Hey guys its Kenny here (aka Carzydog Ken aka Siao Gao Ken) reporting from Japan about our experience here thus far in Japan :) . I’m currently traveling with Leslie (turtle god Sagat), Jasper (Tyco kia poh zangief), and Paul (VintageSoul RF killa). I’ll be updating you guys on whats happening in Japan as well as sharing my thoughts and experience about the trip. Its my hope that through this blog I can share some of the excitements, comedies and insights about the trip because I believe that this experience belongs to everyone in the Singapore community :) .

Day 1 I stayed @ hotel to work the whole day and didn’t get to play so uh. Not much to say here. Although there were some interesting conversations while waiting for the flight back in Singapore. We were comparing people to anime characters and we concluded that Leslie is Kuchiki Byakuya, Xian is Sasuke because of his ability to learn so many characters so fast (aka sharingan), Sam Aheda is Chouji, and the rest of us at the table are Rock Lees (aka. no talent but plays hard to improve lol).

So starting from Day 2 (Wed) onwards, we went to Akihabara to check out all the Tech/Anime shops and had Gyudon for lunch @ Yoshinoya. I swear every other shop is like an AV shop there. I think Jasper thoroughly enjoyed himself in one of the shops there *cough*. After that we went to Shinjuku for dinner and headed for Taito arcade for some authentic Japanese SF4 experience. And let me tell you – it was f**king awesome.

Players present

Notable players that were there includes:
Mago (SG)
Akua (SG)
Hanamaruki (SG)
Ameriken (SG)
Itabashi Zangief (ZA)
Mahoshojo Zangitan (ZA) Idol zangief
Fuudo (RY)
Togawa (RY)
Air (RY)
Reiketsu (Vega)
Yoshiwo (Guile)

As well as the American team (Justin Wong and co), and the Kuwaitis.

General things I learned

If anything, I learned so much about everything watching and playing against the Japanese. Today’s Top 4 Things that I learned about SF4 in Japan

1.  The japanese players are all grandmaster level mashers. Watching akua mash uppercut made me die a little inside lol. But effectively speaking they really pro at it – they know the correct times to “option-select” mash to punish unsafe combos and jump-ins. If anything its the frequency + accuracy of them mashing it thats pretty impressive. A simple example is Ryu vs akuma. Akuma does low medium kick and fireball – fireball doesn’t link and ryu’s mash ultra would come out and hit the akuma.

2. Japan players are top tier turtles. They have endless capacity and patience for turtling and defensive play. I haven’t had this many timeout losses in ages. Think I’ve had more timeout losses yesterday against Blanka and Akumas than a month of timeout losses in Bugis combined.

3. What impressed me the most was not their level of yomi, but rather their execution and match up knowledge. If anything, their match up knowledge and ability to execute supports their “yomi” as they know exactly what obscure set of moves could punish moves that seems to be “unpunishable”. Further more, they have more knowledge of set ups, as evident from the number of set ups that the players are picking up quickly just from watching and playing against the players. An example is Sagat’s cross-up Heavy kick against rufus in the corner – the trick is forward throw rufus in the corner, immediately time kick by doing a forward heavy kick then jump to do j.hk. The resulting j.hk should actually be a crossup heavy kick. (Paul would tio that twice and eat a full sagat jump in combo LOL).

4. I saw the timing of some of the ambiguous splashes that Maho/Itazan does. I tried to incorporate it into my game play and got some decent results. Depending on character, the trick is to do a jump at the apex of a character who is waking up and pressing splash when the guy is getting up from the ground. People were tioing that many times but I still need to perfect the timing.

Specific matchups

As for specific matchups that I played, I got to play against Mahoshojo, Itabashi, Akua, Hanamaruki, some master Viper player, Togawa, Air, Marn, some Taiwanese Guile and Akuma, B rank Blanka, Reiketsu, Master rank akumas, Grandmaster Rufus Nen.

Against Zangiefs – I got destroyed against Mahoshojo (which I’m quite happy about lol. Because it shows how much more I can improve e.g. setups and knowlege and etc). I got totally out-knowledged by him as he perfected me multiple times. The main factor that contributed to my losses against Maho was the lack of match up knowledge. Most notably the specific things that he would be doing that I never do is:
A. After knockdown he neutral jump headbutt O/S with greenhand to catch me if I backdash. Doing so it forces me to block. (Itazan did this)
B. Safe splash – their safe splash timing against zangief is so zhun
C. Anti-airing with ex-greenhand. They can see the antiair distance well. For example I do j.mk from afar and they could ex-greenhand anti air me.
D. Lariat punish – they are very good at lariat punish. They could always ex-greenhand at the last moments of whiffed lariats to punish it.

Other than those factors its either its their knowledge of footsies in this match up thats just better :) . Don’t think I won a single game against Mahoshojo but I managed to win against Itazan but still lost more games against him. These guys timings are really good and the mirror matches are a great learning experience!

Day 3 update: Oh man I got to play with my idols today (Mahoshojo and Cantona). I talked to Cantona for a little with my broken Japanese. He was pretty courteous cool about it despite my crappy Japanese. My epic moment for this trip was when I was lining up to play against Ameriken, Mahoshojo went first and lost, Cantona went second and lost again, next was my turn and I actually managed to pull off a very close win. It was really epic xD. I also got to play against Radiowave, though I didn’t even know it was him at first because he was using a non name card (I later found out that he had lost his original card…), his style is really unique in the sense that it was full of endless uppercuts ~_________~. I style that I hated playing against, but it worked, and it got him to top 4 in SBO which was absolutely amazing.

Against Sagats – I was more comfortable fighting the grandmaster sagats than other characters LOL – just because of knowledge of the match ups. The SG Sagats did well in prepping the players (though there are still things that japanese sagats do that SG sagats don’t, for details ask him I’m not too sure lol – but nothing new against Zangief that I havent seen yet). I managed to win against Akua in one game and almost won against Hanamaruki but he pulled a Gangat to kill me one round (knock me down in corner, safe jump Uppercut, fadc backwards uppercut, fadc backwards again and uppercut – I ate the last uppercut by lariating X_X), the other round I messed up my timing and died to reversal uppercut when I probably should have won T_T.

Thats that for the Sagat vs Zangief anyway. OH, and Mahoshojo also buay tahan leslie and has to Poh like 5 times (managed to yomi right one time by backdash then front dash ultra) against leslie but in the end still get kicked to death. That made me feel better about dying to Leslie so many times.

Day 3 update: So I played against Mago and I literally just died in the corner. His Sagat is really the grandmaster of grandmaster sagats -_- I can’t believe that even between Grandmasters there can be such a difference. His greatest strength is that he is willing to do unsafe moves so opponents must second guess themselves. Hes an excellent reader of his opponents. I am again humbled by the difference in skill level T_T

3. Against Ryus – I played against Togawa and Air. I lost A LOT. Their Ryus are very good and solid, there are no real flaws regarding their gameplay and they make very consistently good calls and judgement. Though theres nothing that really suprised me because I’ve seen most of the stuff they do back in Singapore. But their overall game is just… really solid.

4. Against Rufus – well i only got to play against the GM Rufus once and I won by a small margin. He played more aggressive than SY/Paul/Rchan/Ricz but nothing really new in terms of match up knowledge. Tricks that I used against SG rufus works on him as well – and also vice versa – Paul won a game against Mahoshojo as well so I think our Rufus-Zangief matchup knowledge is not too far from Japan standards. I managed to block all the cross up dive kicks so a big thank you to the SG rufus for training me to see those kicks lol.

Update on day 3 – I got to play a LOT of games against Justin Wong’s Rufus. I felt pressured at first because of his name but as I played I found out that theres no tricks that he did that surprised me and I calmed down. There were both wins and losses but overall I feel that he’s a real solid player, and probably plays his best in tournaments.

5. Against Vega (Claw) – Got to play against Reiketsu. As Leslie mentioned his combos are very zhun (accurate) and his zoning good. I didn’t really have too much trouble against him most of the game as I was quite okay in the footsie/zoning against him. I was going to win with a comfortable margin but he found this one particular set up that I didnt have a good grasp of then I got uncle vegaed (izuna dropped) from like 60% health to 0% -________-. SO yes. If the Japanese knows one puzzle you can’t solve, they will keep throwing that puzzle at your face until you know how to solve it inside out.

6. Against Vipers – I managed to play against this master rank Viper and Marn. The master rank Viper was around HZY level, nothing really new that I saw (e.g. SPAM BACKDASH.) . I had mixed results against him with both wins and losses. I knock him down he jialat, he knock me down I jialat. Though I think I started adapting better against him as we played more. Viper-Zangief is always an interesting match to play. As for Marn I find that he’s a fast paced player and tends to go for the fast-paced plan to overwhelm the opponent before they know whats going on. We played two games on the first day I won one (I learned that he likes to mash ultra when hes losing – even good players do it lolz) and lost the other because I wanted to beat him faster I got impatient but then lost to seismic spam :( . According to Paul he thinks he’s not really that xialan (arrogant) looking if you look at his face – that hes actually quite “cuddly”. >_>

7. Against Abels – Holy crap Japan Abels are MONSTROUS. I played against Shiro and AC Revenger and I still lost more than I won despite it being a 7-3 matchup in my favor. This clearly shows the difference in skill level between Singapore Abels and Japanese Abels. They are literally like a train of death, once they touch you with a good f.mk, its an endless train of guesses. Leslie wrote a nice write up about his experience with Abel players. Read it here: http://community.round1.sg/leschan/2010/09/19/leslies-blog-day-5-and-6/

I think that covers most of the matches so far and it was a good day :) . I recommend players who are coming to Singapore to get used to the Viewlix cabinet timing ASAP because its taking me awhile to get used to it as well. Other than that its been a fruitful day and I just learned alot. Almost every game is a hard fought game since everybody in the arcade would be a top player in Singapore haha.

Update you guys more in due time! Gotta head out soon see ya guys :)