Tokyo – RITs International Game Industry Course for 2023

The Climb

I’ll be combining Monday and Tuesday into a single blog since they were both relatively uneventful (in comparison to most of the other days on this trip).

We started Monday with a trip to Ginza, as there’s a 12-floor UNIQLO store there that we both wanted to visit. The rest of the area was super expensive (think Dior, Louis Vuitton, Valentino, etc.) so we didn’t stick around for long, but the UNIQLO store was definitely worth visiting! I got some cheap shirts (including some Splatoon 3 collaboration shirts) and a nice pair of pants that I had bought previously in a different color. The whole place felt like it was trying to be an art exhibition while also being a store, which seemed like a product of the district it was in but it was kind of neat!

We were pretty beat after travelling to Ginza as it was a pretty far trip and the pure exhaustion from just how much we had been doing for the last three weeks was finally starting to catch up to us, so we revisited the pasta place I praised before for a mix of lunch and dinner and settled in for a night of self care. I dismissed my fear of the customs officers and broke out my switch dock so that Jessica and I could take turns playing Tears of the Kingdom on the TV in our hotel room. While I’m sure we could have dragged ourselves back out for another adventure, we were both pretty beat and I don’t regret taking a night to relax and prepare ourselves for what would come tomorrow.

We woke up a bit late on Tuesday morning and headed to Tokyo Tower for the dreaded 600-step climb to the top. I was much less excited than Jessica for the trek, but it ended up being a bit easier than I expected it to be! They had signs on the way up to question you about some fun facts about the tower, which was probably the only thing that kept me going as I got a second to breathe while Jessica translated the signs. At the top of the tower was a pretty cool view and a small shrine you could pray to, and on our way back down we stopped at some Hello Kitty themed gachapon machines and I got a picture of the statue inside the tower. Pretty cool!

We decided to stop in Ueno as we were coming back from the tower, since it was already on the way and we didn’t trust ourselves to have the energy to leave the hotel again once we were back and showered. We stopped in at a merchandise store outside of the station and picked up some miscellaneous goodies, and then went to visit Book-Off (a pretty well known secondhand store) with no luck.

After that, we took a walk through the park to find a cluster of public activities that featured two more Pokemon sewer grates (YES, I did go out of my way to find more. Don’t judge me.) and I’m REALLY surprised that we didn’t visit this area during the main portion of our trip. There were two museums and a zoo, all nestled into this absolutely gorgeous park that would have been lovely to explore compared to the other somewhat depressing museum we had visited instead. But seeing Diver City instead was worth it!

As we were heading back to Asakusa, the hunger began to kick in, and we ducked into a place that had dumplings for lunch. We ordered 12 dumplings and a large helping of rice, which also came with two fried chicken nuggets and some soup, and it cost us 820 yen in total, which was barely $3 each! I will always mourn the loss of super cheap but still good food now that I am back in America.

We finally got back to our hotel and were able to clean ourselves up and sit down and organize all of our stuff to prepare for the trip home tomorrow. It was quite the daunting task, but a necessary evil that I’m very grateful I left time for. Knowing that this was our last night in Japan made me sad, but deep in my heart I was ready to go home.

Merchandise Heaven

I was very excited for Sunday because I had planned my excursion today well in advance. Me and Jessica went to Yokohama, the second most populated city in Japan! We specifically came here because I had heard of a secondhand anime merchandise store that sells a lot of Pokemon plushes (and boy was I not prepared for the wallet destroyer that I walked into) but we’ll get into that later!

We were awoken Sunday morning around 10 AM by the shaking of our beds – we experienced a 4.2 earthquake that happened just 10-15 miles from our hotel! It wasn’t very strong, but it was still a bit alarming and woke both of us up for good. Just another iconic Japan experience I guess!

Yokohama was very pretty, but also super city-like and a bit overwhelming with the crowds. We went to a restaurant called Yokohama Kitchen for lunch, where I got a platter with steak, chicken, and fries that was pretty good! We then took a slight detour to a store called WEGO, which is well known for its poorly translated English shirts, though I ended up not buying anything because it was pretty expensive and didn’t have too much I was interested in. We also took a trip to a local convenience market (P.S. you can get a pack of 20 pads in Japan for ~300 yen, which is like 10 cents a pad and an INCREDIBLE deal and it made me very sad that I live in America :”) ) and an art supplies store where I picked up some washi tape.

Next was the Yokohama Pokemon Center, which did have a few things that we hadn’t seen at other Pokemon stores but nothing too crazy. We did happen to show up at the perfect time though, as we noticed a crowd was gathering at the back of the center. Lo and behold, we had walked into a Pikachu greeting where we got to see two costumed Pikachu come out and put on a show! We didn’t stay for the whole thing since we couldn’t understand any of what they were saying anyways, but I’m super happy that I got to see them again after seeing one at the Pokemon Cafe! They’re just so cute…

In the same mall on the floor below the Pokemon Center was Suragaya, the secondhand store that I had mentioned earlier. We had no idea what we were walking into. This store was kind of insane – they had walls of Pokemon stuffed animals and anime figured at INSANELY good prices. I ended up spending around $80 on plushies that would have easily cost me $200+ if I was trying to buy them in America. Absolutely no regrets (except maybe for not buying more)!

I also ended up buying a copy of Pokemon HeartGold, in the box with the Pokewalker (a very rare accessory that’s hard to find new) for $45, which is usually more than $200 in the US. SUPER COOL!! (I still have yet to buy batteries for it so I can test it, but hopefully it works, LOL!)

To end the day we decided to order pizza from Pizza Hut to see if it was any different from getting pizza in America. We tried to place an order online, but Jess accidentally set it as a carry out order instead of a delivery order, so we had to call the pizza place and attempt to communicate with them that we needed to change the address or cancel the order. It got to the point where I translated something on my phone with Google Translate and played it out loud over the speaker phone… not my proudest moment. But eventually we were able to cancel the order and reorder it properly, and it was super good!

This was definitely my favorite day in terms of buying merch. This would mark the last time I spent a lot of money on non-practical stuff for myself, which is probably a good thing because I was starting to run low! But I was very excited to visit UNIQLO on Monday, and climb Tokyo Tower on Tuesday. The trip is quickly coming to a close, but every day has something new!

Actually Doing Game Industry Things

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!

Instagram Food

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.

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!

Dawn of the Final Week

Yesterday was a little bit of everything, which I wasn’t sure if we were going to get again! We did some shrines, some shopping, and another very cool themed cafe.

To start the day, me and Megan had to do our laundry for the last time. The hotel that we’re staying in charges an outrageous price for laundry service, so we had to lug our stuff to a local coin laundry building and immerse ourselves in the culture. It was really cool! I was dumb enough to forget to take a picture, but they had these machines that did both the washing and the drying so you didn’t have to move your clothes between machines, which ended up working really well (despite us having to run the drying mode for an extra cycle).

Then, we headed to the Imperial Palace to walk the grounds. We weren’t able to get a ticket into the actual palace, but even just the gardens surrounding it were absolutely gorgeous. It’s really weird to see giant skyscrapers behind the small, ancient buildings nestled into the middle of the city. There’s a specific garden called Ninomaru with lots of colorful flowers and a super cool (small) waterfall that you can walk to the top of.

After the Imperial Palace we headed to Harajuku, right outside of the Meiji Shrine grounds, for lunch. We originally tried following Megan to the mall with the Sailor Moon store, assuming that there’d be some kind of food there, but we managed to lose her and ducked into a different mall instead with an entrance that I’d swear is actually just a portal to another dimension. It looks SO COOL!

The only restaurant in the mall seemed very expensive and didn’t look like they’d have anything that I would like, so at the last second me and Fabian decided to leave and head to a small gyoza place instead. I can definitely say that it was worth it – the dumplings were absolutely delicious and super cheap for how much food we got!

After lunch we travelled into Meiji Shrine, with a long shaded path leading to it and other sub shrines in the area. The shaded path was very comfortable and a welcome change from the sun beating down on us. It was pretty standard compared to all of the other shrines that we’ve visited, but I picked up a peace of mind to keep on my backpack.

After the shrine we were sent off on our own, so a group of us rushed to Shibuya PARCO to visit the Pokemon Center (my 6th) and the other Nintendo Store in Japan. I got a pack of card sleeves from the Pokemon store (no pressed coin because they didn’t have any there 🙁 ) and a Korok coin purse and a handful of gummies from the Nintendo store. I really wanted to do the shirt design lab at this Pokemon Center, but unfortunately the wait was a bit too long for me. Once we had our fill, we rushed back to Akihabara for our dinner reservation!

For dinner, we ate at the Monster Hunter Bar for Fabian’s birthday. It was a super cool Monster Hunter themed cafe with drinks and food! I personally got a couple of different drinks and a steak meal, as well as a very cute set of dango. It was the first time I’ve ever tried dango, and it was definitely a lot chewier than I expected but it was still really good! Pavel also ordered this giant beer that Fabian took a picture with for his 21st birthday that seemed as big as him and it was hilarious.

We went back to Liam and Skyler’s room to watch another movie, this time the new Dungeons and Dragons movie, but we were all so exhausted that we barely made it halfway through before we had to call it quits.

Behind again on my blog posts! It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with them but I’m trying my best. We only have two planned days left after this, which is very very sad :C but I’m happy that I’m staying a couple days after to experience a little bit more!!

Kyoto -> Akihabara

Today we travel from Kyoto to Tokyo for the second half of our time in Japan. Morning gets off to a slow start as we pack up and head to Kyoto Station to board the Shinkansen bullet train. Train ride goes smoothly as I doze off listening to music.

As much as I love Kyoto, Tokyo is definitely my favorite place I’ve visited, and I am very excited to be able to spend more time here. I’m extra excited as I’ve yet to visit Akihabara district. Once at Akihabara, we make our way to the hotel which is conveniently right next to Akihabara station. While it’s not as unique as the design of the Kyoto Anteroom Hotel, the shower has a window that looks over the city for an amazing view.

Once settled in a bit, we took a group trip to Mandarake, a massive 7 floor store with retro anime, games, television and movie merch.

Afterwards, me Brody, Esther, and Vincent got some delicious sushi! This restaurant was recommended to us and it was right next to the hotel. I tried eel for the first time and actually really liked it!

We then went out for a little more shopping where I got a bilingual copy of The Ghost in the Shell manga, and saw some cool zelda posters 🙂