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!)

Thank You Mario! But Our Princess is in Osaka Castle!

June 27th, 2010: Since we avoided the rain on Saturday, we decided to go to the Osaka Museum of History and Osaka Castle on Sunday. Luckily, it was sunny all day and we got to take a lot of great pictures of the historic castle.

As usual, we hopped on a couple trains which took us close to the museum and the castle. We walked by the museum (which is connected to the NHK building) on the way to the castle grounds. After passing a large police station and crossing the street, we were right outside the park that surrounds Osaka Castle. Soon after, we approached a large bridge over a moat that leads to the castle grounds. Inside the grounds there are many signs about the history and different parts of the castle and castle grounds, as well as many trees and other plant life. While we were there, there were many other people walking around and enjoying the sights.

A little ways into the grounds we approached a Shinto shrine. Upon entering, we could see some statues and traditional Japanese architecture. At one of the small buildings were some bamboo stalks with wish tags on them, and a couple natives selling drinks and snacks. We were told we could write a wish tag for free, so Jared wished us good luck on our project on a tag in Japanese and tied it to a branch of the bamboo. We also walked up the stairs of the main building and looked inside at the ancient decorations. Right at the top of the stairs was a small ¥100 vending machine that dispensed fortunes, so each of us purchased on. I believe we were supposed to tie them to the nearby trees, judging by all the white tags on the branches and leaves, but we took them with us. As we were about to leave the shrine, we saw some people dressed in very traditional clothing proceeding in a line to the main building. It turns out we were actually witnessing the beginning of a traditional Japanese wedding! When the "wedding party" had entered the main building, we exited the shrine and continued through the castle grounds.

Proceeding on our way we could see the tower of the castle getting bigger and easier to see. When we had gotten fairly close, we stopped by the nearby gift shop to get some drinks from the vending machines. Inside the shop were lots of souvenirs and other trinkets, including some Maneki Neko and some Pokémon items. Outside of the shop were a lot of gashapon machines, including several Pokémon ones and a New Super Mario Bros. Wii one. Near to the gift shop was the Time Capsule EXPO'70 which was placed in 1970, not to be opened until the year 6970! Just past the time capsule was Osaka-jo in all it's glory. It costs money to climb to the observatory at the top, so we didn't end up going inside. We were able to take some great photos up close, though.

Making our descent from the summit of the castle grounds, we stopped by the edge of the moat to take pictures of the city buildings in the distance. Once again, it was interesting to see the clash between classic, traditional castles and shrines and technologically advanced, modern-day skyscrapers. On our way back down to the museum, we walked through more wooded, park-like areas and along the moat of the castle. Along the way, we could see the walls of the castle grounds with a turret at the edge and the police building in the distance.

Unfortunately, we got to the museum at about 4:10PM and were told it closed at 5:00PM, so we decided to wait until we could devote more time to it. Also, there is a discount for university students, so we thought we'd wait until we got our Osaka University ID cards to be eligible for the discount. We did walk around the ground floor of the NHK building to look around quickly (so much Domo!) and then we headed back to Umeda for lunch.

(Check out all the photos from our trip to the castle here!)

(Next time I'll have a short entry since not much happened this past week. In the future, I'll try to update my Twitter with small events that don't constitute full blog entries. We will be adventuring this weekend, July 3rd and 4th, so I should have another full entry in the next few days!)

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!")

Adventures in Den Den Town!

June 19th, 2010: For our first weekend trip in Japan, we went locally to Nippombashi, also known as Den Den Town because of the plethora of video game, manga, and anime stores in the area.

We left the house around 10:00AM and walked to the Sakurai train station. We took a train to the wrong station (Shinsaibashi, was it?) and ended up walking the rest of the way to Den Den Town. In the small underground shopping area that we walked through after getting off the train, we had lunch at a small ramen shop. I got the cheese and tomato ramen, which is pretty much just pizza ramen. It was very delicious but a little spicy. At first I thought it was just the temperature, but towards the end it was still making my lips tingle. For my first ramen experience in Japan, it was great.

After eating, we left the underground shopping plaza and started walking to Den Den Town. Along the way, we passed by several temples that were all in a line. On one side of the street, there were ancient temples and graves, and on the other (where we were initially walking) was modern day shops and other buildings. It was interesting to see the clashing time periods displayed on the same street. I took many pictures of all the different temples we passed by, and I had taken about 100 pictures before we even got to Den Den Town!

As we were approaching Den Den Town, we could tell it was the place we wanted to be. There were many signs, including a giant one with a Gundam on it. As we got closer, we could see many familiar characters and many colorful stores. We decided to just go at it by walking down one side of the street, stopping at various game stores. Our main goal for our trip was to find and purchase a used Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, and some GameCube controllers. A secondary goal was to find a rice cooker for the house and potentially a microwave.

We stopped in almost all of the game-related stores we passed, each one being similar to the last but each being slightly unique. For example, there were some modern department-type stores that mostly sold new games with some used classics and other stores which specialized in only retro games. To my surprise, many of the used Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy games were all in their original boxes! I would assume that the store sealed the box back up, but the fact that they had games in their original boxes in very good condition was fantastic. Many of these stores also had a lot of game-related non-game items like keychains, figurines, and other toys. One store even had original Game & Watch systems, but they were extremely expensive.

I had an absolute blast looking at all the game stuff, most of which is unobtainable in the States. I had to resist the urge to purchase everything that interested me, but I did buy two things. The first thing I bought was a Pokéwalker case (that consists of a rubber case and a strap with a clip) for 780¥. The second was a Japan-only DS game for 980¥ called Irodzuki Tincle no Koi no Balloon Trip, a sequel to another non-North America DS game called Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (which is what I thought the game was when I purchased it). When we got back, I started a list of things that I should get when we go back, such as the original Pokémon Green for 300¥.

We ended up finding a used Wii and used copies of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. I was pleasantly surprised that the store clerk unpackaged the Wii box and let us make sure that everything was there that needed to be there. We also bought four GameCube controllers, each a different color, for about $20 each. I decided to fully purchase one (the orange one) instead of just splitting the cost so that I could take it back home and have a fairly newer one. We didn't, however, purchase a rice cooker that day; we went to another department store in Umeda to get that and a microwave. When we were done shopping and looking around, we hopped on the train and rode back to Sakurai Station. At the end of the day, my Pokéwalker read 21,444 steps, which is roughly equivalent to 10 miles worth of walking!

Everyone else really enjoyed the trip, even if it was a lot of walking. I expressed interest in coming back a few more times before we leave in October, and the others thought it was a good idea. I'm not sure when we'll go back, but at least I know what kind of cool stuff exists there!
(Check out all the photos of the trip, from Temples to Triforces, here!)

(Next time, Week 2: "Getting into the Swing of Things"!)

Good Morning Osaka! (6/17/10 - 6/18/10)

June 17th, 2010: I am in Japan! I can't believe it! It's too exciting to express excitement, if that makes any sense. I am not overly culture-shocked or anything, but the sheer amount of things I'm going to experience in my 4 months in this fascinating country is completely incomprehensible. I start off my first full day in Osaka by getting showered and dressed and heading to the Toyonaka campus of Osaka University.

The whole group took bikes (rentals, they came with the house!) to the campus and got lost a bunch of times on the way. We took the wrong map (the realtors left a map of how to get to campus, along with many other helpful laminated posters) but managed to meet Prof. Lindeman at the campus. The bike ride was about half an hour long which isn't bad, but we currently have found a much quicker route. The original route we took contained a lot of hills, and the combination of the oppressive sun and my lack of exercise prior to a physically exhausting bike ride almost made me black out. At one point, I had to stop and gasp for air while everything got fuzzy around me. After a few minutes and a trip to a nearby vending machine to get water, I was back on the bike. I have not had the same experience since then, and I am actually greatly enjoying the morning and evening commute.

At the Toyonaka campus, we walked around with Prof. Lindeman for a bit, beginning our walk by grabbing drinks at the vending machines near the Cybermedia Center where we will be situated. I got a Calpis Soda, which is like carbonated yogurt. It sounds odd but is actually pretty tasty, especially since it doesn't leave that sticky feeling in your throat like most American soft drinks. I also learned that Coca Cola made in Japan does not have high fructose corn syrup in it like it does in America; instead, they just use pure sugar.

After getting an informal tour from Prof. Lindeman, we went up to the 5th floor of the Cybermedia Center and met Kiyokawa-sensei, who has been very helpful in our preparation to come to Japan. Kiyokawa-sensei gave us a brief tour of the lab and we met some of the lab students on the way.We then went down to the cafeteria to get lunch with the students. I had some rice and Japanese fried chicken pieces with bottled green tea. The chicken is pretty tasty and I guess it's their version of chicken nuggets. Honestly, they taste like really good Kowloon chicken fingers in ball form. I'll have to take a picture next time I get them. The students gave us a more formal tour of the campus, telling us where we can buy different things, how to use the library, and where to get money from an ATM (which accepts my card!). We didn't stay much longer after the tour, but we did pick out where we wanted to sit. Ultimately, everyone but one ended up in the same room, so I guess it didn't matter that Khoa and I called dibs on the room with all the games set up.

Since we still had half a day to spend, Prof. Lindeman took us on the monorail to a small shopping plaza off the Senri-Chuo stop. There, we saw our first McDonald's and looked for some more stuff for the house. Although we didn't find much, we did go into a Target-like store that had a grocery store built in it and found a kid's arcade which had lots of Pokémon stuff for me to photograph. After taking the monorail back, we grabbed our bikes from the university and biked to a Wal-mart-type store to buy what we needed for the house. With some more household items, we biked home. Over dinner, we discussed how we were getting to campus on Friday; some of us wanted to walk and some waked to bike. There was also talk of buying a used Japanese Wii so we could play Brawl and just to have a console in our 4-month home. Shortly after dinner, we all went to sleep, exhausted as usual.

* * *

June 18th, 2010: I still can't really believe I'm in Japan! It doesn't seem too strange, but it's still pretty exciting.

Today, we woke up early and biked to campus. Five of us took our bikes and two walked to campus. Taking the main road, the trip took about 20 minutes, which was a decent amount shorter than the first time when we got lost. In the lab, we pretty much sat around for a while not doing much, although we did get set up on the wireless. We met with Prof. Lindeman and talked about our MQP, which was initially the "Cyber Clock" idea. Prof. Lindeman's initial idea was that there would be a big LCD display at OU and WPI that displayed the time in a unique way, most likely through user-generated content. Through our discussion though, it seemed like we wanted to do something more substantial.

We ate lunch at the cafeteria again after our meeting, and when we got back to the lab we mainly just hung out with Prof. Lindeman's second daughter, Momoko (age 7). A long period of time went by where we didn't accomplish much, and we left campus around 5:00PM. Unfortunately, it had started raining and we had to bike home in the rain. It wasn't too bad, besides the fact that our clothes were drenched and we couldn't see for most of the ride home. Luckily, we were able to get dinner at the bento place down the street so we wouldn't have to prepare a meal. While eating, we watched some Japanese TV and it was everything we could have hoped. Nothing made sense and that is why it was enjoyable. I learned that the Pokémon Sunday show is on every Sunday morning at 7:30AM, so I'll have to wake up early some time and find out what channel it's on.

(Check out all the photos from 6/16/10 to 6/18/10 here!)

For our first weekend trip, we decided to go to Nippombashi, also known as Den Den Town. Den Den Town consists of a ton of different electronics, comic book, and other types of shops and is a haven for anyone who's into Japanese culture. We figured we'd be able to easily find a used Wii and a copy of Brawl there, and it would be a great place to just walk and look around.

(Next time, I will recount our trip to Nippombashi. Stay tuned for my next blog post, "Adventures in Den Den Town!")

> To Be Continued...

And So It Begins: A Summer in Japan

I finally got around to putting my written down notes online! I figured I'd split them up into separate entries since they're going to be long at first. Once I get into a routine here, I'll probably only update with weekend trip recaps and other interesting things.

On June 15th, 2010 I woke up at 1:30AM EDT in Saugus, MA, took a shower, and made sure I had everything I needed for my trip to Japan. In about 5 hours I would be boarding a plane to California, and in a little over 24 hours, I would be in Osaka, Japan. I said bye to my mom and at around 3:00AM I left home with my dad and my sister Amanda.

We arrived at Logan Airport at around 3:30AM and got some breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts because everything else opened at 5. I had a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant with a watermelon Coolatta before checking my luggage at around 4:00AM. I met up with everyone else who was going (with the exception of one student who flew in earlier) and I bid farewell to dad and Amanda as I went through security around 4:30AM. Going through security went extremely smoothly for me, as did all of the traveling to Japan.

When we were all checked in, we waited at the gate to be boarded. It was about an hour and a half to two hour wait, but we were able to pass the time by chatting about the trip and video games, of course. The sun began to rise around 5:15AM and it's early rays peered over the horizon and through the windows of the airport, blinding any who dare stare in its way. First class was boarded first, and by 6:30AM we were among those finding our seats on the plane. I sat between Liz and Paul, and Jared H. and Sarah sat across the aisle. Jared I. was somewhere up front because he purchased his tickets separately.

Shortly thereafter, at 6:45AM, the plane took off for a direct flight to San Francisco International Airport, and the tired WPI students quickly fell asleep. I slept off and on during the 6 hour flight. I decided not to use my electronics too much in order to conserve battery life for the next flight; going from SFO to KIX takes about 11 hours. At 8:57AM EDT (we were probably in the Central or Mountain time zone by then) I was awake enough to not be able to sleep any more and I watched, or blankly stared, at the in-flight entertainment. There was a show on called "Doing DaVinci", where a bunch of guys aimed to build some of Leonardo DaVinci's inventions. Most of the rest of the flight is blurry in my memory, mostly because I spent the rest of it either staring at the TV without headphones or dozing in and out of consciousness.

At 12:45PM EDT, or 9:45AM PDT, we landed in California. I decided to keep my watch on Eastern time until we were actually in Japan so my notes got a little screwy. Our layover was pretty quick. We had to walk a while from where we landed to where the next plane was taking off. At 1:32PM EDT/10:32AMPDT we were waiting to board the plane we would be on for the next 12+ hours or so. At 11:00AM-ish PDT we boarded the plane, and at 12:20PM-ish PDT we took off from SFO. This plane was much bigger than the first and I had a little more room because I was in an aisle seat. I did, however, need to get up a bunch because the two girls next to me needed to use the lavatory multiple times. About an hour into our flight, 4:15PM EDT, dinner/lunch was served. I chose the orange chicken, which came with a roll and butter, a salad, and a cookies & cream brownie. At the time, the meal was satisfactory, but looking back it was pretty nasty. I guess I was just tired and hungry and didn't care what I was eating. At 4:50PM EDT we were over the Pacific Ocean. I had been pretty much staring at the on-flight GPS map that told us where we were, how long the flight was going to take, when we would land, etc. and decided I should play some DS games. I started with Picross 3D, which I obtained about a week before I left the States, and later played Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story for a while. At 9:00PM EDT, snacks were served to the passengers of the plane. We were given Sun Chips, mini pretzels, a lemon cookie, and a Kit Kat. I ate the first two and saved the last two (at this time, I still haven't eaten the last two).

At 9:15PM EDT by my watch, we crossed over the International Date Line. The little TV in the back of the seat in front of me is very handy in determining the plane's location over the ocean. At this point, I had been on the plane for 6 hours, more than halfway to Japan. I decided to nap a little bit after playing more Picross 3D so that the jet lag wouldn't be so bad. At 1:42AM EDT I made another entry into my journal about the the last bit of the trip. About an hour before we landed we were served another meal, which was veggie stir fry with strawberry yogurt and raspberry shortbread cookies. I had seltzer water with my meals and snack on the flight to make the overall meal better. The food was still pretty gross and I was realizing it more as we got closer to Japan. It didn't make me physically sick but it still makes me gag a little when I think about it. My journal skips to 4:41PM Japan time because of all the landing business, so I don't know exactly when we landed. I'm guessing we landed around 2:15AM EDT, or 3:15PM Japan time. We got our bags from the baggage claim area and went surprisingly quickly through customs. Prof. Lindeman was waiting for us on the other side and we took some photos at the airport.

We took a shuttle bus, the "Airport Limousine", from Kansai International Airport to a bus stop near our housing arrangements. The bus ride was about an hour and a half, but it was nice to sit and watch the sites of a new land. I was trying to put my hiragana/katakana memorization to use by reading the names on the passing buildings. The view of the clouds over the hills in the background was very beautiful, as was the industrial city scene in the foreground. We were greeted at the bus stop by what I'm guessing were some people from the Osaka University who picked us up and brought us to the "Big House". There, they (along with the realtors) gave us a brief tour and told us everything we needed to know about living in the house, such as how to handle garbage, how to operate the bath and washing machine, and general rules about living here. After they left, we went out with Prof. Lindeman to locate the nearest grocery store and pharmacy, as well as a bento restaurant where some students decided to grab dinner. I decided that I would try to spot all the Pokémon-related items I could find and photograph them when I can. When we were done shopping, Prof. Lindeman took off for his own apartment. After everyone had inspected the house and finished eating, we quickly passed out from exhaustion, anticipating the next 4 months that we would be spending in the Land of the Rising Sun.

(Check out all the photos from 6/16/10 to 6/18/10 here!)

Summer vacation is almost over!

That's right. In roughly 8 days I leave for Japan, which means my summer vacation is technically over! I mean, a 4 month trip to Japan could be considered a summer vacation, but I'll be working on a project for school and not relaxing all the time.

As far as the plans I had made for the month and a half of vacation that I had I accomplished a decent amount of what I wanted to. Here's the breakdown/postmortem (I guess) of my summer break:

>WEEK 1 (May 5th - May 9th): Planning
This week was really only 5 days, so I didn't really get much done. Obviously I put together this plan but that didn't take more than a day to do. It acted more as a "get settled in at home" few days.

>WEEK 2 (May 10th - May 16th): Pokémon
I trained some Pokémon! I planned out a team a while ago but never got around to actually making it, so that's what I did during this week. Each day, I bred and trained one Pokémon from an Egg to an Effort Ribbon. During the week I thought about the team as a whole and realized that there were some weaknesses that could have been overcome with other team options, but for the most part I stuck with my original plan. I only ended up training 5 Pokémon because of the weaknesses I noticed, but I used the extra time to raise them to level 50 (with one at level 57). Unfortunately, I did not use my team against human opponents but I started testing them in Battle Tower double battles. If you're interested in battling, I may have some spare time before I leave on the 15th. Let me know if you're interested and send me your friend code! Here's my Pokémon Platinum code: 0860-9118-0984

>WEEK 3 (May 17th - May 23rd): Portfolio
This week was devoted to renovating my website and populating it with some of my recent art. I looked at a bunch of HTML and CSS tutorials (mostly CSS) online, downloaded the 30 day trial of Dreamweaver CS 5, and went to work. Having never used CSS before and only knowing some basic HTML tags, I ran into some issues during the week. I was able to overcome most of them but I'm afraid my site still has a few bugs. I tried to keep it as simple as possible so that it would be easy to navigate and easy for me to create. I think I succeeded in general design-wise, although the colors may be a bit to vivid. I received some great suggestions by fellow WPI students, most notably Alex Schwartz and Elliot Borenstein, and from WPI professor Britt Snyder. The things I will be changing in the future are the color scheme, font, maybe the contact page (just some tweaking), and giving the site more of a focus towards what I want to do when I graduate.

>WEEK 4 (May 24th - May 30th): Play
Since Super Mario Galaxy 2 came out on the 23rd and it was mailed to me on the 24th, this week was all about collecting Power Stars in outer space. By the end of the week, I had collected the first 120 and had beaten the game. With the $20 GameStop credit I got for buying it at GameStop, I purchased No More Heroes 2 and played that for a little bit. During the night I played Psychonauts like crazy on Steam and managed to beat it the following week. I also played some Team Fortress 2 and some other games, but the week was mostly filled with SMG2 and Psychonauts.

>WEEK 5 (May 31st - June 6th): Personal
I realized at the beginning of this week that I should have make a more tangible plan for it. Leaving it open just left me hanging around and not getting much accomplished. Like I said earlier, playing Psychonauts (and NMH2) leaked into this week and I didn't end up thinking about packing as much as I would have liked. Saturday was my sister's graduation from Saugus High School, followed by a small party at the house, so we were busy preparing for that towards the end of the week. I did manage to get to the Japanese Embassy in Boston to apply for my visa, and it is expected at my door tomorrow (along with a copy of Picross 3D that I got for $0.80 from lockerz.com).

>WEEK 6 (June 7th - June 13th): Packing
This is it! The final week! I will be actually packing my bags and getting last minute stuff together/done this week. This includes going shopping for clothes and other necessities, possibly cleaning up my room a bit, and making sure I have everything I need for my 4 month stay in Osaka. Hopefully everything will go smoothly, including the actual flight. I just have to remember to fully charge my laptop, DS and DS lite, and iPod Touch for the 17 hours I'll be on a plane!

Junior Year: Complete!

Yup, I just finished my 3rd year at WPI yesterday. It's strange because I'm glad that it's finally the summer but I miss school already. Having spent so much time in the IMGD Lab working and playing games has made the summer seem empty. Also, knowing that I only have one more term at WPI makes me long for it even more.

I have made a preliminary plan for the month and a half of summer that I have before I ship off to Japan. The idea is that each week will have a theme, and I will focus all my attention on that one theme so that I am actually productive and not just wasting time on the internet. Coincidentally, the themes for each week all start with the letter P. So I guess I can call it my Summer "P"lans. :D Anyway, here's what it looks like so far.

>WEEK 1 (May 5th - May 9th): Planning

It's not a full week, but it's a decent amount of time. This week will begin with unpacking all my stuff and settling in at home. I will then continue to iron out the details of the rest of my summer plans and more specific things I'd like to accomplish.

>WEEK 2 (May 10th - May 16th): Pokémon

I will finally set aside time to build a Pokémon team! I figured I'd get it out of my system early in the summer so that I can get it over with and have something ready for Japan and next year at WPI. I will probably begin the week by finishing up HeartGold and then proceed to actually building the team I planned out a while ago.

>WEEK 3 (May 17th - May 23rd): Portfolio

Since I'll have way too much time on my hands, I really should use it to add stuff to my portfolio. This school year has given me a bunch of stuff to show off, and more importantly a lot of knowledge and skill that I can put towards making more portfolio pieces. Although I am not going to be looking for a summer internship this year because of my Japan trip, I should have a portfolio that I can show off at any time, to potential employers and even just family. I'd also like to make a small game during this week, possibly in collaboration with other WPI IMGD majors.

>WEEK 4 (May 24th - May 30th): Play

What good is a summer vacation if you don't play video games? Although I'll probably be doing this throughout the summer, I thought that having a full week devoted to games would help me clear out my backlog of games. If you're interested in what my backlog looks like, here it is:

PC:

> Mirror's Edge

> Trine

> World of Goo

> Psychonauts

Wii:

> The Conduit

> Excitebots

> Sonic Unleashed

> Super Mario Galaxy 2

VC:

> Kirby's Dreamland 3

> Super Mario RPG

> Cave Story

DS:

> Sonic Chronicles

> Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

> Trace Memory

> Hotel Dusk

> Prof. Layton: Diabolical Box

> Pokémon HeartGold

I'm sure I'm missing some, and more will come out during the summer. Not to mention, there are still some on my wishlist that I haven't picked up and therefore haven't started. Also, Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out on May 23rd (the last day of this week) so I may make this week Week 4 and make something else Week 3. Decided to swap Week 3 and Week 4 since I'm feeling the need to work on my portfolio and thinking that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a great way to start off Week 4.

>WEEK 5 (May 31st - June 6th): Personal

I really couldn't think of another theme, but this one might work. Since it will be my second to last week in the USA I thought having a week to myself (not that the other weeks aren't for myself; they all are :D) to take care of any personal things would be beneficial. This includes hanging out with my girlfriend more, cleaning up my room, spending time with family, etc.

>WEEK 6 (June 7th - June 13th): Packing

On June 15th I leave for Japan and I will be living there for about 4 months (until October 8th). To make sure I don't leave the country without anything, I've devoted a whole week to packing and making sure I'm ready for the trip. I'll be cramming Japanese language, culture, and everything during this week (although I will be studying Japanese over the course of my summer vacation).

So there you have it. A plan for using my free time well for once. And now that it's written down and made public on the internet, I have more incentive to follow it!

D-Term Game Jam

(Just pretend like I posted that PAX East post when it actually happened and this one wasn't written directly afterwards... >.>)

Anyway, the WPI Game Development Club had their final Game Jam of the year this past weekend and it was AWESOME. 48 hours of pure game making and lots of pizza really makes for a great weekend. Technically it was my first ever game jam and I regret not having participated in one in the past. A bunch of guys from 38 Studios came by and were able to play our games and offer advice. I love having contact with the game industry, rather than just being hidden under the wing of game development academia.

Although I am an exec of the Game Development Club and was staffing the event, I set aside the weekend (school work can wait!) and made it my main focus to make a game. And it was sweet. I worked with Elliot Brodzki and Andrew Tremblay making QWERTY Madness, a platforming game where each letter on the keyboard (well, most of them) gives you a different power or ability once, and you have to use all your powers to be able to use them again. Andrew devised the main idea, Elliot did most of the programming, and I made all the art. We used Adam "Atomic" Saltsman's Actionscript 3 library, flixel, to make the game; I used GraphicsGale to make the in-game art, although I used Photoshop to make the menu screens and backgrounds.

I really like using Flash/flixel for several reasons. For one, it's extremely portable; we made it on Windows Vistas machine in the lab and now it can be played in almost every browser. The flixel library also has a ton of game-specific funtions, so even a sub-par programmer like myself can make a game fairly easily. It is also very conducive to iterative design, of which I am a fan. You can run the game at any time to test it, change a few lines of code, and run it again in a matter of seconds. It satiates my need to fix things and then see the results instantly. I plan to fool around with it when I have some free time, probably after the school year is over. I may even try to make a game with it on the plane ride to/from Japan!

Once again, you can play QWERTY Madness right HERE! Play until your keyboard breaks! (But don't blame us!)

PAX East (Just a tad bit late...)

Yeah, so I totally didn't post at all about PAX East during PAX East. It happened almost a month ago... My bad. Instead of relying on my awful short-term memory and trying to remember everything that happened and put them all in a loooooong post, I'm just going to put up links to my Facebook photo albums for all three days and give you a highlight-reel list of things that were awesome. Then I will try to regularly update my blog. Well, I'll get dinner first and then proceed to regularly update my blog.

PAX East was probably the best thing I have ever attended. Ever. There were so many people that all came together for one reason: Because they love video games. Or because they are the parent of someone who loves video games. Or because they were dragged to the event by their significant other who loves video games. But you get the point. Although I won't be able to make it to PAX Prime in September, I will most definitely be attending the next PAX East.

Photos!

> Day 1

> Day 2

> Day 3

Highlights!

> Hung out with fellow WPI mates. Also got to show my sister the wonders of the video game culture that she could only dream about.

> POKéWALKERS! EVERYWHERE! I got between 30-40 people each day, most of them unique encounters. Lots of good items and lots of watts.

> Tried out Picross 3D, WarioWare D.I.Y., and the DSi XL at the Nintendo Booth. I might get Picross 3D (because I loved Picross DS), slightly less might get WarioWare because of the shear depth, and the XL was actually pretty nice.

> Team Fortress 2 Tournament! We won the first round and then were destroyed in the second round...

> Mario Kart DS Tournament! I won first place! It was great.

> Swag! Lots of swag, including 2 Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver drawstring bags (he gave me an extra one on accident).

> Networking and talks/panels: Said hi to Ichiro Lambe from Dejobaan Games. The I HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A GAME panel he was on, along with Darius Kazemi (both WPI grads!), was hilarious and very informative. I also enjoyed the Memes and Microcultures talk (seeing as how I'm going to be in Japan in a few months).

> Video Game Orchestra was fantastic, although I had to leave halfway through. Their performance of the Wind Garden theme from Super Mario Galaxy was amazing.

I think that's about it. But, again, I have a terrible short-term memory and only remember the overall experience rather than specific instances. Maybe we should make games that focus less on super-realistic graphics and more on the player's experience... But that's a topic for another post. ;)