To Akihabara! (5/29)

Today was our highly-anticipated trip back to Tokyo, headed via Shinkansen to remm Akihabara, a hotel right next to Akihabara Station!

It went well and according to plan. With a somewhat shaky start, taking a while to get settled on the Shinkansen, but having gobbled down some Ekiben, I soon conked out for a good majority of the trip!

Upon arrival, we got settled into the remm Akihabara, a quaint, well-equipped hotel. The room was small, as expected, but the amenities and location more than made up for it. I’m probably more excited than I have any right to be about it, but they had a RAIN SHOWER! HOW COOL IS THAT!

Soon after, our group leader, Stephen Jacobs, led us to Mandarake, a famed anime and manga shop known for its variety of rare secondhand items. It was crazy to see the amount of merchandise they had in that place, a treat for almost anyone obsessed with anything! And I mean anything. The streets of Akihabara were absolutely packed with absolutely crazy stuff. Couldn’t stop looking up!

Next, we visited Super Potato. Hidden away in a sketchy-looking hallway off the street, it’s this massive retro game store. The nostalgia factor was off the charts, with walls of classic games and consoles stretching back decades. The top floor even had a few game cabinets, and was fully decked out with vending machines and air conditioners! Still think it’s insane how Japanese buildings fit so much in so little.

After all the exploration, a bunch of us got hungry and decided to check out Yarou Ramen. This place had a Japanese-only ticket system, which was a bit of a hurdle for some of us (even me), but eventually we managed to order our food. Luckily, that trouble was so worth! The ramen was out of this world! I have to say, it was my favorite meal I’ve had here so far. They even let us customize a fair bit. I put on a bunch of spicy tenkasu.

Post dinner, a few of us roamed the bustling streets of Akihabara and ended up in a massive games complex. The first few floors were filled with claw machines (didn’t win anything, as to be expected, haha). Above, there were rooms full of online and rhythm games, all accompanied by the blare of music and sound effects. It was a sensory overload but in the best way possible. The top floor was a treasure trove of retro games. Wonderful to look at, but I didn’t particularly feel the urge to devote myself to anything.

Our next stop was Don Quijote, a discount chain store that sells just about everything. It was a bit of a maze inside, and quite the hell of “way too much visual information.” Despite the confusing layout, it was pretty neat seeing all the stuff they had for sale! I was on the lookout for a Gengar plushie but unfortunately, they didn’t have it in stock. My search continues…

On the way home, we made a detour to Book-Off. I managed to snag around 10 volumes of Jojolion! Sadly, I think the last few volumes would be a real hard find.

Once I was back at the hotel, I took advantage of the downtime to pick up an umbrella (with the weather not seeming to let up this week) and do some coin laundry. On the way there, I was able to look out at the beautiful Kanda river. Damn.

Once again completely beat, it’s lights out!

Evening Up the Score

The second day of the Game Jam started off with a bang as I was motivated to tie up with my arch-nemesis: Unreal Engine 5. As I worked on hitboxes, I found that my code was working, but not entirely. Hitboxes were spawning and de-spawning correctly, but just no in the place I wanted them to. However, before I could amend this problem, I had to fix some bugs with controls and animations, mainly that if an input was put in and held too long, the model would freeze. After an hour of messing around with Animation Notify events, I was able to fix it completely, and all by myself, no internet or anything, besides some documentation about Notify’s.

However, time was running short, so before I could work more on hitboxes, it was time to merge my team’s work. Because we didn’t use repos, I put my files onto a hard drive and gave it to my teammate Kento. After about 30 minutes, he told me I had to merge it on my computer because he lacked some external tools I installed to be able to link Visual Studio to my Unreal Engine. Thus begun the difficult process. I failed to merge multiple times because my C++ classes were not properly importing into the KCG project, so I had to manually re-create everything in record speed, having to ignore a good portion of our lunch break. After all was said and done, I had accomplished it, but not without a lot of stress.

Then we met the judges who went around to each group and gave feedback, and, despite having very little besides art and controls, we weren’t bashed too badly. After that, we cleaned up and thus ended the KCG Game Jam of 2023, with the score between me and Unreal Engine at a tie of 1-1. as I definitely took the win this time.

We got back on the bus and the evening was ours to do as we liked, so a lot of us got together and celebrated the Game Jam. However, Unreal Engine and I are still sitting at an unsatisfactory tie, and our match will be decided in the future. Of course, I will undoubtedly win.

Free day in Tokyo! AND KIRBY

May 30th:

This is it folks, the day I’ve been waiting for. My credit cards are not PREPARED for what I’m about to do to them today. I woke up early at 9am and secured a reservation spot for the Kirby cafe petit on character street. Character Street is an area near the Tokyo station that has all themed shops for different brands like Pokémon, Kirby, Ghibli, Shounen Jump, Snoopy, etc.. I was on a mission for the Kirby cafe petit. I got my reservation for 1:40pm.

To kill time a whole gaggle of us gamers got together to get breakfast and do some light shopping. We went to Starbucks for breakfast 1, I got a pretty good scone. Then we went to get crepes. All of these were sugary crepes but I got a tiramisu crepe. It was yummy and warm :),

After crepes we all split up while others were eating. I took a trip to the Razer store ( like the gaming peripheral brand) to see if I could get a new mouse for cheap. This was an experience to get into the store. It was in the basement ( where true gamers live) and had all green RGB LED lights. It was so funny. Also fun fact! Everything in that store was more expensive than it’s American price point! I thought that was funny.

Once everyone was done eating we starting walking to the train station when we ran into Sten! He was a bit lost and didn’t really know what to do so he tagged along with us to Tokyo station. We got on the trains and headed 2 stops up to Tokyo.

Finding Character street was an adventure in itself as it was hidden from us. I think it took about 15 minutes to find a sign pointing towards it. When we got there though, I saw the promised land. Kirby cafe petit right infront. At this point it was about 12 so we had some time before the reservation. We all split up and went to the themed stores of our choice.

I went to the Shounen Jump store first since I like their anime’s currently. I got a sticker of one of my favorite characters and some candy. After, I went to the Ghibli store and got some really heavy books, a sun catcher, and paper ball theater that I will have to build back home. My shopping bags were pretty heavy at this point so I walked around a bit with Sten and Skyler for their shopping and killed off some time. There was a Pokémon store but the line was astronomically long for check out so we left.

The time has come, Kirby Cafe time. I was ready, so ready. With the reservation we get to choose 4 sweets from the bakery, 2 take out items, and all the merch one could ever want or need. Jess and I were on one ticket so I got 3 desserts and she got 1 ( we agreed on this it’s ok). We also both got a star bread (it’s a big, like thick white bread). After we ordered our sweet we perused the store. I knew exactly what I wanted to I filled our basket pretty quick. I won’t bore you with words but I have many many photos I will show instead of the haul. Here ya go:

I felt at this moment, a tear shedding from my eye. A single tear, it has been my moment. We all exited the Kirby store and went home to eat our sweets. It was so yummy. The cheesecake was delicious and had cheese on it. The tiramisu was creamy and smooth. The Kirby car cake. Oh my. A dream come true. He was a sponge cake with some jelly and this soft pudding/jello like strawberry substance on top. It was amazing.

After consuming we went out again to Uniqlo, Muji, and other stores. I ended up at the Square Enid cafe ( creators of Kingdom hearts) and got some merch. I was so happy and I refuse to look at my credit card bills as of right now.

After shopping a bit, Cam, Liam, Belle, and I got dinner at this place our professor recommended. The food was good but the servers forgot about us. Would not go back. We also then got some donuts as a little treat. That was yummy.

After donuts we all went home and rested for a bit before movie night!!!! In Skyler and Liam’s room we watched Bullet Train ( surprisingly not available in Japan we had to VPN to America). It was a really funny movie and I would watch it again! After the movie it was about 12:30am so I went back to my room, took a shower, and went to sleep.

This was a whole day and oh my am I ready to just exist with my items. I went a bit crazy but I’m happy for it. Come back tomorrow blog for another crazy adventure. Peace ✌?

On the Road to Tokyo

Before long, the day to return to Tokyo had arrived. I woke up slightly later than intended, ate a quick buffet breakfast, and boarded the bus for the station. Before long we were on our way playing games with our headphones in.

Upon arriving at the hotel in Akihabara, we spent some time inspecting the various oddities included in the room. Ranging from the massage chair, in room massages, a rain shower, the interesting shower setup, and a tv where one cannot watch regular tv. We spent some time recharging before leaving the hotel for Mandarake. At Mandarake, we speedran from the top floor to the bottom floor in 30 minutes. From there, we split and I explored some of my favorite shops on my own. I found a giant EVA statue for $1000 at Japan’s Hobby Lobby. No purchases made though…

The streets at night were very cyberpunk with the rain

Later that night, I met with Belle and Megan for crane games and arcade games. I spent way too much money getting my favorite vtuber, Mori Calliope and had to use a “sumimasen” for help multiple times before the staff made it nearly impossible to lose. Afterwards, my luck turned around and I won a Ruby plush from Oshi no Ko in 4 tries.

We got Megan’s RWBY to do a headstand. Unfortunately, no one else won any crane games…

First full Free Day tomorrow! Stay tuned…

To be continued…

Game Jam: End! (5/28)

Jamming

From arriving to the KCG campus to work on our game until around noon, we only had 3 hours! It was a mad dash to get everything done on time, and get everything to a polished, finished state.

The KCG gang was kind enough to offer bento boxes and enough omurice to feed a small village, haha!

We decided on the name “Café Lingua”, a cool-sounding blended name for a language-based game.

Above is a preview video of our game made by Ryuki! Sadly most of the sound effects weren’t put in in time for final presentation, but oh well.

Two esteemed individuals, Akira Thompson, the Studio Head and Game Director at RainBros LLC, and Yuya Shiotani, a UE Community & Education Coordinator at Epic Games. They were great to have, and we all went around playing our (monstrously buggy and unfinished) games, receiving feedback.

(Not to brag or anything, but I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO INTERPRET FOR THEM! I was super nervous but it was crazy to be able to be put in that sort of role. Aaaaa)

Overall, it was great being able to collaborate with students, and more effectively learn how to help with communication. Turns out diagrams are VERY important lmao!! Especially with a language barrier. Even when understanding the language, they’re a very useful tool. The more ways to understand, the better.

Osaka-ing

Back at the hotel, we were faced with a free afternoon. A bunch of the others decided to go to Osaka, over to the Pokemon center, Nintendo store, Capcom cafe, etc.

Now I was anticipating a restful afternoon, buuuuut

I caved 😀

Thankfully with my experience having already gone to that Pokemon Center, I knew exactly how to get there!

We all had a blast looking around, abusing our wallets completely. Even me, the notorious never-spender found himself buying a cool shirt and a tin of cookies.

While I was at the Pokemon Center, looking for the ever-elusive Gengar Plushie that seems to no longer exist in all of Japan, I ran into an old lady (perhaps Portuguese or Brazilian), looking for something for her son. She showed me two Pokemon, a Gengar and a Mew. I told her that Gengar was most likely entirely sold out, but I told her to wait there for a second. I was able to ask the attendant if there was any Mew in stock, since there were none on the shelves–to my pleasant surprise, they WERE! It felt wonderful to be able to help her like that. Heart-is-full moment for the day 😀

Afterwards we all went to the basement floor, where there were tons of stores for desserts and more. Originally, I was looking to introduce the others to Rikuro’s cheesecake, however with a 40 minute line, everyone was a bit apprehensive. Completely understandable! We instead split up to look for things we might like ourselves.

I found myself entranced by this adorable mini chocolate cake, and a canned confection(?). They both tasted absolutely wonderful. (Only problem was the canned cake was frozen, but still, picking at it as it slowly defrosted was a fun experience! Tasted amazing nonetheless.)

We arrived back at Kyoto late at night, with the tower shining proud. A wonderful night out with a bunch of friends 😀

Back to the hotel, and lights out!

From Kyoto to Akihabara!!! (Oooo aaaaa)

After a week in Kyoto, it was time to leave our quaint and oddly artistic hotel and go back to Tokyo for the last leg of our trip. We had a decently early wake up of around 9 and loaded into the bus. We had two buses, one for our suitcases and one for the people. The guy was lifting suitcases all by himself, it was really impressive.

We got to Kyoto station with little time to spare for a real breakfast so good thing I grabbed some bread from our hotel beforehand. Our train came and we all piled on. I spent the whole 2hr ride playing Zelda. This is the first time I’ve touched Zelda in like a week so I was happy.

The Shinkansen ride is about 2 hours between Kyoto and Tokyo. So two hours passed and we got to Tokyo. When we got out of the train it was really really humid and raining. Kinda uncomfortable. To get go Akihabara we had to take 2 stops on a local train line. Toshi sensei helped us out with that.

Arriving in Akihabara was amazing, we got off the train to see anime, everywhere. Quite literally everywhere. Our hotel was right next to the station which was great for my aching shoulders. You know the deal, get the key cards and go up to your rooms. We had an hour of free time before meeting back up. Our rooms are nice, smaller than Kyoto but we have a massage chair! I tried it but the back was kinda hard for me.

Jas and I unpacked, relaxed for a bit, and headed back downstairs to meet everyone. Our classes walked around the city to see the sights and visit some old retro game stores like Mandarake. It was really expensive.

Afterwards we all split up to check out some stores and grab food. As prof Jacobs put it – “You’re free beings until Tuesday at noon”. So we all scattered with some going to animate, book off, and other second hand stores for games. There were a lot of really cool items in all the stores but my wallet was to be saved for the next day. Except for 1 event.

After Belle and I got dinner at this Karaage place ( karaage is like fried chicken) we headed to an arcade. Skyler ended up joining us later on. This was a 7 floor arcade with crane machines, video games, rhythm games, etc,etc. We spent ALOT of time there trying to win prizes but only Skyler came out with 2 prizes. We did, however, okay a lot of video games as well. The atmosphere for those floors were no windows only game. So it was lit up with LEDs.

I also ended up getting a really good score on one of the games. It was very fun.

After spending too much money there we went home for the night. I was able to get some really cool photos of the city at night. It was raining so things are a bit blurry but it was really pretty.

After getting home we basically went to sleep, I literally was out cold 2 minutes into laying on my bed. So I’ll catch ya later for tomorrrow, it’s gonna be a big one.

Game Jam Wrap + Osaka trip

The day began the same way as the day before with buffet breakfast in tbe hotel lobby. We then returned to KCG at around 9 to our groups to make one last sprint towards the finish at around noon. Because I finished my portion of the art the day before, I spent the day doing minor tasks such as making our game logo. We also had delicious Omurice for lunch. It was my first time trying it and I found it quite delicious. Overall, while some things could have gone better within my group, the experience of participating in a game jam for the first time was a great experience and was very worthwhile.

After another great lunch, two professionals from the game industry came in to critique our games. Their feedback was very interesting to hear coming from 3d design since all our critiques are visually focused. However, all of their feedback revolved around the gameplay and mechanics which was very new to me.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we boarded a bullet train for Osaka. We went to a department store where on one floor there was a Pokémon Center, One Piece store, Nintendo Store, Capcom store, and other smaller stores. I spent a little bit of money at the One Piece Store…

We also had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the department store before taking the bullet train back. Later that night we had a short Jackbox meetup before heading to bed. Until next time!

To be continued…

Day 7/8

Day 7 was the remaining part of the game jam and I stuck with my new group. We worked on adding the audio, the art, and backgrounds, as well as bug fixing when we got lunch. During lunch, I wanted to try adding a boss attack. So within the last 30 minutes, I started and finished adding fireballs to our game so the boss can attack the player.

Then we had two industry professionals review our games. One had started his own studio, and the other worked in the education outreach division of Epic – the makers of Unreal Engine. They seemed to think our game Hero Duo was funny – which was the goal, but gave a critique on our lack of player feedback; particularly when the player gets hit.

The next day, we took the bullet train back to Tokyo. I still think the bullet train is so cool, how it uses magnets to make the train as frictionless as possible. Although I’m bummed I wasn’t able to see Mt. Fuji due to the clouds. We went shopping for a while at some second-hand stores (although I mostly remained in the video game sections) before getting ramen – for the first time – and heading back to the hotel.

Game Jam: Start! (5/27)

S’up y’all! Today was the start of the game jam, so there’s really not much to talk about!

I was teamed up with Tamura, Naoki, and Ryuki from KCG, along with Belle and Esther from RIT as part of team 3. The theme was “collaboration across cultures”!

After meeting up and brainstorming (and doing a fun little party trick I call “eating loads of wasabi on a spoon”, we decided on the idea of incorporating food in some way. Eventually, we came up with the idea of working at a restaurant, and incorporating learning each other’s language in some way!

After a whole day of work, we were at a pretty good point, but still far off from a playable game. After all, not much can be done in a 1 day game jam ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nevertheless, I did my best at helping in team communication, writing and translating dialogue, and gathering sound effects and music for the game. Belle worked on art, Esther worked on UI/UX, and the three others worked their damnedest in unreal to get this thing working!

Day 6

Today was the first day of the game jam. I spent over half of the day trying to download Unreal Engine on Professor Jacob’s laptop since my 2015 Mac would have never been able to handle that as it can barely handle Unity. While I was waiting for it to download, I began helping another group in the game jam.

During this time, Unreal Engine finished downloading on the laptop. However, it required another software to download. At that point, I felt that it would cause more harm than good if I went back to my previous group; since they would have to explain the entire code base to catch me up. So I remained with the new one since their programmer was sick with covid.

My time at KCG was where I tried a lot of new foods and snacks. I don’t know the names, but they were very good. One was in the shape of a mushroom and had a chocolate top. Another had a koala print on it and was filled with chocolate. I also got to try white rice wrapped in seaweed and Japanese pizza – which I didn’t realize was more uncommon there.