Getting into the Swing of Things (6/20/10 - 6/26/10)

I thought I'd condense all of my activities for this week into one blog post since only a few small events happened. Also, all my photos from this week fit into one album on Facebook. :P

June 20th, 2010: After having played Brawl until around 3:45AM the night before, I woke up at 11:00AM. Khoa wanted to go to Umeda to buy a rice cooker and microwave, so I decided to tag along. Before shopping, we stopped by the First Kitchen, which served semi-American food. I got a bacon, egg, and cheese burger with BBQ french fries. It was like a fusion of McDonald's breakfast and lunch in one meal.After eating,we went to the Yodobashi-Umeda department store which had a lot ofelectronics and other goods. There was an entire floor dedicated to toys and games, so we spent some time looking around there. There were lots of Gundam models, a section of Nintendo stuffed toys, and a whole aisle of Pokémon stuff! We ultimately found a rice cooker and microwave we liked, so we bought them and carried them back home. At around 3:00PM we got home and played Brawl for a bit to unlock more characters.

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June 21st, 2010: We started off our first full week at the university today. I woke up around 7:30AM before my alarm went off, showered, ate breakfast, and left on bike at around 9:30AM. At the lab, we hung around for quite a while not doing much, and then we met with Prof. Lindeman and Kiyokawa-sensei to brainstorm MQP ideas. We talked about a lot of good stuff but didn't end up finalizing a project idea, mostly because of our grandiose vision of the project. Prof. Lindeman assigned us to find 20 instances of similar or related projects from which we could learn. We also planned on attending the Interactive Creation (?) class on Wednesday to meet with our IVRC entry partners.

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June 22nd, 2010: Today marks the 7th day, or first full week, we've been in Japan! Following up the previous day's meeting, we did a bunch of research on interactive public displays and saved a lot of useful papers on the subject. We finally ended up using the Japanipedia wiki to store our findings, which has proved very useful. On the bike ride home, I saw some cats, including a little kitten, down the street from our house. I stopped to say hi but he didn't seem to want anything to do with me.

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June 23rd, 2010: Since we planned on attending the Japanese students' class, which runs from about 4:00PM to 7:00PM, we went into lab a little late (around noon). We took the 3:40PM bus to the Suita campus and met our project team members in person for the first time. After introducing ourselves in person and discussing the progress on the project, each team gave a presentation to the class. When everyone's presentations were done, the class was concluded and we all went to Senri-Chuo for a nice dinner. The restaurant we ate at was very traditional, and the style was that everyone ordered different dishes and everyone shared. Two of my team members came to dinner and sat at the same table I did, and they helped me figure out what was on the menu and what I would like to eat. To order, you can call over a waitress or submit orders on an electronic tablet device. Kiyokawa-sensei apparently ordered double of everything, and Prof. Lindeman had to keep taking the ordering device away from him. Since Prof. Lindeman also does not eat seafood like I do, he was able to tell me what was non-seafood and good to eat. Overall, I had a great time and had a lot of fun.

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June 24th, 2010: Instead of going into the lab first thing in the morning, we took a bike ride to the Toyonaka city hall to take care of our alien registration paperwork. When we went through customs on the 16th, some of us were given slips of paper that said we had 60 days (or 90, I can't remember) to register as foreigners since we'd be staying for more than the usual travelers length of time (under 90 days). When we were all set with our paperwork, we went back to the lab and everyone but Jared I. and I went to lunch. Jared and I ended up going to lunch around 3:00PM, which avoided the massive lunchtime crowd, and then met with everyone to discuss our MQP at 3:30PM. After our meeting, Kiyokawa-sensei took us around to look at demos of the Japanese students' research. When all the presentations/demoes were over, we went home.

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June 25th, 2010: Again, we went into the lab a little late. Since we don't have a definite time we need to be in the lab (or when to leave) we sort of just wing it. We hung around for a bit, then had lunch, and then had another MQP brainstorming meeting. We came up with lots of good ideas again, but the scope was still too big. At around 5:40PM we left the Toyonaka campus and took a bus to the Suita campus for an international student welcome party. There, we introduced ourselves and had a small social gathering. I talked with a professor and some students, most of which asked me about my being an artist (the only one in the group!). There was some Japanese food like sushi and gyo-za, but also small pizzas! One the train ride back, I noticed someone had dropped their wallet as they were exiting, so I ran up and returned it. We got back to the house around 10:00PM and played Brawl for a bit, and then went to bed.

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June 26th, 2010: This Saturday was the first real relaxing day since we got to Japan. Due to the rainy weather, we decided to stay in and not try to travel anywhere. During the day I played Brawl for a bit and unlocked the rest of the stages and a bunch of music. We had food from the bento place for dinner, and Jared got some takoyaki and taiyaki from a vendor outside the grocery store. Nothing much of note occurred today, but we do have plans to go to Osaka Castle on Sunday!

(Check out all the photos from 6/20/10 to 6/26/10 here!)

(Next time, our trip to a traditional Japanese locale: "Thank You Mario! But Our Princess is in Osaka Castle!")