Last night, I remembered that I had an iPhone app, the “DDR Compendium”, which is supposed to list arcades with DDR machines all over the world. The app is unbearably slow, but after a bit of research, I found out that it just pulls data from DDRFreaks.com, so I went to the site, looked up Toronto, and tried to locate each address on Google Maps. Some of them ended up being way too far for my taste, so I wrote down the ones within a distance I could tolerate, and headed out.

The first one was easy. Apparently, there’s an arcade right in the hotel where I’m staying at. It’s a pretty interesting one in that it takes normal quarters (not tokens), and there’s no attendant. It’s a pretty small arcade, but they got ITG2 at $1 for 3 songs, and there’s no scores on there. I quietly left my mark.

Nothing else really caught my eye, except for Crisis Zone at only 25 cent. This is one of the best deals I’ve ever seen, and I anticipate coming back just for this game.

The next one was in KoreaTown. I had headed the wrong way at first, going east, and then having to backtrack and go west again. I walked through the campus of University of Toronto, where I took plenty of pictures (see my Facebook), and stopped at a comic shop.

The shop was having an “out of business” sale, so I looked around. Not much interested me, as it was mainly western comics and baseball cards, but I did see a “How to draw Manga: Weapons and Military” which I picked up. I’ve been playing an ongoing prank on one of my friends, trying to convince her that Iron Man is a black guy, and he built the Iron Man suit because of his inability to walk. I think I’ve gotten her to the point where she’s sceptical, but open minded, so I tried to find a comic which said “Iron Man” on the cover, but mainly featured War Machine. Unfortunately, all the comics which said “Iron Man” mainly featured Iron Man, and all the comics that mainly featured War Machine said “War Machine”, so my plan was for naught.

I brought the Manga book up to the counter and asked him if it was 50% off (there were signs all over the place saying that various merchandise was 50% off the sticker price, but not on this book). He pointed at the sticker where $29.99 had been scratched off and 24.99 was shown instead and said “Well, it’s already been discounted… And the markup on this item is shit.”

I gave him my “Yeah, I don’t give a fuck” face, and he said “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give it to you for $15.” Which I accepted.

Actually, my “I don’t give a fuck” face is my neutral face; I think it’s a curse that I inherited from my father. When I’m neutral, I looked pissed or antagonistic. He has that problem (I think; or maybe he’s just pissed all the time), and people have said that I have the same problem.

When I finally got to “Annex Submarine”, the arcade in KoreaTown which was supposed to have DDR Extreme on Double Premium, I found out that the arcade had closed down.

It was past 4:30 now, so I proceeded to the Royal Ontario Museum, where admittance would be free until 5:30, when the museum closed down. I was sort of expecting something like the Police Museum, where I could see everything there would be to see in half an hour, but I was sorely mistaken. I dawdled at the native Canadians exhibit for a while, when they announced that the museum would be closing soon, so I rushed through the Asian and dinosaur exhibits, and didn’t get to see what was on the 3rd, 4th or 5th floor.

Back outside, there was just one arcade left: SilverCity. DDRFreaks said that there would be an ITG2 and DDREX machine there, but when I got there, there was only an ITG2. I asked the staff if that area there was the whole arcade, and they confirmed it was so. The scores on this machine were quite high, with quite a few 100%s. There may have even been a 100% or two on doubles. This, I thought, must be where all the “real” DDRers play. With that, I put in my money (4 tokens, meaning a dollar for 3 songs) and started.

The bar on the right side was shit, so for all subsequent games, I played on the left. On both sides, the left menu button doesn’t work, so it was a pain to only be able to rotate the song list clockwise, and to try to enter my name this way (My name is easiest to enter counter clockwise, ‘cause the letters appear in reverse alphabetical order: NEBU).

After I left, I noted that there’s a subway station named “Leslie”, and I was wondering if it would take me near to Lovegety, in case I decide to return on Friday. So I got there, but when I checked the GPS, I was nowhere near Lovegety. I was on Leslie, alright, but I was quite a ways south from the final destination.

I headed back to the hotel, picking up some Pho on the way. The service was good. I didn’t actually want to say the word “pho” ‘cause I knew I’d mispronounce it, so I just said “Give me beef, tripe and beef balls.” He managed to figure out that I meant “in pho” and not just straight. He also gave me free tea. I experimented with tipping in terms of absolute value instead of percentages; gave $2 on a $7 meal, and I was pleased with the results and will probably look into continuing this habit. When I got to the hotel, it was quite a feat to try and prepare the pho for consumption, despite not having a bowl. I managed, and in the end, it didn’t really taste all that great.