May 29, 2023 – RITs International Game Industry Course for 2023

Embarking to the Tokyo Continent

Right outside of our hotel in Akihabara, Toko

Today was the day we said by to Kyoto and bullet trained back to Tokyo. It was really sad leaving Kyoto because we did so much there together, but I was reallly excited for Tokyo. We bussed to the train station in the morning and then rode the bullet train for about 2.5 hrs to Akihabara. After getting there we walked literally 30 seconds to our hotel, which was connected to the train station. This hotel was located in the perfect spot possible. There were so many cool places right next to it. We had a little bit to set our things down and eat before we met up outside the hotel to go to Mandarake, a second-hand anime/games/comics/manga/NSFW store, and Super Potato, a retro games store. Both of these stores were really cool. Mandarake was a bit overwhelming and we didn’t have all that much time in there, but I wish I had gone back later because it was super cool. One of the floors had straight up hentai though which was a bit odd.

Super Potato was also sick and had lots of cool little nick nacks, not to mention the immense amount of old games. I bought lots of candy there. After Super Potato we were pretty much free to do whatever for the day, so I went shopping with some others. I got some really cool HxH figures I had never seen before at this small little figure store next to Super Potato. After that we looked up the best anime stores nearby and decided on a place called Animate. It was like a 5 minute walk and was absolutely loaded with stuff, but not stuff I really wanted. It was really interesting because they didn’t have any figures or shirts really, but a lot of anime school supplies, stickers, and keychains. Unfortunately there was ZERO AoT merch, which I still can’t wrap my head around.

After Animate we went to this really cool store called Volks Hobby Shop, which did have figures. There was some really cool stuff there, even though most of it was outside my price range for a single statue. I did find this really unique figure series for Jujutsu Kaisen, and ended up getting the Sukuna one. They were like old button-eyed doll versions of all the characters, detailed with stitches and everything. I also got a funny Gojo figure sitting in a chair, he looks stupid :). After shopping we dumped our stuff at the hotel, chilled for like an hour, and then went to this sushi place that Toshi-sensei recommended. It was soooo good. I got some grilled fish, octopus, scallops, and fried diced squid. One of my favorite meals of the trip to be honest.

Gojo being stupid and dumb

5/29 – Arrival at Akihabara

Today was mostly traveling, taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo and then from there taking the local subway to Akihabara.

The Shinkansen ride was about the same as before, but this time I bought an ekiben to take with me on the train! An ekiben is just a bento box that many people buy to eat on the bullet train, and so I wanted to try one at least once on this trip! The one I bought was fried chicken, teriyaki chicken, egg, and rice, and it was pretty good.

Ekiben on the Shinkansen, pretty good for a late morning meal.

Once we’d done all the train hopping we needed to, we arrived at Akihabara! It was such a stark contrast to Kyoto, having multitudes of high rise buildings adorned with electric billboards, anime posters and images, or some combination of both. What was also cool was our hotel was right next to the subway entrance. Very convenient!

We settled into the Remm Akihabara, and then headed out at around 4pm to explore as a group! We went to Mandarake and Super Potato, two of the main spots we wanted to hit here in Akihabara, but on the way to them me and Jas got a little lost! We ended up over-shooting by a few blocks because the streets were so crowded and we lost sight of the group, so we experienced the intensity of the popularity of Akihabara first hand.

The sights in Akihabara were very cool, here’s a sneak peak at the ramen place I mention later!

Inside Mandarake, it was like a used or rare toy shop on the 7th floor, and then the other floors had many other items and things like manga, figure statues, and more.

Super Potato was a cool collection of super old and retro games/merch that you could buy, and a cool retro street fighter type arcade setup on their top floor. It was very cramped and tight though, and the humidity was kind of through the roof, so I found it a little packed-in, but still a cool experience.

They even had a self-playing Pong machine!

Afterwards, we all split up and I joined some of the group for ramen at this nearby apparently famous place. It was pretty good, and honestly I really enjoyed it! I had a regular size, but they went up all the way to Mega and even “Manly” size, whatever that means.

Here’s the regular sized ramen I ordered on the left, and on the right the Mega sized ramen
one of our friends accidentally ordered!

After that, I wandered around a bit and explored a few shops/arcades, and then headed back to the hotel. A pretty good first day in Akihabara!

Game Jam Grind

Today was the day the entire trip came down to… Upon arriving at KCG after a hearty breakfast at the hotel, we were met with temporary internet issues at KCG which bottlenecked some from downloading assets or Unreal Engine. During this time, our group specified our game as a trivia game on different elements between Japanese and American cultures. The player would play as explorers and find treasure at the end once answering all the questions.

My role as the artist was to make all of the assets for the game including a cart, rail tracks, and a bamboo forest with treasure at the end. Utilizing premade assets that I had either made previously or downloaded from the internet, I was able to finish my job in that day. However, the whole day was an emotional rollercoaster of mood swings ranging from extreme exhaustion, to mild frustration, and pure joy.

Me in the zone

KCG generously provided drinks all day and provided delicious onigiri for lunch and bento boxes for dinner. KCG were excellent hosts and the translators were very patient and helpful. I also had to borrow Sten’s laptop which was extremely helpful (Thank you Sten). Below is my work from only that one day.

Stay tuned for the end of the jam tomorrow.

To be continued…

Game Jam… but day 2! Plus Osaka!!!

For day 2 of the game jam, I work up at a decent time and grabbed some breakfast. Got my carbs for the day. After eating, the RIT students packed onto the bus and headed to KCG. For the final day of the jam we only had 3 more hours of work. I was done with my portion for the jam and helped Fabian with GitHub stuff. We did some pair git hub work and finished out our side of the project. Around noon we had omurice for lunch! Omurice is a Japanese dish that has typically fried rice topped with an omelet and maybe curry sauce. It was quite yummy in my tummy.

Once our 3 hours of time was up, we did presentations of our games. I think everyone did really well and a lot of interesting ideas came out of the theme. To reiterate, the theme was collaboration across cultures. Our game was about 2 aliens that meet on a deserted planet and had to work together to survive. One character was strong and one was smart. It was a 2D coop puzzle game.

Once our presentations ended everyone got a big round of applause and we cleaned up. After some time of socializing with the students and eating snacks, we left KCG. We didn’t have a bus back to our hotel so we had to figure that part out. We took the weirdest way to our hotel through many trains and stops. Thanks to Toshi sensei for dealing with us!

After having some time to relax, a large group of us went to Osaka! Osaka is another large city about 30 minutes by bullet train from Kyoto. We walked to Kyoto station, got out tickets, and headed to Osaka. Our plan was to go to all the character shops in this mall since it had a Pokémon center, nintendo store, capcom store, one piece store, etc etc. Osaka was described to us as the closest to NYC that Japan can get. It was weird but if you removed all the Japanese from signs and told me I was in NYC I’d believe you. However, there was this really pretty building with greenery.

Across that little bridge was this giant mall that had all our stores on the 13th floor. Once we got up there it was insanity. Literally crazy. I went to the Nintendo Store first and got some Kirby merch and some Zelda candy. They had some really cool statues in the store though!

After walking around like a bewildered child, I checked out the Pokémon center! This must be a new one cause the statue was of the new legendaries in the series. I didn’t plan on getting anything but I found these really cute stickers and they had pins of my favorite Pokémon so I had to.

I checked out and the gang walked around for a bit waiting for all of us to quench the thirst for merchandise. We gathered everyone and split up again for food! I wasn’t super hungry so I opted for a fancy cake. I was so excited to eat it but they didn’t give me any utensils and I couldn’t find them anywhere. So I sadly had to carry my delicious snack home to wait.
While waiting for people, I did get this eclair knockoff from 7-11. It was the size of a breadstick that had a chocolate covering and a single bit of whipped cream inside. 6/10 tasted like an ok Swiss roll.

After everyone finished eating we headed back to Osaka main station to head home for our last night in Kyoto. We got on the bullet train and headed back. The ride was once again uneventful.

We got off the train and walked to a family mart so I could buy an ice cream to get a wooden spoon to use for my dessert that I still have not eaten. I got my wooden spoon and we went to the hotel to pack then hang out. I also ate my dessert! It was really really yummy. It was like a tiramisu layered cake. It had a lot of cocoa powder on top though. 8/10

As a greater group, we decided to get some sake and have all of us ( who are legal to) have a shot and try it. We’re in Japan anyway! Honestly it wasn’t too bad in my opinion, kinda good actually.

we played some games and around 1 we all went to sleep to get ready for the next days adventure.

That’s about it for this one but I’ll catch ya soon! Bye bye!

Fushimi Inari Free Day

Before going to Kyoto, I knew that I wanted to go to Fushimi Inari before without the crowds. Inspired from a video from the YouTube channel Tokyo Lens, I decided to go at night. I set my alarm for 3:15 in the morning and silently made my way out of the hotel. The walk to Fushimi Inari took about 20 minutes plus 10 minutes of me getting lost wandering around a random neighborhood. The area at night was eerily silent but really pretty. The entire time I saw one maybe two people. With the solitude and silence combined with the iconic torii gates, for a little while, it felt like I was in a whole different world.

I reached the top of Mt. Inari around the same time the sun came up, however, there is no view from the top. The only good view is from approximately halfway. I highly recommend this to anyone willing to get up early as it was for sure worth going. I was worried that it would be a little dark, however, there was often too many lampposts for many of the photos at night to turn out well. The only thing that was a little scary were the wild monkeys roaming around at night.

I also saw some wildlife.

Other highlights

This is the link to a google photos album of my journey: https://photos.app.goo.gl/skTohPGDtuGQYGSFA

After getting back around 7 and having breakfast at 8, I went back for a nap before going shopping.

Kat and I became fishmongers at Don Quixote

After, we went over to KCG and toured their facilities. They were pretty nice and had some elements that I wish RIT had such as the private rooms and easily accessible power outlets.

lastly, we started the pizza party with the KCG students to kick off the game jam. They were all very fun to be around, except the guy who made me eat three spoonfuls of wasabi…

Up next is the game jam. Stay tuned….

To be continued…

Game Jam Day 1

Day one of the Game Jam was a success! My group consisted of 2 KCG game designers, an RIT animation student, a RIT new media student, and me, a game design major.

We got off to a bit of a rocky start due to some programming road blocks and issues being the only programmer on the team. However, as the event progressed we were able to get in the flow, overcome some challenges and progress with the programming. Katherine also ended up unofficially joining team 1 to assist with programming due to the imbalance of skills on the team.

Our concept dealt with idea of differing cultural depictions of superheroes and common legends. We wanted to incorporate 2 player coop with one player controlling a samurai hero and the other player controlling an american hero. While we were unable to implement local multiplayer, we still incorporated the idea of a dual tag-team esque mechanic by having a single player game in which the player toggled between heroes with siffeeent movesets.

Ultimately, on day 1 we made a lot of progress establishing the idea and feel of the game, communicating with the team about everyone’s role and aspirations for the project, and getting a good foundation with the code structure and programming.

The highlight of the day was definitely continuing to talk to the KCG students and get to know them as we collaborated. My teammates were wonderful and it was super interesting how overtime we were able to figure out an effective way to communicate despite language barriers. Can’t wait to continue tomorrow for day 2!

The Grand Return to Tokyo

Today we said goodbye to Kyoto and returned to Tokyo to stay in Akihabara for the rest of our trip. Akiba is considered the anime capital of Japan, loaded with merchandise to the brim, so I was excited to visit a lot of stores and look for anything niche and cool that I could snatch up.

The train ride from Kyoto to Tokyo didn’t hold anything interesting, but it was another pretty look at the scenery as it changed from more rural to more urban. Thankfully our hotel was only a couple minutes’ walk from the Akihabara station, so we didn’t have to do much walking and spent most of our transit on trains. We got a short bit of time to chill in our very interesting hotel rooms (Seriously – there’s a window between the bedroom and the shower that’s only blocked by the shower curtain. Kind of weird right??) before we headed out to explore some of the shops around our hotel.

I didn’t find anything of interest to me that didn’t seem super overpriced at most of the stores we visited, but Animate held a treasure trove of goodies for one of my favorite games right now: Project Sekai Colorful Stage. It’s a mobile rhythm game that I’ve been playing a lot over the last year, and it’s impossible to find merchandise of it in America, so it was one of the biggest things I was looking for when I came here. I also found a small store that was selling some really cute keychains of a couple of my favorite characters, so of course I had to pick those up too!

We ate dinner at a fried food restaurant that served fried chicken and shrimp, along with fries. We accidentally ordered WAY too much chicken but it was all very good! We then decided to go to Game Panic, a crane / rhythm arcade center that we ended up accidentally spending three hours in. Skylar won two things from the crane machines, but me and Megan had no luck. The rhythm games were super fun though!

Tomorrow we’ll hopefully be visiting Character Street in Tokyo for some more goodies, but the rest of our day is pretty open. We might do some karaoke or something else, who knows! I’m just happy I don’t have to wake up at 6 am tomorrow.

Nerv Kyoto Base

Today we had some free time where we were able to go explore Kyoto independently from a big group. I had learned about a Neon Genesis Evangelion exhibit at the Toei Studio Park in Kyoto. As a big Evangelion fan I was so excited and this was genuinely an experience I was so grateful to have gotten the chance to have.

The exhibit featured a life-sized model of Eva Unit-01 that you could take pictures with, go on top of, and even go on the hand. I got pictures with my favorite characters 😀 and even stood on the model’s hand. They incorporated a lot of elements from the series and it was such a fun experience.

Before leaving the park, we had a quick lunch break and I ordered the Misato Katsuragi curry ramen 🙂

We ended the night with a kickoff for the RIT x KCG game jam where we got to officially meet our teammates and start planning ideas. I am looking forward to working with everyone in the days to come.

Hiroshima

Today we traveled from Kyoto to Hiroshima. I was looking forward to visiting Hiroshima because of everything I have learned about it, and was not at all disappointed. The scenery was beautiful with moving memorials and stunning gardens. We saw the Hiroshima dome which was a building left standing after the bombing. The dome was located on the side of a river near the blast center, and it was so surreal to stand in the very place of such a huge historical event.

The above picture matches almost perfectly one of the pictures from right after the bombings, and it brought tears to my eyes seeing such a place in real life.

After walking around the memorial garden and the dome we went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum where I was able to learn a lot about the events of the atomic bombing, the health impact, and the rebuilding of the city. What was most moving were the survivor stories and witness testimonies. In the Peace Memorial Park, we passed a man who told us he was the son of one of the oldest survivors of the bombings, and was passing along information about his testimony and peace advocation.

After visiting the memorial sites, we also traveled to a shinto shrine in Hiroshima where we walked around briefly and saw some cute koi fish. It was a relaxing way to decompress after the powerful yet emotional morning.

Finally, to end the day, we enjoyed a traditional Hiroshima dish called okonomiyaki for dinner. The okonomiyaki was delicious and the restaurant staff were very kind and welcoming. Afterward we took the bullet train back to Kyoto and crashed for the night in preparation for our free time the following day.