Friday was pretty packed with both events and rain! It rained pretty much the entire day, and the wind was a bit much at times, but it honestly just made the day more memorable.

We met at 10 AM and walked to Unreal Fest, a game industry networking / showcase event that Epic Games was hosting. It was cool, but I don’t think foreigners were the intended audience (obviously). The day we were able to go wasn’t focused on indie game showcases, but instead on seminars for people learning how to use Unreal Engine and make games. As someone who A) has never touched Unreal before, and B) can’t understand more than a couple simple phrases in Japanese, the seminar that I attended was pretty much just a break to sit for an hour. But the game showcases that were on display were really fun to play test!

One of the games I enjoyed most was a VR rhythm game where you’re shooting bullets at timed targets to the music. As someone who loves rhythm games, it was right up my alley. There was also a cool game about learning English based on groups of letters (for example, breaking “perfection” into “per”, “fec”, and “tion”) that had a really cute art style. They also gave us some merchandise for attending, namely a wristband, a bag, and some flyers that I definitely don’t have anymore. But I did buy a cute fruit sticker from one of the game showcase tables! (I didn’t really take any pictures from the Unreal Fesr, but I cannot for the life of me get rid of the image spot above / next to this text, so enjoy this weird random pic of an email they sent me about Unreal Fest lol.)

Once we were finished at Unreal Fest, we were all excited for lunch. I found a super small wagyu yakiniku place nearby, and man was it incredible. It was me, Pavel, Megan, Skyler, and Fabian, and just us alone took up nearly half of the space in the restaurant, but we got there at the perfect time when it was totally empty. Yakiniku is a type of restaurant where you’re provided with your own mini grill, and you can cook the meat to your liking. The meat was fantastic (and this was the first restaurant since being here in Japan that provided salt on the table, which was a big plus for me) and it was a really unique experience that I’m really happy I got to have. I’m really sad that I didn’t make it back here for the rest of my trip!

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After lunch, we had some time to kill before we met with our professors again at 2:30. I went to the card store that I’d visited a couple days before to get some other cards that I’d been thinking about in my head, and then me and Pavel went to Bic Camera to meet up with Fabian. The only notable thing there was that they had a Pikachu keyboard on display, which was SO EXCITING to me because I’ve always seen them in videos and never gotten to play with one in person.

It was then time to head to CyberConnect2, a small game studio that we had the opportunity to tour that afternoon. They’re responsible for a lot of anime-to-video game titles, namely Naruto games, and it was cool to see all of the merchandise that they have in their offices and how small the teams really are in some gaming studios. The whole presentation they gave us felt super sugar-coated and corporate (and I’m not gonna lie, I was really close to falling asleep in the middle just because we were all SO tired from how busy we’ve been and getting to sit for an hour was few and far between) but it was a great experience! I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures inside of the office of course, but they did have an anniversary banner in their lobby that I got a picture of.

We were all pretty tired once we got back from the studio tour, but the next thing we had to worry about was dinner. We split into two main groups and the group I went with that went to Sushiro, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It’s another experience that I was really excited to have while being in Japan, and we had a lot of fun! Chloe, Fabian, Pavel and I sat at a booth together and I got to try some stuff that I don’t think I would’ve in another scenario, such as crab tempura with some mystery sauce on it (pretty sure it was mayo, but there is no guarantee). There was also a delicious chocolate cake slice that I of course had to order too!

Despite the rain, Chloe and I managed to convince Pavel and Fabian to come to the arcade next door with us to play the rhythm and crane games. We learned that Chloe is an absolute god at the cranes, winning a Miffy stuffed animal and a King Boo night light, and I had fun playing a rhythm game called maimai DX that I would definitely become addicted to if I lived here. Just before we left I also managed to win a Pokemon stuffed animal from one of the crane machines!

To end the night, we finished the Dungeons and Dragons movie and spent our final time together as a large portion of the group. Saying goodbye was really hard, but I’m so blessed to have been on this trip with so many incredible and amazing people and learned so much about myself and the world. I wouldn’t have traded this trip for anything else, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again when I’m back in Rochester. I love you guys!!