Tag: Food

Diver City and Team Labs!!!

June 1st: Today we’re going to Diver City! Diver City is an area near the center of Tokyo on and island. It’s very popular as it has the Gundam base ( gundam is a very popular robot franchise). Diver City is also home to the museum of Science and the future which we also went to. It was a cool train ride with some cool sights as well as the walk to the gundam base.


The gundam was really cool and we got to see it transform as well! Behind the gundam is a mall! We went around the mall for a bit, saw some poorly translated shirts in English, and a weird amount of US college merch from like Harvard, Holy Cross, Rutgers, etc.

After grabbing some donuts from Mister Donut ( 7/10 frosting was a bit hard), we all met up and headed to the museum. This museum was a small walk away and discussed the problems we face on this earth and what we should do. However, the museum would not give you any answers you had to come up with it yourself. Personally, I had a bit of a crisis walking through but the big Earth, robots, and the ISS walkthrough.


After the museums we had the very anticipated team labs!!! Team Labs is an art installment where you become part of the art. It’s like, everywhere on social media, and very pretty. The experience has two parts, the water and garden. You start with the water part. The fun thing is that you have to take off your shoes for the whole experience. I really can’t describe how amazing it was. There were so many new and pretty things to see. To make up for my lack of descriptive words, here’s a lot of photos!!

It was truly amazing and I would 100% go back. After team labs we went back to Akihabara where I took a shower and got some chicken for dinner from Lawson.

We also did Karaoke!!! Liam, Skyler, Belle, Fabian, Cam, and I went to do karaoke! It was so much fun and we got snacks while we sang and we tried to do as many Japanese songs as possible. It was rough but I’m happy with how much I’m able to read as quick as I can!!! Liam was super impressive with his fast reading and singing!!

After that a group of us started watching the dnd movie! We made it half way through before a lot of us became sleepy and ready to hit the sack. The movie started really good though!

See you tomorrow blog!!

Invading a place of business

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 :((.

losing my goddamn mind in the world’s most normal mall

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

Broke ?

Today, Esther and I spent our free day in Akihabara shopping! As a huge anime and game nerd, I was clearly very excited to get my hands on as much merch as I could from my favorite franchises.

We woke up relatively early to go to Tokyo Station and hit up Tokyo Character Street! Character street is filled with shops for Japanese franchises and characters like Sanrio and Hello Kitty, Studio Ghibli, Sumikko Gurashi, and more. My personal favorite was the Ghibli store, and my wallet hurt a bit after getting lots of gifts for friends there.

After spending some time at Character Street, we took the subway back to Akihabara where we spent the day going in the larger stores such as Mandarake, Animate, and Super Potato, as well as going to any and all smaller hole in the wall shops we could find. My personal favorite was a building we stumbled across called Radio Kaiken that turned out to be floors and floors of some of the coolest figure collections I’ve seen.

Some highlights from the shopping include:

  • Berserk figure
  • Majoras Mask Soundtrack
  • Original Ocarina of Time guidebook for the n64
  • Elden Ring Art Book
  • Pokémon White
  • lotsssss of Hunter x Hunter merch

We ended the day with some yummy hotpot and empty wallets, but it was very much worth the financial hit.

Shibuya, Harajuku, and Fabian’s birthday celebration!!!

May 31st: Woke up this morning around 9 and went to do my laundry. Belle and I headed out around 9:45 and walked to the coin laundry about 6 minutes away. We used this machine that had a machine that washed AND dried. That was cool. Sadly we had to do some extra drying time since our clothes were still damp after the first cycle. Overall that took about an hour in total. We headed back to our hotel and had maybe 20 minutes until the class had to meet.

Our plan for the day was to go see the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and Meiji Jingu in Harajuku. We hopped on the train and went two stops to Tokyo. The station is like grand central in NYC with a lot of art and architecture. Apparently it was designed by a French guy so it looked very European.

From there we walked to the Imperial Palace. Apparently the imperial family was there at the time so it was very busy. We weren’t able to see the Palace but we did see the gardens. They were pretty and had some history to them. There was a koi pond which was my favorite. Here’s some photos as all we did was walk and see.


Afterwards we went back to the station and took the train to Harajuku to see Meiji Jingu ( that’s a shrine btw). We got an hour for lunch so I ran over to the Sailor Moon store to get some merch. This is where I got told the rules of Tex free and I have now found out I’m gonna have to pay tax when I come home! Little frustrated by that since no one told us but whatever.

I did also get food with a third of the class. It took forever to come to us but I got a very yummy omelet.



After some food we met up with the rest of the class for the shrine. It was a beautiful walk with a lot of pretty trees and architecture. Once again here are some photos:


After the shrine we were let free. A lot of us wanted to go to Shibuya for the Nintendo Store, Pokémon store, and Shibuya crossing. This was a really popular area but half of us decided to walk to the mall. On our way we saw the Olympic stadium! That was cool. The Pokémon center in Shibuya had the mewtwo statue!!!! I didn’t get anything from the Pokémon center but I did get stuff from Nintendo.

So we were a bit on a time crunch cause we had reservations at the Monster Hunter cafe for Fabian’s 21st!! On our way to the train station we ran into Shibuya crossing! It was really cool to see such a populated place that we also so popular.


We made it back to Akihabara for the cafe just in time! We all got some themed food from the Monster Hunter series and had some drinks. It was very yummy. I got some strip steak with potatoes, a drink with cotton candy, and dango for dessert! For fabian’s 21st we made him pose with a big thing of beer the size of his face. It was funny.

After dinner we went back to the hotel, watched half of the new dnd movie, and went to bed.

See you later for the next days adventure soon!!


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 ✌?

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.

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.

Game Jam… but day 2! Plus Osaka!!!

For day 2 of the game jam, I work up at a decent time and grabbed some breakfast. Got my carbs for the day. After eating, the RIT students packed onto the bus and headed to KCG. For the final day of the jam we only had 3 more hours of work. I was done with my portion for the jam and helped Fabian with GitHub stuff. We did some pair git hub work and finished out our side of the project. Around noon we had omurice for lunch! Omurice is a Japanese dish that has typically fried rice topped with an omelet and maybe curry sauce. It was quite yummy in my tummy.

Once our 3 hours of time was up, we did presentations of our games. I think everyone did really well and a lot of interesting ideas came out of the theme. To reiterate, the theme was collaboration across cultures. Our game was about 2 aliens that meet on a deserted planet and had to work together to survive. One character was strong and one was smart. It was a 2D coop puzzle game.

Once our presentations ended everyone got a big round of applause and we cleaned up. After some time of socializing with the students and eating snacks, we left KCG. We didn’t have a bus back to our hotel so we had to figure that part out. We took the weirdest way to our hotel through many trains and stops. Thanks to Toshi sensei for dealing with us!

After having some time to relax, a large group of us went to Osaka! Osaka is another large city about 30 minutes by bullet train from Kyoto. We walked to Kyoto station, got out tickets, and headed to Osaka. Our plan was to go to all the character shops in this mall since it had a Pokémon center, nintendo store, capcom store, one piece store, etc etc. Osaka was described to us as the closest to NYC that Japan can get. It was weird but if you removed all the Japanese from signs and told me I was in NYC I’d believe you. However, there was this really pretty building with greenery.

Across that little bridge was this giant mall that had all our stores on the 13th floor. Once we got up there it was insanity. Literally crazy. I went to the Nintendo Store first and got some Kirby merch and some Zelda candy. They had some really cool statues in the store though!


After walking around like a bewildered child, I checked out the Pokémon center! This must be a new one cause the statue was of the new legendaries in the series. I didn’t plan on getting anything but I found these really cute stickers and they had pins of my favorite Pokémon so I had to.

I checked out and the gang walked around for a bit waiting for all of us to quench the thirst for merchandise. We gathered everyone and split up again for food! I wasn’t super hungry so I opted for a fancy cake. I was so excited to eat it but they didn’t give me any utensils and I couldn’t find them anywhere. So I sadly had to carry my delicious snack home to wait.
While waiting for people, I did get this eclair knockoff from 7-11. It was the size of a breadstick that had a chocolate covering and a single bit of whipped cream inside. 6/10 tasted like an ok Swiss roll.

After everyone finished eating we headed back to Osaka main station to head home for our last night in Kyoto. We got on the bullet train and headed back. The ride was once again uneventful.

We got off the train and walked to a family mart so I could buy an ice cream to get a wooden spoon to use for my dessert that I still have not eaten. I got my wooden spoon and we went to the hotel to pack then hang out. I also ate my dessert! It was really really yummy. It was like a tiramisu layered cake. It had a lot of cocoa powder on top though. 8/10


As a greater group, we decided to get some sake and have all of us ( who are legal to) have a shot and try it. We’re in Japan anyway! Honestly it wasn’t too bad in my opinion, kinda good actually.

we played some games and around 1 we all went to sleep to get ready for the next days adventure.

That’s about it for this one but I’ll catch ya soon! Bye bye!

Game Jam Day 1

Day one of the Game Jam was a success! My group consisted of 2 KCG game designers, an RIT animation student, a RIT new media student, and me, a game design major.

We got off to a bit of a rocky start due to some programming road blocks and issues being the only programmer on the team. However, as the event progressed we were able to get in the flow, overcome some challenges and progress with the programming. Katherine also ended up unofficially joining team 1 to assist with programming due to the imbalance of skills on the team.

Our concept dealt with idea of differing cultural depictions of superheroes and common legends. We wanted to incorporate 2 player coop with one player controlling a samurai hero and the other player controlling an american hero. While we were unable to implement local multiplayer, we still incorporated the idea of a dual tag-team esque mechanic by having a single player game in which the player toggled between heroes with siffeeent movesets.

Ultimately, on day 1 we made a lot of progress establishing the idea and feel of the game, communicating with the team about everyone’s role and aspirations for the project, and getting a good foundation with the code structure and programming.

The highlight of the day was definitely continuing to talk to the KCG students and get to know them as we collaborated. My teammates were wonderful and it was super interesting how overtime we were able to figure out an effective way to communicate despite language barriers. Can’t wait to continue tomorrow for day 2!