Our last day included two tasks: attending UnrealFest and visiting CyberConnect. After a semi-late start at 10 AM, we were able to get into UnrealFest, which I had been promoted from the waitlist the day before. Unfortunately, today was also the day of the typhoon, dooming rain upon us.
UnrealFest had a lot of cool games, though I had to admit it after my feud with UE5 during the Game Jam. It was a little difficult at times learning how to play the game because most of them were in Japanese, but I had fun nonetheless.
Afterwards, Brody, Esther, Maddy, and I found a soba place where I was able to order and absurd amount of so a for around 1000 yen – it was so much that I couldn’t finish it, and that’s saying something. Then, we went to Radio Kaikan for some last minute gift shopping.
The image I stole from Steve because I didn’t take any photos that day
We met back up with everyone around 2:30 PM to say goodbye to Toshi – probably the saddest part of the trip. He walked us to the subway, where we parted our ways as he went back home and we went to the CyberConnect studio.
We had a small introduction to the studio by their PR manager, and a cool tour that included seeing a lot of anime and manga spread about their many shelves. After CyberConnect, we were officially done with our Japan trip agenda and were free to spend the rest of our last day how we chose. Brody and I, who were exhausted after the whirlwind of activities in these last weeks, just decided to get dinner and rest in our room.
This day was special: it was where most of my pictures were taken. Our first destination was the Diver City Mall where we saw the large gundam statue. After some lunch, a minute amount of shopping, and a slightly underwhelming gundam transformation, we found our way towards the Museum of Science and Technology.
Fabian and I at the Gundam statue
The Museum of Science and Technology had some fascinating exhibits, like a robot that replicated your facial and arm movements, a depressing and interactive viewing of our world in the future, and a guided learning experience about iPS cells and stealing kidneys from pigs. A lot of it was actually really interesting and I enjoyed walking around the various exhibits.
Next, we made our way to teamLabs, which was an artistic experience based on room-to-room art exhibits. Unfortunately, we were split in two. But, It was truly insanity some of the sights I saw.
One of the many pictures at teamLabs I took
After teamLabs, Maddy and I went back to Akhihabara to get some Chinese food. I had mapo tofu for the first time and it was one of the most delicious dishes I had during the trip. However, it was a rough realization when I started thinking about how it was one of my last in these remaining days of the trip.
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!
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!!
There is no other group of people I’d rather be crammed into an elevator with LOL!
Today was our final goodbye :(. We pretty much had to get to the airport on our own since everyone had different flights, but it wasn’t bad at all. Me and Vincent had the same flight so we just took this train that goes directly to Narita. It was really easy and quick. Unfortunately our genius plan of getting to the airport early did not end up being great. This is because Singapore Airlines didn’t open their desk for giving them our checked bags until 3pm, we got there at 12pm. So we had a few hours to kill until we could ditch our bags and go to the airport.
So we did what every good american does and got McDonalds :). I finally tried the samurai burger, it was really good! After sitting next to the desk for 3 hours we were finally able to get in line to deposit our bags. Once we got rid of our checked bags we headed to our gate. The customs were super easy to get through, they didn’t even ask us abour the tax-free stuff we bought, which was the only thing I was really worried about. We got to our gate pretty easily and then waited to board our flight. I think I preffered ANA on the flight to Japan because their seats were nicer and I liked the food better. It was still a really good flying experience though.
After landing in LAX we got our checked bags and then Vincent’s dad picked us up. They were letting me stay with them overnight which was super helpful. Once we got to his place we watched an episode of Succession and then took a well deserved nap. After the nap we had dinner reservations with Vincent’s family, who were all really really nice. Some of them had actually just gotten back to Japan recently, so we got to compare experiences. We ate at this super good mexican food place, which was a nice change of palette from Japan. After dinner we went home, watched more Succession, then went to bed for the night. In the morning we loaded up our bags and went out to get pho for breakfast. It was, as expected, very good. After pho we went to the aiport, which is where Vincent and I were to part ways, since we didn’t have the same flight this time. I checked my bag and then headed to my gate to wait for my flight. I got some starbucks becuase I was hungry and then we took off for Rochester! This trip was amazing and easily the best 2 week period of my life. I can, with a full chest, say that it changed my life. Thank you Steve, KCG, Sten, and everyone else who made this trip possible. I will never forget it.
Soooo I might have fallen behind on my blogs a little bit… oops. I would rather wait and put out a good blog making sure that I cover everything rather than skipping things to get them out on time, but I promise that I’ll still be covering every day until I leave! I’ve done sooo much since my last post and I’m so excited to share everything!!
To start the day, I woke up early and explored Akihabara with Fabian to see if we could find any more merchandise that we could snatch up as we were preparing to pack all our things again. I personally was looking to find some Pokemon cards as they’re basically sold out of everything in stores, and I stumbled across a card shop that had what I considered to be a LOT of good deals. I only bought some single cards because I didn’t want to chance my luck with the packs, and I’m really happy with the few that I got! We also went to a figure store called Tamashii Nations so Fabian could look at their Gunpla (a term for model kits… i think?) and he got a cool exclusive Iron Man figure.
We met up with the rest of the class at noon to head to Diver City, a place well known for its giant mall and giant Unicorn Gundam statue. While I don’t know much about the anime or the model kit community surrounding Gundam, the giant statue was really awesome and we even got to see it change forms (it basically just played some lights and music for 30 seconds and it’s horns closed together to become a single horn, like a unicorn). I don’t think I picked up anything from this mall, but there was a Mister Donut that I was finally able to try and MAN are those donuts good!!
Once we were finished at Diver City around 3, we went to the Miraikan Museum (“Mirai” means future) which had a lot of cool interactive exhibits that ended up being super depressing and existential. The entire thing was basically just “humanity is ruining Earth, we should fix it” and while I enjoyed seeing a lot of the exhibits they had it was kind of a mood killer. They did have this giant spherical Earth display that you could walk around that was really cool though!
The last group thing we did that day was by far my favorite. We finally got to visit TeamLab Planets, which has become really iconic online for its fantastic photoshoot potential. It’s basically an “interactive” art exhibition where you’re walking into these giant artsy scenes that make for some really good photos. I did already make my Instagram post about this because I just couldn’t wait, but I’ll put my photos here too because I’m really proud of them. The experience was really awesome and I think it’s especially fun as a couple or a group going through it together.
my personal favorite 🙂
they got mad at us after this 🙁
could not tell you what fabian was doing in this picture, but it’s hilarious
Once the school-sanctioned portion was over, Liam, Megan, Skyler, Fabian, Cameron and I decided to rent a karaoke room together for a couple hours because we felt like it was a quintessential Japan experience that we needed to have. Because I’m not one for singing with others (and a couple of the people I was with were MILES better than me) I didn’t sing much, but it was fun to look at all of the songs they had, both English and Japanese, and see how different the experience was compared to karaoke in America. We were in our own private room with couches, a massive screen, and two mics, and overall we had a great time! This was also, however, when the rain began.
Something interesting about our time in Tokyo is that there was actually a typhoon (Typhoon Mawar – though I’m pretty sure it was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it reached us) dancing along the coast of Tokyo over the last couple days, writing this in retrospect. From Thursday night until Saturday morning, a majority of the country (including where we were staying) faced a LOT of rain and wind. While it was never too bad for us rain-wise, the wind definitely broke a good chunk of our umbrellas and left me wishing I had brought a rain coat instead. We didn’t see any damage or severe flooding though, so I don’t think it was that bad!
Tomorrow is the last school-planned day of our trip! Which makes me really sad, because everyone leaves on Saturday 🙁 but I’m happy that I have a few extra days to get some final bucket list items out of the way!
And so, we reached the final curtain call for this crazy, wonderful, amazing, jaw-dropping experience of a trip. Today was our last day in Japan, and man, it was a little tough saying goodbye.
We woke up kind of late, about 6:15am, and with an 11am flight that necessitates arriving at the airport 3 hours early at 8am, and a 35 minute train ride from our hotel to Haneda airport, that means that we had be out of the hotel at 7:25am the latest. A bit of a time crunch, but we’re no strangers to that. We readied ourselves, checked out, grabbed some konbini food, and we were off. The train ride was painless, and we got to the airport at about 8:15am.
It was a little rainy outside, but not too bad.
Checking in at the airport also went pretty smoothly thanks to our pre-flight check in online, even though I almost walked into the security check with my checked luggage still in hand! Pavel caught me luckily, and we sent in our checked luggage and passed through security without issue. After that, we just had to sit and wait an hour and a half until our flight was ready to board.
I made one last Japan konbini run, grabbing some hot green tea, a rice ball, and a melonpan!
While we were waiting, an old Japanese man approached us out of the blue! Turns out he was from the Japan Tourism Bureau, and just asked us to fill out a survey about our time in Japan and how much we spent on what kinds of things. Afterwards, he gave us both an eraser shaped like a sushi. It was a bit awkward at first, but I was able to verify that the bureu did in fact exist, and it wasn’t a scam or anything like that.
Finally, we were able to board, and got onto our flight! It was a 12 hour flight back to JFK, and so we strapped in for the ride. The flight, surprisingly enough, went by really fast! I ended up doing some writing, and watched both Terminator: Dark Fate and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which were very entertaining. Our in-flight meals were similar to the first time we flew, and I got a chicken teriyaki set again as well as some pancakes for our second meal/breakfast. I also played some more Octopath Traveler. Before I knew it, we were touching down in JFK!
The meal was pretty similar to first one coming in.
Going through JFK was also pretty easy, which surprised me, as I thought there would be more hassle going through Customs and getting all my merchandise over. But in about 30 mins, Pavel and I were both through with our bags! My parents picked us up right as we left, and afterwards we were greeted almost instantly with a classic US welcome; The monorail we needed to take to get to our parking terminal broke the moment we stepped onto the platform, but no one was informed and the employees there didn’t even know what was really happening. We had to figure out that a shuttle bus would come to pick us up, and figure out where on our own. And even that took 20 minutes, by which time my dad was able to get a cab to the parking lot and come back with the car to pick us up. Compared to Japan, where everything was on time and worked consistently and conventiently, it was quite the welcome home shock. I don’t think there was any better contrast between Japan and the US than with this!
About an hour car ride later, I arrived home and Pavel was picked up and headed home as well. And so, the most amazing trip I’ve ever taken comes to a close. I experienced so many new things, learned a lot about Japanese culture, saw local icons, played and made some really fun games, got to meet and get to know some truly amazing and awesome people, and have the experience of a lifetime. I’m truly grateful that I got the opportunity to go on this trip, and am already hoping to go back again sometime!
Today we went to Unreal Fest! It was super cool even though I couldn’t really experience most of the activities since it was mostly lectures in Japanese. There was a room with game demos set up that was really cool. I played a bunch of puzzle games, this really interesting mecha movement-based action game, and a super fun soulslike that I really liked. There were a lot of games there that I didn’t end up playing because they didn’t look particularly interesting to me, but still cool nonetheless. There was also a lot of tech demo stuff for random systems or software that I didn’t understand because it was in japanese.
After Unreal Fest we had a break for lunch before heading to CyberConnect 2! I ate at this hole-in-the-wall soba place that was pretty good, but I started getting a stomache ache so I didn’t finish most of my food :(. After we regrouped we took a train over to CyberConnect 2’s Tokyo studio. We had a bit of a lecture about what CyberConnect 2 is, the games they’ve made, and how they run things. Then we got a tour of their studio which was really cool to see. They have a really casual workplace that has a staff room full of free games and manga to rent for research, which actually makes sense since they primarily make anime fighting games (such as the Demon Slayer, Naruto, and Jojo’s games). Their studio was really cool.
After CyberConnect2 we could do whatever we really wanted for the rest of the day. So a few of us went back to Akihabara to find someplace to eat. We tried going to this steak place that was supposed to be really good, but it ended up being too crowded. After that place was a bust we walked around for a little bit trying to find a new place to eat. Eventually we decided on this place that was supposed to be like Japanese Olive Garden. It had steaks, burgers, pizza, garlic break, and the like. I got a little pizza and some garlic bread which was pretty good. Then we trudged back to the hotel in the pouring rain and said goodbye to everyone we got dinner with. Then Vincent and I had to do laundry, which was quite troublesome during the typhoon. After the laundry dilemna we went to bed for the night. Last day in Japan :((.
Today was another great day, but also a bittersweet one, as it was our last full day together in Japan. We had two more events left to do, and then we would be officially done with our trip! I think the sky was also sad it was coming to a close, because it was a torrential downpour almost all day. There had been a Typhoon warning issued yesterday, and so the rains today were carry over from that.
Our first event was Unreal Fest, and once we arrived we realized what we were in for. It was a medium sized venue room, full of tables and chairs where game demos sat waiting to be playtested. It gave off sort of club fair vibes, but in a cool way, since it was full of games all developed in Unreal Engine. There were mech games, rythym games, and a section of almost 12 games all made during a local game jam! I played one where you take control of various marine creatures and swim around, taking in the ocean atmosphere, as well as another that was very similar to cut the rope, but with a bit more physics.
The talk had a lot of attendees!
There were also talks being held, and so me and a few friends attended one for Hi-Fi Rush! Unfortunately for us, it was entirely in Japanese with no translations or anything, so we mostly just watched the slides go by and tried our best to pick things up with Google Translate’s camera. It seemed interesting though, covering the technical obstacles and pipeline the team worked with to get the stylized art style working in real time.
Chai wished us a fond farewell after the talk.
After the talk, the fest broke for lunch, and so did we. A few of us went to this beef place nearby that let you cook the meat yourself, and it was delicious! I luckily got a whole staton and platter for myself, and man the food was good!
Niku!
Afterwards, we still had an hour before we needed to head to our second and last event of the day, so I did some last minute shopping at Bic Camera to use up some of the last of my yen. I bought Fire Emblem Engage and Pokémon Legends Arceus for about $80 total, whch for me was a steal!
After that, we all met up at the hotel to head out, but first, we had to say goodbye to Toshi-sensee, which was really sad. He had been with us pretty much the entire trip, serving as a translator, guide, and just a cool guy to talk with. We were all sad saying goodbye, and he gave a really touching farewell speech. Once we all said our farewells for now, we all headed on the subway to our last event; a studio tour of CyberConnect 2!
They’re the company that makes the 3D Naruto fighting games, as well as a plethora of other anime fighting games. They actually said that this was their specialty, which was cool. The office was smaller, but it wasn’t their main office; they have 3, and we were in the Tokyo one. They have two more in Montreal and Fukuoka, the latter of which is their main base and the biggest of the 3. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about the visit, as we did have to sign an NDA, but I’ll try my best to describe what I can.
It was a pretty communal studio and space, and they had so much cool artwork and libraries of manga and anime for reference and study! They also have an animation team in house, which is really neat, and the library they keep serves as good reference for them. They were extremely nice, and honestly it was a really cool tour! There were employees in the office today as well, so we got to see them too. One member had a huge umbrella attachment at their desk that shielded their entire workspace, which was something I’d never seen before.
We got to take pictures in front of the logo in front of their studio!
Once the tour was over, we got a great group picture, and then we were let free. Unfortunately, there weren’t any dinner places that could fit a group of our size, so we had no more group events planned, and were on our own for dinner and whatnot. So we all headed back as the rain got even worse, and then split off for dinner. A few of us went to have rotating sushi, which worked out for me as I had been wanting to try it to see if the sushi was as good as people say, and also didn’t break the bank since I had only about 3000 yen left on me! I have to admit though, the sushi wasn’t all that great. Compared to the sushi we had when we arrived in Kyoto, this just couldn’t compare. The fish was a little too slimy and not as fresh, and many of the rolls just didn’t mesh well. It was still a good time though, and honestly it was nice to just share one last dinner with my friends in Japan!
One the last rolls I ordered, a well-packed seafood roll.
After that, we hit up an arcade for a bit, and then me and Pavel headed back to our room to finally start packing our stuff up in prep for our early morning flight tomorrow. Our group got together one last time though, and we finished watching the Dungeons & Dragons movie! It was a little sad, but also a lot of fun, and we all said our farewells there, since Pavel and I wouldn’t see the rest of them before we left.
After that, I finished up packing, and then went to bed in prep for our flight back!
today we awoke with two essential missions in mind: see the future museum and the teamlabs exhibition. but first, a side quest: see the big gundam.
the big gundam was the least interesting thing i have seen in my life but it was nice to see fabian excited. what came next though, was the mall behind the statue. me and megan split off due to a disinterest in getting real food and ended up trying mister donut due to liam’s glowing endorsement (mid btw). afterwards we encountered a donguri republic and as always i was legally obligated to make a purchase.
[he eats my coins.]
throughout this mall journey we mainly noticed how similar it was to malls from america. save for a few shops, the lineup was identical and the interior design was ripped straight from my mall at home. with the exception. of this one store called “wego.”
wego is, to put it conservatively, a clothing store that presents a surreal parody of american culture and the english language that is marketed unironically to japanese customers. it has 2 sectors, one “resells” “used” american college merch, (i do not believe for one second they are doing the digging to acquire that stuff, it’s most likely unsold stock, but it was labeled as “used” nonetheless) and the other makes original designs. and oh boy. as weird as it was to see a real demand for college t shirts that the buying demographic has never attended, those originals were something from a wormhole. reading these things was legitimately disorienting, each and every one of them spoke to an interest in projecting an experience that was neither authentic to its culture of origin or the experiences of the people it was supposed to be marketing to.
i want to clarify that i do not care in the slightest about “the sanctity of the english language” or “appropriating ‘american culture,'” it’s just that seeing it portrayed as aspirational in conjunction with a reverence for the worst parts of american consumerism was… weird. tshirts for t shirt’s sake i suppose. also reading so much of my first language written in a way that almost completely disregarded actual meaning was legitimately off-putting after some time, while i knew what the words meant the way they were being assembled was basically a foreign language. it was a land where any effort to make sense of my surroundings only further disoriented me. we came in for laughs, and they were had, but leaving that store was a bit of a relief.
[a microcosm of the greater horror. imagine a whole store with nothing but this. whatever you are thinking of right now, it was worse.]
after that we went to the Future Museum which sure had a lot to show. in an effort to avoid being a public hater as much as possible i will instead show my favorite part which was this note wall that was filled with book titles and quotes from children in a bunch of different languages.
[i love little note walls like this. you can tell when kids were told to write an answer to some bullshit “big question” and they just write anything to get it over with. or maybe i’m projecting. idk. i feel like when i was a kid i could tell when no one really cared about the questions being asked but if we didn’t take it 100% seriously we were doing something wrong.]
last part of the day was the teamlab planets exhibit. i mostly thought this was pretty cool. in the words of david (kcg guy of the day (long story)) it was whelmed. not over or under, pretty much just exactly what you would expect. i think for a place that is trying to provoke a feeling of immersion the lines could have been handled better, the whole “corral as many people as possible in a dark room” strategy doesn’t exactly inspire connection with art. it was mostly a few pretty rooms that looked cool in pictures that didn’t contain much to do or think about.
[oh my god i felt so bad for these flowers. many of them did not look well and they were getting run into and torn by attendants. i know plants can’t feel like we can but i wish people just had a bit more respect.]
the day ended with a group trip to a conveyor sushi restaurant. i was sitting with liam and skyler and we just had a ball. hot takes were had. liam would not stop going off about how the conveyor isn’t the same since the sushi licking incident of 85. we all had melon sorbet that was decidedly mid and i stole the container it came in. i loved going to restaurants with liam specifically during this trip because watching him navigate conversations with staff and reading menus was genuinely awe inspiring. watching the countless hours that had gone into learning the language get put to use never stopped being fascinating to watch. also i think i probably would have starved to death without him giving me the confidence to order food in multiple scenarios. owe that man my life fr.
[see the sushi came to us directly via the upper deck, and not the conveyor belt below where in theory anyone could take it. this was apparently a blight on the pure reputation of conveyor belt sushi.)
this was coming up on my last day with everyone and feeling bad about that was inevitable i think. but i don’t think now is the time to talk about that. i had a good day. i used as much time as i had to hang out with as many people as i could and while i feel like i would have liked more time i know i used all of the time i had to the fullest. alright. last one’s next and it’s gonna be the Big Sad. prepare yourselves >:2
Today was another big day for us. I started the day by getting breakfast with the gang and then shopping at this used figures store called Radio Kaiken, which was insane. They had so much cool stuff there and I really wish I had millions of dollars to buy all the figures :(. I got some stuff for me and some gifts for friends before we needed to go back to the hotel and head for Daiba City. We took a train over to Daiba to see a giant Gundam statue and do some shopping at the Daiba mall. The Gundam was so cool and we stayed for when it “transformed” into a different gundam (its head thing moved). I got some japanese manga books in a store in the mall of volumes I’ve already read, which were cool collectibles.
Big Earth
After the Gundam figure we went to Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It was really cool and had lots of interesting exhibits, and robots. There was this giant earth ball that you could walk around on a spiral staircase which was sick. They also had a this game thing that let you create an earth to try and get to survive 50 years by giving it a path to take and hoping it wouldn’t be destroyed by bad events. I got my earth through all the bad stuff :). There were some cool AI exhibits that learned from the people that interacted with them, but they were so scary to look at. Uncanny valley was doing its work for those robots.
Then we went to teamLABs, which was another highligh of the trip. This place was so cool I was surprised. They had LED light shows in giant mirror rooms, water exhibits with interactive fish holograms, procedural flower projector domes, floating flower gardens, and a room full of giant balls. Each exhibit was unique and interesting, which made for some really cool photos.
