Category: Kyoto

Kyoto ? Hiroshima day trip ? Kyoto

05/25/2023

Classic start with breakfast. The karaage was yummy! As was the croissant! Not sure what the spread was ontop of the bread & lettuce but it was alright!

We have a long day ahead of us today, as we are visiting Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park as well as the museum.

The shinkansen ride was beautiful as usual. My favorite part is seeing the fields & mountains.

Before heading in, we stopped by a small food court for lunch. I got this deeelicious cookie & cream chiffon cake from starbucks with Jess, Belle and Megan.

Conveniently placed tree that hides the dome from view (?).

Conveniently placed random man that ruined my almost perfectly clear shot (?).

I took exactly zero photos once we wandered into the park & museum. Besides being ‘respectful’ and not lifting my phone to snap photos, I also felt it was much more respectful to spend my time reading as many plaques & text descriptions as I could. The main exhibition inside the museum is the permanent exhibition, which displayed a large amount of personal belongings left behind by victims.

There was a projected simulation of the timeline & destruction path of the bombing near the entrance of the exhibition which offered a very helpful visual diagram of how the land looked before and after the destruction.

The whole experience was, needless to say, extremely depressing & sobering. When I was learning about nuclear energy & war a few months ago, I ended up doing a deep dive into the destruction of Hiroshima, but there are just experiences & artifacts that you don’t see online. Reading so many personal quotes & stories from victims’ families, seeing the tattered & burnt clothing of victims, and seeing chunks of glass & metal fused together from the sheer heat of the blast really hit me.

Something I really appreciated was how well-designed the exhibit was! The flow of sections leading into the next physical area/room were well-planned, and the one room with victims’ photos/plaques being displayed within a glass or acrylic panel next to gently lit display cases were nothing short of beautiful, elegant & respectful. The text was easily legible despite the dim lighting, and the vibe of the room paid tribute to the tragic event very well.

Now for something that’s just as distressing as the contents we just explored in the museum. This insane clock is right outside the entrance to the exhibits (but inside the building).

If you’re having a hard time reading the text in the photo above, here’s a snippet from the plaque: “The cogwheels represent a virtual countdown which warms us that we are on the path leading to towards the annihilation of humanity. The cogwheel at the top rotates 100 times per minute, but will spin faster if the earth shows signs of being in danger. If it reaches the immovable cogwheel at the bottom, the clock will automatically self destruct.”

HUH?

I didn’t get a video but the cogwheel at the top was spinning pretty fast….and even if the plaque is just hypothetical, I still have so many questions. Some of our classmates spent a good while discussing what we think the text means, and I tried to not fall into a deep pit of existential dread like how I usually do during the conversation.

After the museum, my feet & soul absolutely died while we were dragged around past our bodies’ limitations (or just mine, at least). I sat near the outskirts of the castle with a few others while the rest of the class trudged onwards and then we got okonomiyaki for dinner and went back to the hotel in Kyoto.

May 27th: Game Jamming!!!!

Today was the big day, the game jam! For me it started off pretty rough, I woke up a bit late and had to rush downstairs. I also found out my laptop decided not to download the engine I needed because my graphics drivers weren’t good! It was so so so fun to uninstall and reinstall all my graphics drivers and unreal itself for a couple hours ( this is sarcasm). Once I got past the pain that I downloading, I got to work. I was put on UI art which isn’t my thing but I tried my best anyway. I like design for UI but more on the technical side.

We spent the day snacking, sitting, coding, and helping each other. The LCG students were familiar with Unreal when a lot of RIT students were not. At RIT we typically use Unity which is entirely different. The day was pretty quiet overall with just a lot of head down let’s get this done energy.

we got some rice balls (onigiri) for lunch and a really nice bento box for dinner ( I forgot to take a photo). The bento box had some white rice, bamboo shoots, a meatball steak, tempura, some fried chicken, a lot of greens, and a sweet waffle for dessert. It was quite yummy. Our jamming lasted from 9:30am to 8pm so basically all day. The Japanese students on my team were very quiet other than when they needed something done or had updates for us so it was pretty quiet. I enjoyed just sitting and listening to music for a day since we have walked like 15 to 18 thousand steps everyday. Literally it’s crazy here’s a screenshot of my steps. The most being from kimono day surprisingly.


That’s a lot of steps. That’s basically it for the day. I took a nice shower and played this game I downloaded called Colorful stage ( it’s a rhythm game). Tomorrow we have to get up at around the same time (7am) and have 3 hours to finish up our games. Well then, see ya later blog!!

Gaming and Jamming

Today was the main day of our game jam! It was super fun to finally get to work with our teammates face to face and make some key decisions about our project.

There’s not too much for me to talk about today – we basically just sat in a room for 12 hours and worked on computers (something my body is very gracious of, as I desperately needed a break) to produce something of sufficient quality to present to everyone tomorrow. While I won’t give any spoilers on what Team 3’s game is, I can say that my main job was working on the art assets and I made nearly 30 assets in total! Combined with Esther’s assets, Liam’s localization and SFX, and Naoki, Ryuki, and Tamura’s planning and coding, if everything comes together I think we’ll have a pretty sweet product for having less than 24 hours to work on it!!

Tomorrow we’ll finish out the game jam and then have some free time for our last day in Kyoto. I REALLY want to go to Nara to visit the deer park, so I’m hoping that we can manage to get into the otter cafe early and maybe head there or Osaka for dinner depending on the park’s schedule. Fingers crossed!! To end I’ll share some of the assets I made for our game 😉

May 26th: Kimono Day!!!!!!!!!

Todays the day!!! The day of wearing Kimonos!! I was so excited since I made the reservation two days in advance and I even woke up buzzing with excitement. At around 7:05am, Belle, Chloe, and I headed out to the Kiyomizu-dera area ( this is the place with the old looking pretty streets and temple that looks over Kyoto). Our reservation was at 8am and we ended up getting there at around 7:45am. We walked around for a bit then headed in. We were greeting by this middle aged Japanese lady that spoke pretty good English! Being the try hard student I am, I tried to speak Japanese the entire time we were there, the women there said I had a good accent!

We all chose our kimonos, belts, and accessories and the women there got to work. I never realized how many layers a kimono had but there was alot. There was a white under cover, a lot of straps to tie it together, towels to keep the shape firm, the actual designed kimono cover, the belt, and accessories. Overall it took 30 minutes to get dressed and about 15 minutes for them to do our hair. It was a really fun experience as I tried to speak through it.

Once we got out we headed towards Kiyomizu-dera to take so many photos. The plan was to go early to miss the crowds but the crowd was still there. We took some photos at the top then headed down the hill. A lot of other foreigners asked to take photos with us which was kinda weird but we said no. Here’s some photos though of the temple with us in it!


We headed down the hill to the shopping area. Belle and Chloe got some goods from the stores and we took photos along the way as we could. It did get crowded fast but we managed. The worst part of the kimonos were the shoes. The shoes are basically wedged flip flops that were a little too small and you had to wear socks with a little cut for the flip flop. Here’s a photo of what it kind of looked like.


We walked around a while. I headed to the Ghibli and freaked out for a bit ( as in I bought a cute mug with Spirited Away and sat next to JiJi from Kiki’s Delivery Service). After our shopping was over we went to a couple other area for photos then headed back to the kimono shop to get undressed. We were lucky it was cloudy in the morning but the afternoon started to get really warm, especially in all those layers.



After we got back in our regular clothes, we took a walk to the Pokémon Center of Kyoto. I already went earlier in the week so I won’t go into much detail there. And No I didn’t spend more money at the center this time I held back. After the Pokémon center we went exploring near Nishiki market and all it’s cool stores. We went to the otter café but it was full sadly but we explored instead! We saw a sticker store that was really cool. It kind of reminded me of Zumiez at home. We also went through some anime stores with many many figures and a thrift store that was too expensive to be thrift. We had to be back to our hotel at 4pm for our next schedule event so I grabbed a cream puff ( shuu-cream in Japanese) and we all headed to the station.

We made it home just in time for our class time and got on the bus to KCG. We were going to a pizza party and meeting the student we were going to be working with! We arrived at the school and got a tour of the grad program and meet our teammates.

Tangent time: we got pizza from a popular chain around here called pizza-la. To be honest it was really sweet and didn’t sit well in my tummy but it’s ok. There was only 1 plain pizza though the others were overly topped for my taste. There was chicken nuggets though! Ok tangent over.

We met with our groups, hung out for a bit, then headed home. We got a nice group pic on the bus ride home though!


After wards us RIT kids went to family mart for some snacks and drinks and played jackbox party pack together since it was an early night. That was pretty much my free day! I keep forgetting to take pictures of my merch but think of it as a surprise for my last post when I show everything I’ve gotten ( cause I’m not done yet we have a whole week in the anime fans center of the world Akihabara)

See you next time blog!

Gyoza, Zazen, Ten-Pin (5/24)

The day was another early one, starting at 7AM.

Breakfast was a nice highlight, maining avocado toast, something I would never expect to see in Japan! Was definitely a treat.

Our first activity was a trip to a nearby temple for a Zazen practice. For those not in the know, Zazen is a meditative discipline that’s central to Zen Buddhism. Despite being a tad congested, I found myself sitting in the lotus position, trying my hardest to focus on just breathing and keeping the pose right. Some people opted for the shoulder-stick whack to stay focused, but I decided my struggles were plenty enough.

Our next destination was Rengeo-in, or as it’s commonly known, Sanjusangendo. Seeing the 1001 buddhist statues in a row was quite the experience, something I just can’t put into words! It’s just so many statues that you can’t even process how much effort it took back in the day.

I particularly enjoyed the statues in the front row of a bunch of religious figures, but sadly, no photography was allowed. Instead, here’s some official photos of the inside!

We then headed back to the charming lanes of Ninenzaka where we visited Yasaka Koshindo Temple, filled with colorful ball-shaped charms. There, you write one of your hopes and attach it to a little string. In a way, it’s like people’s hopes and dreams painting a giant colorful mosaic on the shrine!

After that, we got ourselves lost among the back alleys, and stumbled upon another temple, and a delightful Pokémon manhole cover! The contrast of traditional temples and modern pop-culture references was just… Japan in a nutshell. Loved it!

Following that, we took part in a traditional sadou tea ceremony. We learned about 和敬清寂 (wakeiseijaku), the spirit of peace and harmony, respect, purity and tranquility as the principles of the ceremony. There, we were treated to kohaku (a type of sweet jelly dessert, with some yuzu peel in the center) and matcha tea. Everything was so calming and the people there were nothing short of hospitable. On top of that the sweets were so unexpectedly good, and the matcha was intensely high quality.

Nishiki market was up next, an extravagant shopping street lined with hundreds of food shops under a ceiling patterned with red, green and yellow. It was quite crowded, but an experience I definitely enjoyed! In the middle was an amazing snoopy-themed restaurant, so I went and got a snoopy-yaki (a snoopy-shaped taiyaki). Walking back, I also found some gyoza — absolutely mouth-watering!

Afterwards, a group of us aimed to try the Kyoto Pokemon center, only to be met with a cue a ticket system just to enter. I wasn’t in the mood to wait a whole hour just to get in, so I opted to head back to the hotel to get some laundry and blog post writing in.

In the evening, we joined up with some folks from KCG for a fun bowling session at Round One, a massive entertainment complex. The kid of one of the American teachers joined us, and they were a riot! Very much a kid ranting about his special interests. After a while, we ended up more wanting to have fun with it, as you can most likely see from the score sheet. I ordered some fried and chicken, which wasn’t the best quality but sure was addictive. The drink bar was also great!

The bowling alley was nothing short of futuristic and navigating the screens was an… experience in itself (somewhat hellish for even me who can speak the language). I’m used to bowling with much less tech, so it was quite novel to me. Nevertheless, there was even a floor dedicated to karaoke, and three more floors of arcade games!

After bowling, we found ourselves wandering towards the arcade games. I fruitlessly spent a bit too much on claw machines and watched some friends become rhythm game novices right next to pros shredding the SSS level difficulty tracks. Nothing brings you back to earth like that, haha.

Walking back to the hotel, we got a kick out of the amusingly mistranslated English on some signs. Can’t help but not laugh at it all.

Finally, after yet another day packed end-to-end, I got back to the hotel and crashed out.

Tomorrow? Hiroshima!

7th Impact

Toei Studio Park Kyoto

Today was our free day in Kyoto, followed by the game jam kickoff at 5pm. For the free day Vincent, Maddy, Esther, Sten, and I went to the Toei Studio Park in Kyoto to see the giant Eva 01 statue. We went with the understanding that we would only be able to look at the statue and take pictures in front of it. However, we were able to do the full boarding and linking experience. We got a bunch of pictures of ourselves in front of the Eva and then went inside it, where we took a quiz to see which of the characters in the show we were, based on some random quiz questions. After that there were cardboard cutouts of the characters in the show that we got to take pictures in front of. Then we ascended the mech and got to do a compatability test by sitting in the plug in its neck. It simulated what it feels like being shot from the underground city to the surface, like they do in the show. We all got really low compatability percents :).

Sten in front of his favorite character, Asuka

After going through the Eva we got a printed photo of all of us standing in its hand, then explored the rest of the park. There wasn’t all that much there unless you wanted to do some of the attractions, but they costed extra and seemed to be meant more for kids. We shopped at the stores in the park and I got a little Gojo keychain and a coin purse. There was a cool Evangelion shop that had a bunch of cool stuff, and there was a lot of samurai and ninja merchandise which I thought was super strange. The park was overall kind of underwhelming, since there wasn’t really anything for the shows that Toei has, it was all just ninja themed areas. We ate at this resturant that served Evangelion themed dishes which was alright, not the best food I’ve ever had but not the worst. After eating we did one last run through of the building and then headed back to our hotel.

Before we got the hotel Vincent, Esther, and I went shopping at Uniqlo in Aeon Mall, and I bought 4 Attack on Titan shirts for only 30 USD :D. After shopping we walked back to the hotel just in time for the bus to KCG. After we got to KCG we did a tour of their new building for masters students, which was really cool. Made RIT look cheap with their fancy event floor and rooftop garden. Their classrooms and library were also super nice, and they had a sound mixing room that looked really cool. After the tour we headed over to the building next door to kickoff the game jam! It was super cool to meet all the japanese students, and they were all really nice. We ate pizza and snacks while getting to know each other. Then we all installed Unreal in preperation for the next day, said goodbye, and then took off. Today was super fun and I am excited about what the game jam has to offer.

Sick Day

May 26th:

Unfortunately I have little to share today because I am 90% sure I have strep throat. It is very on and off pain wise. Sometimes I feel fine other times I can’t speak or swallow. Now is one of the latter times. Perfect for typing.

I woke up late and played Zelda for a bit before Jasmine convinced me to go to Mister Donut with her. I still haven’t tried mine but they look amazing.

I also got to hangout with Professor Jacobs while he helped me navigate getting to an ER (they don’t have urgent care) and taking covid tests and such. No help as of today however it was honestly a really interesting culture experience.

We got some tasty food afterwards and I learned a lot about the abroad program and our class and other fun stories from Jacobs.

With some extra time left part of the group played jackbox games! I left pretty quickly though as my throat began to hurt again. So annoying but I’m still very happy to be in Japan and having fun.

Hiroshima

May 25th:

Today was a bit challenging. I am staring to get sick and we are going to be out all day. Not to mention the weight of going to the Hiroshima museum was more than I expected There were many school groups with young young kids going into the museum that had very graphic and tragic content. The children also preformed speeches and bowed to a memorial statue as well. It was a lot different from any school field trip in the states.

Because of the intensity and out of respect I avoided taking photos in the museum I did get a few others of the dome building that is still standing.

On a lighter note Skyler and Emma accidentally ordered alcoholic drinks for lunch at 11 am and Skyler actually drank a decent amount of them. I also got a chance to try some banana and caramel mochi balls at Starbucks.

After the museum and talking to some Japanese children that were very curious about Sten we headed to an old castle were we mostly watched fish and took a short sitting break.

And finally we had a HUGE dinner. I am the only one who didn’t finish their food I don’t know how everyone did it I was in pain. It was so yummy though. I was attempting to understand Yuko and the chef speak in Japanese but I probably looked like a children just staring at them while critically thinking.

bonus image: sten’s head

Day 3

We woke up super early today and meditated with a monk at his shrine. Something that surprised me was that if you get distracted or your back begins to hurt, you bring your hands together, bow to the monk, and he hit you with a rod. My back did begin to hurt – I also thought, “When’s the next time I can get hit by a monk?”, so I gave this method a try – it shockingly helped. While it was hard to focus occasionally, it was a cool experience.

Afterwards we visited one of my favorite shrines, the one with all of the statues in it. I couldn’t take pictures due to it being a sacred site, but nevertheless I loved the visual and the story behind it; where the emperor wanted to show his strength and security so he created this temple.

We also got to walk around a small marketplace with incredible views – at the base of the shrine where the people jumped off and survived – and got to have make tea at a tea ceremony. I piqued my interest how strong the tea was. Apparently it’s made with either less water or more tea and is very caffeinated.

Afterwards, Megan and I went to the Pokémon center where they had Pikachu wearing a kimono greeting the customers and where I spent a surprisingly small amount of money. Later that night we met up at Round1 for bowling and I got two strikes.

Day 2

The entire group spent the day sightseeing numerous temples – both Shinto and Buddhist. While I don’t remember the exact names of all of them, I remember them all clearly. We first went to the Golden shrine right on the lake, that had part of the cremated remains of the Buddha on the third floor.

After getting on the bus and traveling to our next destination, we found ourselves in a bamboo forest and a marketplace for lunch. Before moving on to a temple on top of a mountain – where a group of people apparently jumped off of and survived. It was here where I started collecting stamps from the various temples and shrines so I could make a collage when I got back home.

We finally visited my personal favortie – a temple with thousands of gates – known as the Fox Shrine; where Sten had to photobomb me as payback from something earlier in the day. We spent the night at KCG, watching ‘Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train’. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, which was surprising because I’m not the biggest fan on anime. I really liked the creepy villain, the story, and the conflict for the main character that fights demons, where his sister is a demon.