Just Another Week in Japan (6/28/10 - 7/2/10)

Nothing really exciting happened this past week at the lab. Although we don't have set schedules, we've pretty much gotten into the routine around here.

June 28th, 2010: Just a regular Monday. We met with Prof. Lindeman and Prof. Claypool about our project from about 11:30AM to 1:00PM, then again from 3:30PM to 6:45PM. Luckily, we finally decided on a project idea for our MQP! It's still in its infancy, but I'm sure it will grow to be a great project. The main topic for the project is having large public displays at WPI and OU that can communicate with each other, and users can interact with the display using a smartphone (iPhone, Android). We wanted to emphasize the communication between US and Japanese students, as well as the wide audience that the display has to appeal to at both campuses. Since I am the only artist, I will be in charge of all the art, like an art director/lead artist. I also get the pleasure of deciding on possible art styles for our project and making sure everything looks good.

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June 29th, 2010: Today marks the 14th day we've been in Japan! It definitely doesn't feel like it's already been two weeks. We went into lab a little late today (which seems to happen quite a bit). Since it was Tuesday, there was a small baked goods stand set up on campus next to one of the food places. We stopped by and picked up some delicious bread. I got some bread with cheese in it, as well as a roll with a fried potato patty with beef inside and ketchup and mayo on top. The potato-beef bread was delicious, and the cheese bread was okay. We (the WPI students) met without Prof. Lindeman and discussed what features we would like to have in our project. We left the lab a little before 4:00PM, which is probably the earliest we've left.

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June 30th, 2010: Today marks 100 more days left in Japan! As much as I don't want it to fly by, I can't wait to be back home and back at WPI. Khoa and I had lunch at the Suita campus with some of the UCSD PRIME students, and then met with our IVRC partners to discuss our "virtual flip book" project (the second part of our MQP). Khoa is going to be handling the hardware and how it communicates with a PC, our Japanese partners will be learning Actionscript 3.0 for the programming, and I will be learning Adobe Flash so I can make the animations.

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July 1st, 2010: A week or so ago, we all signed up for Japanese lessons at Osaka University, and my first lesson was at 11:00AM today. I will be attending lessons every Thursday at 11:00AM with Lex, the one UCSD student in the lab (all the others are on the Suita campus). Our teacher only speaks a little English, but she is really nice and really wants us to learn. She wants us to tell her what sort of things we want to say in Japanese, so I'll have to think of important things I'd like to be able to say.

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July 2nd, 2010: Again, nothing really exciting happening in the lab today. I think I'm getting used to all the biking and walking we've been doing, and I hope all the exercise is paying off! We have plans to visit the Osaka Museum of History on Saturday and Kyoto on Sunday. I'm probably only going to be updating my notebook journal and online blog on weekends for trips or if something new and exciting happens. This will probably be the last "weekday" post, since our lab routine is fairly uneventful.

(Check out the whopping 18 pictures, mostly of food, I took this week here!)

(Next time, I finally get caught up with my blog with our past trip to the Osaka Museum and historic Kyoto!)