On my trip to Japan

Hello everyone.

As per @Myke 's request, I've made this thread to share with you some details about my recent trip to Tokyo. The picture above is the entrance to Club Sega in Shinjuku, the district in which I was staying. It was great to have an arcade within walking distance of my hotel, unfortunately however this particular Club Sega did not have any VF cabinets. I had to go to Club Sega Akihabara(about a 30 minute train ride away)to play VF.



This is Kabukicho. Those of you familiar with the Yakuza game series will recognize this landmark. For those who don't know, this place is a somewhat infamous nightlife area but since this place was within walking distance of my hotel I couldn't help but check it out. If you should ever find yourself here, a word of advice. Plan your route ahead of time and always know where you're going. Guys known as hawkers(sometimes referred to as touts)will approach you and try to get you to go into an overpriced bar or club. You can usually brush them off easily enough though. I did however find a great heavy metal music bar in this district called Metal Godz.

But enough about that, lets talk VF. As I mentioned earlier, I found some VF cabinets at Club Sega Akihabara. I didn't take any pictures of the building but you can easily find some pictures of this place on any image search engine.



This a VF character access card used in VF arcade cabinets. There are many like it but this one is mine. These are sold through vending machines located near the VF cabinets. They cost 500 yen.



Thanks to @Stl_Tim for translating this menu for me.

Once you have your access card you can use a separate terminal to set up a profile and customize your character among other things.

As most of you already know, I play VF on a default X-Box 360 controller. I tried learning stick a few years ago but I couldn't really get the hang of it. Because of this I didn't play too many matches. I did however manage to(barely) score a win against a Japanese player.(Where's my JP slayer badge?!?)



This was the view of Shinjuku from my hotel. My last night in Tokyo and I got snowed in so I couldn't get to the arcade again.

That about wraps up my Japanese VF experience. This post is getting long so I won't bore you with the details on the rest of my trip but feel free to ask me any questions.

Thanks to the VFDC community for making all this possible.

 

Shame about the snow, Tokyo doesn't usually get much at all but this year it was quite heavy. The TV news made it sound as if Godzilla was coming or something. Glad you could make it to Akihabara though, did you come across any known JP players?

 

Not that I know of. Usually when I went out it was during the day. I guess regular VF players mostly go to the arcade in the evening.

 

I really wish you had footage of your El Blaze play man. I'm trying to improve my Blaze. Could really use some tech from the best Blaze I know!

 

Wow! It seems that you had, a really good adventure in Japan.
That's cool!