Soon after the lab trip we travelled to Tokyo for the
IVRC Finals at
Miraikan. Our side project that we've been working on since before we arrived in Japan made it to the finals, so we were able to present it at the conference in Tokyo. The conference itself was three days, Monday to Wednesday, but we stayed for the rest of the week to look around and to climb Mt. Fuji. We stayed in a fairly nice hotel on Tokyo Bay with a beautiful view of the city, including
Tokyo Tower close by. The hotel was also a five minute walk from the
Pokémon Center, which was a nice perk.
August 23rd-25th, 2010: The three days that we spent at Miraikan for the IVRC were fairly regular. Monday was set-up and Tuesday and Wednesday were presentation to the public. Our project was パランガ (Paranga), the Virtual Flipbook. As the name implies, it was a device that simulated page flipping and animation that you get with a flipbook. We had some issues with our device throughout the event, and only one worked for half of it, but we were able to show it off without any major issues.
There were some official judges going around and taking notes who decided which awards would go to which project. There were also boards where visitors could place stickers for their favorite project. At the end of the second day the main awards were announced, and at the end of the third (last) day the winners of the "audience choice" awards were announced.
We ended up winning the
Maywa Denki President's Award (presented to us by Maywa Denki himself), which I feel like was more of an "honorable mention" than a real award. There wasn't a monetary prize, just a certificate and an odd musical instrument called an
Otamatone. It was still better than what I was expecting, which was nothing! It was cool to see the different types of projects that other people brought to the conference, especially since we were pretty much thrust into this project without any background of the contest. I think we did pretty well, given the circumstances.
* * *
August 25th, 2010: After the IVRC was over, we decided to walk around for the rest of the night to visit some local places. Obviously, the first place I wanted to go was the Pokémon Center, and we walked there first since it was close to the hotel. The store itself seemed smaller than the one in Osaka but had much of the same merchandise. The one thing that stuck out was the table for playable demos of the new games, Pokémon
Black and White. There weren't many people/kids in the store or at the demos because the store was closing in less than an hour, so I was able to hop on one of the DS systems quickly and play without the pressure of other people in line. I really enjoyed what I saw and played, and I definitely will be purchasing a Japanese copy when it comes out on September 18th.
After eating ramen at a small restaurant for dinner, we debated whether we should go back to the hotel to plan our Mt. Fuji trip or take the monorail to the large mall and
SEGA Joypolis that we discovered the night before. Although, in retrospect, it would have been better to plan out our Fuji trip I have no regrets about our choice to check out Joypolis. At first, I assumed that it was merely an arcade with a few rides like the one in the HEP Five building in Umeda, but I was only partly correct.
Joypolis is a 3-floor amusement park with about 20 rides, many arcade games, and some gambling games. Unlike the one in Umeda, this Joypolis has some large rides, including a fake snowboard halfpipe and a small roller coaster. There are also some "virtual reality" games, like racing and shooting games. We were totally surprised when the giant entrance doors opened and we walked inside because we were not expecting it in the slightest. At first, the ¥1,900 discount ticket still seemed expensive, but I think it was worth every yen.
* * *
August 26th & 27th, 2010: On Thursday we started our day fairly early to travel to
Shinjuku where we would catch a bus to the Mt. Fuji area. Instead of resting up for our hike we made the mistake of walking around Shinjuku looking for arcades. We found several of them and played some games which was nice, but all that walking left us tired and not fully prepared for our Fuji encounter. The games I played were the usual
Rhythm Heaven game,
DrumMania (which was much harder for me than Rock Band drums),
GuitarFreaks, and
Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 (I actually printed my "license" card this time for ¥200 extra).
After visiting the ¥100 Shop, waiting a little while for our bus, and riding the bus for about 2 hours, we arrived at the 5th station on Mt. Fuji. This station is one out of the 9 that are located along the trail to the summit, and most climbers start here and continue to the top. I started the hike in my usual clothes (shorts and t-shirt) because I enjoyed the cool weather that we experienced due to already being about 2,000m up the mountain.
As we got closer to the top, I resorted to putting on my sweatshirt but I kept on my short for the entirety of the hike. I don't remember much of the hike up because it was really repetitive and dark, plus I was already tired and mainly focused on climbing rather than thinking about anything else. We took frequent breaks along the way, and we took the time to look back down the mountain at the clouds and other hikers, up at the distance we still had to travel, and up at the stars we wouldn't have been able to see from the city. As we got closer to the top it got harder and harder because of the lack of sleep, lack of energy, and lack of oxygen. Somehow, we managed to make it to the top (and at that point I didn't actually know it was the top) and were able to rest for a bit before sunrise, despite the biting cold and supreme exhaustion.
The sun rose at about 4:30AM and we had the best seats in the house (3,776m about sea level). Instead of seeing it rise above the ocean or normal horizon, it seemed to rise out from the clouds, illuminating everything as it found its place in the sky. Once it was up we could truly see all of the clouds and smaller mountains surrounding Mt. Fuji and the actual number of people that were on the summit.
We took some time to take pictures around the crater but didn't stroll around the top to look around because we weren't really in the mood to do anything other than go back home. We had been climbing for about 7 hours and were not looking forward to another 5 hours of walking back down. The descent sounds like it should be easier than climbing up, but it was probably just as difficult because of the steep slope and tiny rocks that afford slipping.
I witnessed a few people falling and slipped many times myself. It was not an enjoyable experience in the slightest, but the view of the clouds and mountains below us helped make it better. At one point near the end of the descent, the clouds were actually sweeping up the mountain and onto the trail, giving us a refreshingly cool breeze that I would have loved to bottle up and take with me.
By the time we reached the 5th station again, my knees and feet were killing me and I was covered in a thin layer of dirt from the downward trail. We took another bus back to Shinjuku, travelled back to the hotel to get the luggage we stored there, and waited several hours for our overnight bus back to Osaka (all without sleep...). I was able to pass out on the overnight bus back home, but it took some time for me to get back into my regular sleep schedule. It was a good thing we ended our hike on a weekend!
(Check out all the photos from our Tokyo trip
here and
here!)
September 4th, 2010: As with most of our weekend trips this trip was planned at the last minute, so we travelled to Kyoto without any real itinerary (other than wanting to see Ginkaku-ji and Kinkaku-ji). Unfortunately, we only made it to Ginkaku-ji, but we had a nice time walking around the garden area and taking lots of pictures. Both Ginkaku-ji and Kinkaku-ji closed at 5:00PM; we were at Ginkaku-ji at around 4:30PM and would not have been able to travel to Kinkaku-ji before it closed.
September 5th, 2010: Learning from our previous error of leaving in the afternoon, some of us left a few hours earlier (closer to 12:00PM) and headed to Arashiyama, with the bamboo forest as our destination. On the train ride there we noticed that the Iwatayama Monkey Park was close to the station and on our way to the bamboo forest. We ended up taking the wrong path up the mountain, however, which was in actuality a hiking trail that didn't lead to the park. We spent a chunk of time hiking part way up and then back down after we noticed our phone's GPS straying from the Monkey Park, but after walking a short distance from the entrance of the trail we found the entrance to the Monkey Park.
The Monkey Park, also known as "Monkey Mountain", houses around 150 monkeys that are all named and all have their birthdate recorded. The park has certain rules, such as "Don't stare at the monkeys in the eye" and "Don't touch the monkeys", but you are able to feed them with snacks bought at the top of the mountain. The monkeys are used to human visitors so they frequently walk close to visitors and usually stay still for pictures. One baby monkey actually walked to me and started playing with my shoelaces, but I snuck away when it wasn't looking so that I wouldn't upset its parents. The view of Kyoto from the top of the mountain is also really nice, and there are a few sets of build-in binoculars for viewing the many buildings down below.
After leaving the Monkey Park we crossed the Togetsukyō bridge and walked only a short distance to get to the bamboo forest. The tall stalks of bamboo were quite intimidating but are a really interesting sight to see. They sway in the wind and drop leaves like confetti, and even block out some of the sunlight as you get deeper into the forest. The trail through the forest is fairly long, and there is a path that leads up to a garden made by a famous film maker (if I recall correctly). We stayed on the main path but I don't think we went all the way through. After exiting the forest we took a snack break at a small stand and walked back to the train station, walking along the river and back across the bridge.
