KOFXI Sawakoro Festival 2024
Tournament Report by ATG
Preface
In 2024, once again a German delegation made its way to the Sawakoro Festival. This time, Sensei Enrique couldn't make it, but new player Antser joined us for the trip.
- ATG: Oswald/K'/Vanessa(L)
- Arit: Ralf/Clark/Jazu(L)
- AD_Ryan: Iori/Kula/Ash(L)
- Antser: Duck/Kyo/K(L)
Before we made our way to Nagoya, we had over a week to spend in Tokyo, meeting Ryoji & Ryuumi at Shinjuku Sportsland twice. As always, we had incredibly fun matches with them - their choice of characters is refreshing, with Ryoji playing Silber, Gai, Ash(L) and more, while Ryuumi used Terry, Yuri, King, Elisabeth and others.
We also visited Game In Good Day 21 in eastern Tokyo several times, aka the Castle of the Demon King (Yanjirou, jokingly called "Maou", Demon King, plays there). We were all incredibly tired and the other German players left, but I decided to play two ft10s that evening, the first one was against Akio. His patient style worked perfectly against me, I felt quite helpless. The second one was against Sho, famous for his strong Leader Oswald. I did a little better than against Akio, but overall wasn't too happy with my play on that day. During the ft10s however AD_Ryan suddenly returned and said he couldn't just leave without supporting me, which I was really grateful for.
We arrived in Nagoya during the evening and decided to relax a bit - it had been raining cats and dogs and Tokyo for days, and we were tired.
As is the tradition, our lunch was Misokatsu at the famous Nagoyan chain Yabaton to regain our strength, then went to an Izakaya for dinner and later watched the good day 21 stream at our air bnb until we went to bed.
2024/10/11 - Sawakoro Festival Day -1
Friday, day minus-one of the Sawakoro Festival had started.
We met Sawakoro, Toru and famous Taiwanese player & Tougeki Participant Yukito at a remote bus terminal at noon, near Aratamibashi station. The weather was great and other than us there weren't many people around other than a few seniors. Toru took us to an amazing Tsukemen Restaurant called Sugure that was, once again, Rukkora's recommendation (he is famous as the number one gourmet of the Nagoya KOFXI players).
We were then taken to the harbor by Toru & Sawakoro for some sighteseeing. We climbed the harbor tower for a scenic view and donned captain's uniforms for hilarous fotos (will definitely never been shown publicly). Afterwards we visited the icebreaker / science vessel Fuji, and finally the Aquarium. We took many pictures and head a great time with everyone.
Afterwards, it was finally time to go to the holy halls of KOFXI - port24 in Yagoto!
