Tag: Kyoto Computer Gakuin

Free Day ? KCG campus tour

05/26/2023 (Friday)

Since I slightly passed away from our tiring journey yesterday, I slept in today while my roomie Megan and a few others went out for an early morning kimono dress-up session. I went to breakfast at around 8am and came back and napped until around 1pm.

I headed out with Jess to Kyoto station to grab some new clothes from uniqlo & order from mister donut for the first time! We also managed to squeeze in lunch before rushing back to the hotel to head out again at 4pm to check out the KCG campus.

Here’s what Jess & I ordered wrow! I embarrassingly went into the wrong storefront after getting the menus mixed up and we apologized while going to the store to the left of the menu instead….

Pretend the image is properly oriented I can’t believe wordpress doesn’t have this option included in the base post editor

The food was so yummy…..katsu perfectly cooked & juicy, didn’t feel oily or greasy at all. I could drink a gallon of their miso soup too…

Baby’s first time at a mister donut!!! It’s been 2 days and I’ve yet to eat what I ordered but I’m sure its delicious.

Arrived at KCG’s graduate campus for a quick tour!

We then headed to KCG’s main campus to meet the students that would be game jamming with us! Shoutout to nametag guy ?

It was nerve wracking to meet our teammates for the first time, but I was excited to practice my japanese! One of our team members ended up not hanging out with us as often due to being nervous, but I have faith in him for our actual game jam. They brought tons of snacks for us to try, and we also had pizza-la delivery! I’ve heard of the chain name before but I was not expecting the pizza to taste so…sweet? Many of us ended up sharing similar sentiments after the dinner meet.

We shared a very crowded bus with the KCG students on our way back to the hotel & also saw Kyoto Tower!

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 😉

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.

New Friends in Old Places

Today was about as busy as I expected it to be, but boy I did not think it would physically affect my body as much as it did.

Today was finally our free day!! Which meant that me, Megan, and Chloe were up early in the morning to head to Kiyomizu-dera and rent kimonos for the morning! The store was certainly not prepared for a very tall American woman to walk in, so the kimono itself was a little tight and the shoes were a bit too small, but it was still fun to walk around and take lots of photos!! My feet were dying after three hours of waddling through thick crowds and cute stores trying to find some good spots to take pictures. But we did get a lot of really good shots!

After we finally peeled our kimonos off, we made the walk to the Kyoto Pokemon Center to see if it would be as busy as it was on Wednesday. To our surprise, there was no line or crowd at all! I was able to buy a couple small things, like another Made in Japan charm with Eevee on it and an adorable sleeping Eevee plush (Can you tell I like Eevee?). I really wanted a coin purse, but they were out of the medium size which was the only one that I wanted so my search for the perfect coin purse continues (and at this rate will likely continue until a day or two before we leave, with my luck).

Our other plan for today before we head back to the hotel to meet with KCG was to visit the Loutre Otter Cafe, which was one of the big wishlist items that we wanted to do, but unfortunately they were too busy. Hopefully we can go back on Friday and play with the otters!

Hanging out with KCG at getting to meet our teammates for the first time was super fun! They ordered lots of pizza and other sides (though there was only 1 pizza without a bunch of toppings that I don’t like that was swiftly devoured) and brought a lot of snacks and candy for us to try. There was also a small group of boys that were repeatedly eating wasabi, for reasons that will always elude me. Everyone from my team was super nice and I am looking forward to working with them for the game jam!

To end the night, a majority of our group hung out in Brody and Vincent’s room and played Jackbox party games and Mariokart 8 Deluxe while “drinking” (aka we bought some random stuff from the stores, sipped a little, and then forgot that we were drinking because we were very into the game). It was really nice to get to hang out with everyone because we’d been trying to do it for a while but had always come back to the hotel too exhausted to do anything. I’m a bit nervous for the game jam tomorrow, but I’m definitely looking forward to getting to sit down for a majority of the day!

A Journey Through Kyoto Culture

We started the day at the brink of dawn: 7:30 AM. We made our way to a nearby temple where we met a monk who taught us how to do Zazen Meditation. Though my posture was hideous and my body was in pain, the numbing effect of it really helped clear my mind. After two sessions, we went to a Tea Ceremony, splitting into two groups. The ceremony was really beautiful and the 40 minutes it supposedly was went by like five.

After the tea ceremony, we went to Nishiki Market, where I had some of the best steak I’ve ever had in my life. The market itself reminded me a lot of Vietnamese Night Markets with many vendors selling mobility-friendly food.

My meal at Nishiki Market

Afterwards, we had some free time before the true staple of Kyoto culture: bowling. Brody and I went back to the hotel where we decided to rest for a little bit before 6 PM.

At 6 PM, we made our way to Round One, an arcade, karaoke, and bowling place. I met a KCG student named Quan who came from Vietnam seven years ago. After a couple games of bowling, I got to know him better and he was extremely friendly, helping me and some others understand the subway system to get back to the hotel.

After a quick trip to FamilyMart for a cup-and-noodles dinner, Brody and I went back to the hotel where we had a quick meeting. Soon after, we clocked out, preparing for a big day at Hiroshima.

Trail Mix

Today was a nice blend of traditional Japanese cultural experiences in the morning and free exploration in the afternoon. We visited two temples in the morning, and participated in two special activities to immerse ourselves in the culture more thoroughly.

The first place we visited was the Shōrin-ji temple, a sub-temple where meditation known as zazen is performed and taught by a single monk. We got the chance to do this meditation for two fifteen minute intervals, though it personally wasn’t very relaxing. We had to keep our backs straight the entire time, fold our feet into a criss cross position and breathe as you count to ten over and over again. If you began to find it difficult to focus or get sleepy, you can bow over and have the monk smack your back with a wooden stick to refocus you. While the whole experience was a bit more exhausting than relaxing for me, it was really cool to get a glimpse into the deeper workings of Japanese religion. I couldn’t imagine doing zazen for six to eight hours a day like the monks do.

The second temple we visited was the Rengeo-in temple, home to a national treasure of Japan. Within the main building of the temple are a thousand statues of Buddha (and a few other statues of various Buddhist gods). We were not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the temple, but there was a beautiful garden and some gates that we were allowed to take photos of.

The other cultural experience that we had today was the opportunity to take a class about tea ceremonies, and participate in one of our own. Formal tea ceremonies can last as long as four hours, but ours was only 40 minutes – a very nice woman gave some background information and a demonstration and then we were allowed to mix our own tea.

I personally have never had matcha before today and the matcha tea that we made was a bit too bitter for my tastes. On the other hand, the small jelly candies called “wagashi” that we ate before making the tea were positively delicious!

As we waited for the other half of the class to participate in their own tea ceremony, we had the chance to explore some more of the area around the Kiyomizu-dera shrine that I mentioned yesterday. We were able to find some really nice photo ops, visit a shrine that featured some colorful decorations to celebrate the monkey deities, and my first (and possibly only) Pokemon manhole cover in Japan. There are many of them spread throughout the country, but we only have the chance to see 2 or maybe 3 at most with where we are visiting.

To finish our time with the tour guide that we’ve spent the last two days with (shout out to Yuko for being fantastic in every way), we were dropped off outside the Nishiki market, a very popular food market in Kyoto. While most of the food featured in the market is fish-related, I found an incredible beef skewer stand that I then convinced nearly half the class to buy rib skewers from (and nobody complained). We would pass by this market again later at night as we were heading back to the hotel, and seeing it deserted after being packed into the small street like sardines just hours before was a weird feeling.

A mostly deserted Nishiki Market, strongly contrasting its usual crowded appearance.

After a failed attempt at getting into the Pokemon Center Kyoto, we headed back to the hotel to recharge before a night of bowling with some KCG students at Round1 Stadium. While I wasn’t initially excited to go bowling (especially when I found out that Japan doesn’t have bumpers as an option— like what’s up with that??) I ended up doing a LOT better than expected and even won a game! We then stayed there a bit too late playing various rhythm games in the arcade section of the building, and didn’t make it back to the hotel until nearly 11 o’clock. Since we have to be up and at ‘em at 7 am tomorrow to jump on a train to Hiroshima, I’ll definitely be spending my commute catching some extra Z’s.