Little Tokyo

     Today was a great day off. My friends and I went to Little Tokyo, which is downtown LA, somewhere around there. It was the first time I've ever been there and it was a treat! The drive wasn't too bad but there was a lot of traffic going both ways. The first thing we did when we got there was eat at this place called Mr. Ramen, this tiny whole in the wall sort of restaurant with all this colorful artwork all over the walls. It was so colorful to the point that it looked tacky but my friends said that all the artwork was something new that they added to the restaurant recently.
     When it came to my meal I ended up getting the beef ramen. It had slices of shredded beef, cilantro, those vegetables that's always in pho (see through veggie), and noodles. The broth was so good! I ended up eating/drinking all of it. We ate a bunch of great snacks today. We got these things called Pocky's at a grocery store and there were all kinds of flavors. It's basically a chocolate/other flavor sweet cookie sort of snack. And then later my friends got tacoyaki, this fried bread-like ball with meat and sauce inside. Really tasty stuff. I really enjoy Japanese food as well as other aspects of Japanese culture-anime, gaming, waifus, swords, women, lol.
     We ended up walking all over the place. It was a little hot under the sun but we endured it. In terms of appearances Little Tokyo doesn't look very Japanese. It looks like a rundown area of LA. We saw plenty of homeless people, one guy even coming up to us and shouting,"Give me some money" lol. The shops we went to were all great but at same the time I thought I didn't have very much cash so I didn't buy anything substantial like a toy model or other bric a bracs. Instead I just got this cool black and red Japan rising sun head band that said kamikaze. I only hope it doesn't stand for kamikaze pilots lol. I won't be wearing it, its just something I wanted as a neat souvenir.
     The best part of the trip other than the great food was the anime/hobby shops we went to. I saw great anime model toys, waifu pillows(!), keychains, pins, anime, posters, shirts, manga, and trading cards. What really caught my eye was this Kirby (Nintendo's very own pink marshmallow) toy model. It was very detailed and if I knew I had the cash I would've definitely bought it. Oh well, maybe next time. It was a fun experience and I would definitely want to go back in the future, this time looking for things in particular that I can't find elsewhere.
     After we came back we played some smash. I've reconciled the fact that I'm going to be a Bayonetta main with a strong Zero Suit Samus secondary, sometimes even preferring to use Zss over Bayonetta in certain match-ups. For the time being I want to focus on Zss until I can master the Bayonetta 0-death combos that are so popular. I've got a tournament tomorrow at Fire and Dice, we'll see what happens. I'll probably use Zss if I feel like Bayonetta isn't as strong in whatever match-ups I get thrown into. I've been playing a lot of smash with my friends but they like playing free for all with the three of us, and that's just not going to help me in a tournament setting. We do have days where we just play 1v1's and take turns but that doesn't happen nearly enough for us to keep improving at the game. I've definitely got to get us out of playing those dumb free for alls.
     Hope you're all having a good work week. In other news I'm going on vacation next week but I'll probably still be blogging with my laptop. In addition, Pokken Tournament comes out on Friday, March 18 so I'm definitely excited for that. Wish me luck in the tournament tomorrow!