to go online and "search" for other ones.  I figured if his blog looks decent enough, then it's probably alright ;)





Air-San, pushing his highly modified vintage luggage uphill for roughly 15 mins to our guesthouse

Lets discuss about Air-San.  This little mofo is actually a pro-gamer!  He gets paid to play games!  Lucky bastard.. (he's actually not gay, but we discovered during our recent Japan trip that there's a rumor going around amongst the Japanese top StreetFighter4 players that "Air is gay".  For me, this is funny as hell. *Troll* (more troll'ness to come on this sorta topic)

So what else happened on the trip?  Well, for those who dont give a rats ass about SF4, we did absolutely nothing other than take a really long flight to Japan, and play this ONE video game, over and over, over and over, and over again until you pass out and repeat on the next day, and the days after, until we go home. 

*cue dramatic background music* But for us it was 2 weeks of, extremely tough, extremely aweome, extremely... salty "training trip" (for those who dont play: shut up and you can ignore the next chapter :p).  We went thru 12 days of intense anal rapage (@SF no homo), and intense ramen eating marathon, and alot of walking in the super hot weather.

*normal bgm again*

Playing against mostly Japanese top players, what we learned is that THIS GAME IS RETARDED. <- Period

The odds are completely not against you when they tell you that you have a "bad matchup" in this game.  And the brilliant balancing team at Capcom made it so *a round of ap·plause   to these champs please, brainless motherfuckers @salt*

Supersize lemon tea for only 100yen

Hokay, aside from gaming, there were these days where we did a tiny bit of other shizzle aside from gaming.  We managed to meet up with a couple of Kenny's (air, but I call him kenny cause I'm not a gaylord gamer geek all the time :p) buddies.  Shout outs to K I M 1 2 3 4*yen* , HaoFengFu-san, Lai Man Jeh and the other few pieces that I do not remember the names of unfortunately (I am usually a very "face" person, I would remember your face in 10 years if I meet you once, but I will not be able to remember your name the first 5 times you tell me).....

So ya I had a blast hanging out with all those mofos, it was kinda like tiny breaks from getting owned at a video game, which is what we went there to do, our target, our goal (well mine :p, Air was planning on beating them, and that he did, some games :p).  We didn't do anything super special, just meeting up at train stations... then walk around the streets for abit....then grab dinner.....andd walk around abit more then say goodbye (which is kinda sad, they are all very cool people to hang out with, I hope to see them again in the future) :D 




Very epic bathroom wall at Ichiran Ramen

 

Oh aside from the everytime routine we also went and walked to the Yokohama Pier (I don't know the name of the place)..which is apparently a very well known places where couples go and well.... to "spring", and cockblocked 2 or 3 couples from advancing to the next stage, but unfortunately that had came to an end as we have to rush for the last train to go home.  Cause if we miss that train, we're either stuck in that town for the rest of the night till 5am, or we're gonna take a very expensive taxi ride home.  So since Kenny and I were in super cheapass save money mode, we decided to bounce.



United Airline, never riding with these mofos ever again. :D



But ya, I'm back at home now, extremely (3rd) home sick. *1st home = home.  2nd home = espot (local arcade).  3rd home = Japan (it felt like so at this moment. since I just got back) and extremely salty that in vancouver there are no ramen that could even compare with the real jdm ramen. :(

How's that for a first post? :p PURDDDDY LONG RIGHT?! :p  I did all this in 30 mins, I should become a professional writer, maybe ppl will pay me to travel to... write brilliant blogs for them :p

Cheers guys, thank you and goodnight

The Deadliest SupaDonkie on this planet