Fabian – Page 2 – RITs International Game Industry Course for 2023

5/24 – Tea Time!

Today has been quite an interesting day, full of new experiences!

The day began very early in the morning, at around 7:15am for us, where we got our boxed breakfast from our hotel and then promptly boarded our bus again for our last tour through Kyoto. We first went to a Buddhist temple for a Sanzen Meditation! The meditation was led by the Master Monk of the temple we were in, and was a really interesting experience! We had two 15 minute intervals that consisted of sitting on small rectangular pillows with our legs crossed and on top of one another, our backs straight and hands forming a circle on our lap, and breathing in and out slowly while looking straight ahead. The master monk slowly walked around while we meditated, and we could request he use his kaisuke (a somewhat long and flat stick made of wood, somewhat similar to baseball bat) to give us a “strong tap” on our backs to get us back into focus or prevent falling asleep. It was sort of hard to keep my back straight for so long, and my back muscles began to hurt after a little while, but overall I enjoyed learning what some zen monks go through in order to train and reach their goals. It’s not easy at all to stay focused for that long!

Afterwards, we journeyed to the Sanjusangen-do Temple, a national treasure of Japan. Inside we saw the 1,001 statues of the goddess Kannon, as well as 34 other gods, all from Buddhism. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, so I took as much time as I could to see it all and take everything in!

Here’s what it looked like from the outside though!

After that, it was back to the historical district in Kyoto, near the Kiyomizu-dera Temple. Here, we were invited to take part in a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony! It’s a sacred ceremony with its own set of rules and etiquette that need to be strictly followed, which we learned about from our ceremony host. There is Wa, Ka, Se, and Jaku; Wa means peace and harmony (only talking about pleasant things and no politics, countries, or things like that), Ka means respect (personal space, only doing one thing at a time, etc), Se means purity (cleansing oneself of unpure thoughts and using only the specified tools in the tea ceremony), and Jaku means tranquility (taking in the quiet space of the tea room, that is separate from all the hustle and bustle of the outside world).

The instruments she used for the tea making looked very traditional.

She demonstrated the process for making matcha tea, and afterwards she allowed me to drink the cup of tea she had made! It was really good, and was some of the best and most traditional matcha tea I’ve ever had. Once she had demonstrated, she then moved on to the first part of the ceremony, which was eating sweets. Sweets are always eaten before the matcha, and so this time we had a Yuzu jelly, which was a clear jelly filled with Yuzu, a lemony citrus fruit from Japan (super tasty!) After that, we got to all make out own cup of matcha as well.

My cup was only a little frothy, whisking it was harder than I thought!

Once that was over, we then headed over to the Nishiki Market, a long narrow street filled to the brim with local street food shops! This was one of the places I had been looking forward to seeing, and it was so exciting! There was so much interesting food that I wanted to try: dango, octopus and squid on a skewer, takoyaki, tayaki, mocha, beef skewers, I could go on and on! I ended up trying some fried chicken, an ichigo daifuku (mochi bun filled with sweet bean paste and a strawberry), an octopus on a stick, and a beef skewer (was a little fatty 🙁

Overall, a fun time! By this time though, our group wanted to get moving and back to our hotel to rest up in time for bowling later, so I missed out on a chance to get a yummy looking squid meat skewer. Next time!

5/23 – Kyoto Temple Speedrun: Any %

Today was a wonderfully busy day! We covered 4 whole temples in Kyoto in the span of about 6 hours, and I still can’t believe we managed to see them all.

The first temple we visited was Kinkaku-ji Golden Pavilion, a building constructed by a Shogun as a way to showcase their wealth and influence. Each story of the building is meant to represent a certain class level, starting at the bottom with Emperor, followed by the second level that represents Samurai, and finally the first level which represents Buddhism or the Buddha themselves. The temple itself was beautiful, surrounded by a large pond and gardens, and having gold leaf completely coat the top two levels! There were a lot of people and it got very crowded, but the serenity of the nature surrounding the temple made it worth it.

View of the Golden Pavilion from the pond’s shore!

Afterwards, we sped on over to Tenryu-ji temple in Kyoto’s Arashiyama district, a Buddhist temple site thats consists of one main temple surrounded by numerous other smaller sub-temples and gardens. This temple was one of my favorites, as the large amount of gardens created such nice scenery and really brought into perspective the beauty of nature. The bamboo forest within the temple grounds was breathtaking as well, and the shoots were so tall they seemed to reach towards the sky. The path we followed culminated in a wonderful view of the nearby mountains and a river, which created an environment that I used to only see in books or online. This temple was truly an amazing experience, and probably my favorite of the four we visited!

The scenery and nature of this temple was stunning.

After Tenryu-ji, we spent an hour in Arashiyama and tried some of the local food there! I got some kokoroge, which is a croquet with different types of filling, as well as my first bowl of ramen in Japan, both of which were delcious! I also managed to find some matcha ice cream soft serve before we boarded our tour bus again, and while it was tasty, the green match powder also got all over my shirt!

Our third temple of the day was Kiyomizu-dera in eastern Kyoto, an extremely popular temple famous for its views and wooden platform that rests high above the ground. The view from the platform was amazing, and I could see for miles! A nice old man who was Japanese even came up to me and Megan and offered to take our picture for us, and complimented our Japanese 😀 I was also able to buy a stamp book, one as a souvenir and one to hopefully fill up with my temple stamps!

The walk up to the temple went through a traditional/historical street!

Kiyomizu-dera’s views and scenery was breathtaking!

Our fourth and final temple of the day was the Fushimi Inari Shrine, a Shinto shrine that’s known for its iconic red Tori gates (over 1,000 of them!) I was able to try praying at the shrine, and walk through some of the many gates! It really made me feel connected to and gave perspective on Japanese spirituality, and is an experience I’ll remember for a long while.

The gates were so cool to see, and walk through as well!

Our day then began to wrap up with a movie screening of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, which was really interesting as I had never watched Demon Slayer before. The animation was great, and I still had some wet eyes towards the end despite not really knowing any of the characters beforehand. After finshing the movie and grabbing a last minute dinner at the food court in a nearby mall, our group finally headed back to our hotel and turned in for the night, bringing another busy and fruitful day to a close.

5/22 – Faster than a speeding Bullet Train!

Oh, what a day this has been!

The day starts off at 5am (as per usual apparently), where I realized I apparently had forgotten my satchel in the food court we had eaten at last night. Frantically asking staff in the hotel lobby in both English, English translations, and even rough Japanese, I tried to see if anyone had found it or had seen it, but to no avail. I even opened my Find My Devices app to see if my Airpods (which had been in my stachel) were nearby and could be located, and by proxy my bag, but still no luck as they were “Unable to be located.” Saddened that I may have lost some valuables, I returned to my room defeated, and along with Pavel stepped out to find some breakfast.

Just as we did, however, Pavel’s maps app was sort of freaking out, so I opened my phone to get directions to our destiantion, which opened to Find My Devices, and which now displayed my Airpods as being 0.1 miles away. Startled, I followed the app to the East Tower front desk of the hotel, and after explaining my situation to the concierge, he made some calls and was able to find my bag! He reutned it to me, and I couldn’t have been happier!

After that whole fiasco, Pavel and I were starving, and so we went to a nearby café to have breakfast, and I was able to speak with the cashier in Japanese and order our food, which was a great feeling!

Breakfast at Café Shinagawa. I was even able to speak to the cashier in Japanese!

After enjoying a filling meal, we wandered around Shinagawa city for a little while, finding a shopping center inside a large building, and a small park with a shrine inside. Then, it was time to meet back up with the group and go to board the Shinkansen for Kyoto!

A small shrine we found while exploring near Shinagawa

The Shinkansen was a great experience, and I saw lots of smaller local towns as we zipped past them. It was really interesting seeing the different home architecture and land layouts!

The Shinkansen really is fast!

Once we arrived in Kyoto, we met with KCG staff who were so welcoming and kind, and made us feel right at home as guests! They took us to a restaurant that was full of traditional Japanese cuisine, and my mouth was in its happy place the entire time! We were served ten courses, and each was a new food I hadn’t really tried before. There was small squid, soups, vegetables, and even sashimi prepared by the head sushi chef, who let us try rolling our own, which was an amazing experience. After dinner I was extremely full, but so glad I had the chance to experience so much wonderful food!

And so our first official day came to a close. I can’t wait to see what the next day has in store for us!

5/19 – Travel: Start!

Our voyage to Japan begins! Today marks the first day of my trip to Japan, and our class excursion to a country that’s been on my bucket list for years. I’ve always wanted to visit japan, and now it’s happening! Pavel and I are travel buddies for the trip, and so we arrived at the airport together.

We arrived at JFK in the late morning, and were able to get through check in without issues. Once we sat down in the waiting area, I went to the currency exchange counter that happened to convenientley be right next to our gate, and exchanged some USD for yen. Our airplane arrived, and once we boarded and sat down, we listened to the cabin announcements and then were off!

The flight itself wasn’t actually so bad, 13 hours long but the first half went by relateviely fast. Pavel and I flew in on All Nippon Airways (ANA), and the flight had so many cool features that honestly really suprised me! First off, the seat monitor had an interactive 3D glove that acted as the map for our flight, live TV that included a Japanese channel, a generous amount of preloaded popular movies (both American AND Japanese!), preloaded Japanese tv program episodes, and even two live feeds of cameras mounted to the bottom and side of the plane! Just this aspect alone was getting me more excited about the trip, as the American airline monitors that I’ve had before haven’t come close to this.

We were served two in-flight meals complimentary, which was a pleasant surprise, as I had only expected one. Each meal was reminscent of a Japanese-style meal set, with a small main dish accompanied by a few smaller side dishes, which was really interesting! I had never eaten a meal set like that before, and thought I woudn’t be full afterwards since I was used to bigger dishes at home, but I was indeed full! They followed up each meal with an complimentary drinks like green tea, and offered water or other drinks throughout the flight (which was greatly appreciated!)

I stayed awake for the first 3 hours of the flight, but was only able to sleep for about 2 hours, after which I committed to just staying awake the rest of the time in hopes of syncing up with Japan time. about 7 hours later, and we were touching down in Japan!

We got through cutoms relatively easily, and the Visit Japan website pre-check-in made it so easy to advance through everything. At about 5:30pm Japn time, we were in Haneda Airport’s main lobby. We opted to exchange our JR Rail pass vouchers now as opposed to later on Sunday, as we wanted access to the train lines and that was the only way we knew how at the time. The process, however, took about 2 hours, but after a grueling line wait, we finally had our JR passes and were able to board the Tokyo Monorail to get to Tokyo.

However, one more thing happened before we were able to make it to our hotel; We had to transfer from the monorail to the Yamanote train line to get to our hotel in Shinagawa. Maybe it was the tiredness from the flight or the wait on the line, or the fact that it was now 8:20pm at night, but somehow I managed to get us on the correct train line, but going the wrong direction. I quickly realized this however, and we were able to get off on the next stop and switch platforms to get on the right direction train and arrive at our hotel.

Exhausted, we checked in and got to our hotel room, and opened the curtains to be greeted with a breathtaking view of a nightime Shinagawa skyline. All the trials and tribulations to get here seemed to melt away while taking in this view, and it finally hit us: we were in Japan!