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Japan Day 4 - Aaron, Yokohama,and those weirdoes at Muthos
I left Aaron (of www.aaroninjapan.com fame) a message yesterday saying to give me or Nykkel a call at the ryokan if he felt like hanging out today (Sunday). I didn't really expect him to get it, so we figured we'd end up shopping today, but I woke up this morning because the phone in my room was ringing. It rang and stopped so I got confused, seeing it was almost 10am, I went to see if Nykkel had been ringing my room to wake me up, but no, he hadn't... the phone started ringing again and I ran to answer it and it was Aaron! So I was halfasleep but made plans with him to meet up in the Yokohama station at noon.
Got up, got ready, got out of the ryokan, it took us about an hour to get to Yokohama, and as we went through the station we ran into Aaron! Yay! (Though about 2 mins before we got into Yokohama I realized we left the chocolate we brought for Aaron back in the ryokan. Anti-yay.) We were all hungry so we went to get lunch at a place in the station... chose a place with tonkatsu and scary soup. It was really good to see Aaron and talk to him again. He's so nice and so funny.
We wandered around Yokohama for a bit after lunch. There was this arcade called "Freedom", which had a PNM machine on the outside corner with lots of space around it... Aaron was like "This is the infamous freestyle PNM machine". So we watched some guy play a little PNM and then some other guy comes by and Aaron grabs him, explaining "You know that video I have of PNM freestyling on my site?" (we didnt), "This is that guy the video is of!" So he explained to the guy that Nykkel and I were visitors from Seattle, and the guy's like "Oh, I'd like to put on a performance!" So we're like, cool, great, heh.
OMG, this pop'n'music freestyler was THE coolest thing EVER. He had all these routines to various PNM songs, like Mikkeneko Rock and the J-Tekno song, and I forget the other one. It was so cool though, he'd do all these spins and poses and stuff, it was just amazing to watch. There was this HUGE crowd gathered; I took some videos of him and pictures of the crowd... it was sooooo cool! After his set of songs (of course he got an extra stage), he was giving out these handouts explaining the performance and whatnot; I haven't actually tried to read it yet, but, heh, so cool!
We wandered around Yokohama a bit more after that, and then decided we should go to Muthos.
Muthos was very interesting. There was a guy from Sweden there; his name was Frederik or something. He was tall and skinny and reminded me of one of the Trunkses from Portland (the one with blonde hair). He was also really nice! We talked about DDR and Euromix and Extreme and whatnot for a while. We were both saying how bad we are at DDR so we went up and played a set together... I totally had him beat on PA (I was getting 20ish greats on a buncha songs including 24 on Absolute) but he totally has me beat on stamina (he was all about playing Be Lovin' and Burning the Floor Momo and stuff like that). Although I got Afro Prime as an extra stage and I basically had a 170-something combo before I felt sick and walked off. There were some other people around but I didnt really catch names. Fujitake was playing a lot of GF, and Kazu-something was playing DDR (he AAAed Sync Heavy and some other stuff), and Sayaka was hanging out playing PNM and DM, and other people I dunno. It's pretty funny how they refer to James as Godai.
A sad thing is that Aaron actually AAAed AM-3P mirror stealth and my STUPID CAMERA DIDNT GET THE PICTURE. I was really mad about that. grumblestupidcamera.
I played a whole buncha PNM and IIDX because hey, it was cheap. Aaron took pictures of me playing them so now I have more pictures for my Hasegawa/Bemani page! Heh.
Eventually Frederik had to leave, and shortly after that Yasu and Take showed up. Aaron started explaining who me and Nykkel were but Yasu was all like "Oh I remember her!" so Aaron's like "Do you remember her name?" and Yasu gets out his cellphone and scrolls for a minute and says "DEANNA!" hahahaha. Apparently he still had me in his cellphone email thingy. So I'm like "hisashiburi!" and then I said hi to Take and then I went back to PNM.
(BTW, for the record, if Aaron says he is bad at other Bemani, dont believe him. He's at least better than I am at all of them.)
I watched the guys play a little bit of DDR and I talked to Aaron but it was already pretty late, so I got to see a few AAA's which they wouldnt let me take a picture of, although I did take a hilarious one of them hiding while they both got Cartoon Heroes standard AAA (I think that was the song), and I got a bad picture of Take AAAing bag yet again. I also got to see Aaron and Yasu doing the Trick Oni.. they both failed during max300, but... Aaron had like 30 greats for the whole course at that point... scary. Oh, so it was late, so we ended up leaving around 6:45pm, because Aaron had to go do stuff at home and Nykkel and I didnt want to try to find our way back to the station by ourselves. It was pouring rain by this point, and pretty cold, too, which sucked.
So we rode back to Yokohama with Aaron on the sotetsu train thingy, and then went our separate ways. I hugged Aaron goodbye, which I think surprised him. But I really like hanging out with him.. he is definitely one of a kind.
Nykkel and I then sat on the train (or stood is more like it), the Tokaido to Shinagawa and then the Yamanote back to Ikebukuro. Got out of the station and then we parted ways since I had said I was starving AND getting kaiten sushi for dinner, and Nykkel's not so much into kaiten sushi.
I scouted out two possible places to take him for kaitensushi later, although... well, one was by the station, but they mostly had weird stuff on their belt, I'm not sure he'd like that one. The other was one DJ and I had gone to before, and they have menus in english, so that's a possibility. Alternately I can just go find the one in Shinjuku where they were nice to us last time. We'll see. Yes, I literally got kaiten sushi for dinner twice tonight... once right off the train, then I went to the ryokan to drop things off, then I got more kaitensushi, then I went to an arcade and played some PNM and played a UFO catcher a bit (4 tries and I got a Hello Kitty... not too bad I guess), and then I came here to the internet cafe. Its becoming a routine. Maybe I should get a card here, heh.
So, yeah. Aaron is still awesome and Yasu is still totally weird and all, and Muthos is still really far, and PNM freestylers rule!
One of the trains we were on kept posting baseball info. I can't believe the Tigers swept the Giants this weekend. Crazy stuff. Fighters also lost 2 of 3 to the Lions. And I hope the weather gets better so I can go to Chiba for a Fighters game sometime early this week...
And I should get going so I get to sleep at a decent hour... I think we're gonna try to get up early and do laundry tomorrow, whee.
Got up, got ready, got out of the ryokan, it took us about an hour to get to Yokohama, and as we went through the station we ran into Aaron! Yay! (Though about 2 mins before we got into Yokohama I realized we left the chocolate we brought for Aaron back in the ryokan. Anti-yay.) We were all hungry so we went to get lunch at a place in the station... chose a place with tonkatsu and scary soup. It was really good to see Aaron and talk to him again. He's so nice and so funny.
We wandered around Yokohama for a bit after lunch. There was this arcade called "Freedom", which had a PNM machine on the outside corner with lots of space around it... Aaron was like "This is the infamous freestyle PNM machine". So we watched some guy play a little PNM and then some other guy comes by and Aaron grabs him, explaining "You know that video I have of PNM freestyling on my site?" (we didnt), "This is that guy the video is of!" So he explained to the guy that Nykkel and I were visitors from Seattle, and the guy's like "Oh, I'd like to put on a performance!" So we're like, cool, great, heh.
OMG, this pop'n'music freestyler was THE coolest thing EVER. He had all these routines to various PNM songs, like Mikkeneko Rock and the J-Tekno song, and I forget the other one. It was so cool though, he'd do all these spins and poses and stuff, it was just amazing to watch. There was this HUGE crowd gathered; I took some videos of him and pictures of the crowd... it was sooooo cool! After his set of songs (of course he got an extra stage), he was giving out these handouts explaining the performance and whatnot; I haven't actually tried to read it yet, but, heh, so cool!
We wandered around Yokohama a bit more after that, and then decided we should go to Muthos.
Muthos was very interesting. There was a guy from Sweden there; his name was Frederik or something. He was tall and skinny and reminded me of one of the Trunkses from Portland (the one with blonde hair). He was also really nice! We talked about DDR and Euromix and Extreme and whatnot for a while. We were both saying how bad we are at DDR so we went up and played a set together... I totally had him beat on PA (I was getting 20ish greats on a buncha songs including 24 on Absolute) but he totally has me beat on stamina (he was all about playing Be Lovin' and Burning the Floor Momo and stuff like that). Although I got Afro Prime as an extra stage and I basically had a 170-something combo before I felt sick and walked off. There were some other people around but I didnt really catch names. Fujitake was playing a lot of GF, and Kazu-something was playing DDR (he AAAed Sync Heavy and some other stuff), and Sayaka was hanging out playing PNM and DM, and other people I dunno. It's pretty funny how they refer to James as Godai.
A sad thing is that Aaron actually AAAed AM-3P mirror stealth and my STUPID CAMERA DIDNT GET THE PICTURE. I was really mad about that. grumblestupidcamera.
I played a whole buncha PNM and IIDX because hey, it was cheap. Aaron took pictures of me playing them so now I have more pictures for my Hasegawa/Bemani page! Heh.
Eventually Frederik had to leave, and shortly after that Yasu and Take showed up. Aaron started explaining who me and Nykkel were but Yasu was all like "Oh I remember her!" so Aaron's like "Do you remember her name?" and Yasu gets out his cellphone and scrolls for a minute and says "DEANNA!" hahahaha. Apparently he still had me in his cellphone email thingy. So I'm like "hisashiburi!" and then I said hi to Take and then I went back to PNM.
(BTW, for the record, if Aaron says he is bad at other Bemani, dont believe him. He's at least better than I am at all of them.)
I watched the guys play a little bit of DDR and I talked to Aaron but it was already pretty late, so I got to see a few AAA's which they wouldnt let me take a picture of, although I did take a hilarious one of them hiding while they both got Cartoon Heroes standard AAA (I think that was the song), and I got a bad picture of Take AAAing bag yet again. I also got to see Aaron and Yasu doing the Trick Oni.. they both failed during max300, but... Aaron had like 30 greats for the whole course at that point... scary. Oh, so it was late, so we ended up leaving around 6:45pm, because Aaron had to go do stuff at home and Nykkel and I didnt want to try to find our way back to the station by ourselves. It was pouring rain by this point, and pretty cold, too, which sucked.
So we rode back to Yokohama with Aaron on the sotetsu train thingy, and then went our separate ways. I hugged Aaron goodbye, which I think surprised him. But I really like hanging out with him.. he is definitely one of a kind.
Nykkel and I then sat on the train (or stood is more like it), the Tokaido to Shinagawa and then the Yamanote back to Ikebukuro. Got out of the station and then we parted ways since I had said I was starving AND getting kaiten sushi for dinner, and Nykkel's not so much into kaiten sushi.
I scouted out two possible places to take him for kaitensushi later, although... well, one was by the station, but they mostly had weird stuff on their belt, I'm not sure he'd like that one. The other was one DJ and I had gone to before, and they have menus in english, so that's a possibility. Alternately I can just go find the one in Shinjuku where they were nice to us last time. We'll see. Yes, I literally got kaiten sushi for dinner twice tonight... once right off the train, then I went to the ryokan to drop things off, then I got more kaitensushi, then I went to an arcade and played some PNM and played a UFO catcher a bit (4 tries and I got a Hello Kitty... not too bad I guess), and then I came here to the internet cafe. Its becoming a routine. Maybe I should get a card here, heh.
So, yeah. Aaron is still awesome and Yasu is still totally weird and all, and Muthos is still really far, and PNM freestylers rule!
One of the trains we were on kept posting baseball info. I can't believe the Tigers swept the Giants this weekend. Crazy stuff. Fighters also lost 2 of 3 to the Lions. And I hope the weather gets better so I can go to Chiba for a Fighters game sometime early this week...
And I should get going so I get to sleep at a decent hour... I think we're gonna try to get up early and do laundry tomorrow, whee.
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1) Kiyohara broke the record for lifetime strikeouts. Waahahahaha.
2) This is the first time in history that the Tigers have ever swept Yomiuri in their season opener. Fancy that.
Now if only the Yankees would suck this bad once in a while.
Meanwhile, Chunichi have a winning streak going.
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Looking forward to the photos and videos!
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Your comment the other day about it feeling so right, but you feel like a stranger is exactly how I felt too. It was worse from me since I didnt' speak the language and was too scared to use what few words I did know.
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you don't realize how freakin funny I think that is.
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Crazy...
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I get a lot more psyched about playing Popnmusic except when I get depressed that we barely have it in America.