Aqua Ring of Life (7/11/10)

July 11th, 2010: On a rainy Sunday there's nothing better than going someplace that's indoor. Especially if that place is the Kaiyukan Aquarium in Osaka City. The aquarium hosts many creatures from around the Ring of Fire (or more accurately, the Ring of Life), from Japan, Antarctica, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Pacific Ocean in general. Although many types of fish and other aquatic life make up the majority of the exhibits at the aquarium, there are a few mammals that live there. Overall, there was a lot to see on the 6 floors of exhibits and I really enjoyed it (I stayed behind to take pictures and ended the day with close to 300 of them).

We took the train from Sakurai station as usual and got to the aquarium area around 2:30PM. The area around the aquarium has a food court, a sketchy arcade, and one of the world's largest ferris wheels. We had a late lunch at the food court before entering the aquarium, and I got a double bacon, egg, and cheese burger from First Kitchen (it tasted just as good as the one we went to a few weeks ago). When we finished eating, we walked over to the aquarium and bought our 2,000 Yen admission tickets at the ticket vending machine.

The intended path for visiting the aquarium starts on the 3rd floor. There is a "tunnel tank" with a few types of fish that arches over the path, and then there is an escalator that takes visitors up to the 8th floor of the building. From there, the path is almost a spiral ramp down the building and around the main center tank in the middle of the aquarium. Rather than write about walking around the aquarium, I'll post a couple photos and some captions of what we saw organized into the floors they were on.

3F:
The tunnel tank with creatures swimming around.
Some type of ray.
A large starfish with very long limbs.
A hammerhead shark perhaps?

8F:
Animals from Japanese forests, I assume.
Little sea otters. They were moving around too fast to get good pictures of them. It seemed like they were doing something specific, because they were running back and forth, from the cave to into the water.
There were a couple in a little group on some rocks.
Some type of fish in the forest area.

7F:
A fairly large bird. There were some ducks in the same area, but there was only one of these.
Another type of otter washing his face. He's green because of the lighting (I didn't find the light correction option on my camera until afterwards).
Huge arapaima. There were several of them in the tank, and they were literally twice the size of that little girl.
A capybara! There were two in this area, but both were just sort of hanging out.
This penguin was washing his back or something, but he was really close to the glass. There were a bunch more on the other side of the tank. There were also two newly hatched penguins across the way from this tank.
There were a lot of dolphins swimming around, including a baby with its parent. The workers there came out to feed them as I was walking by and the dolphins were doing tricks (see the two videos here and here).

6F:
This lobster was extremely creepy. I believe that thing in his mouth is another fish from the tank!
Lots of different kinds of fish. All their eyes are glowing because the flash went off for this picture.
The main attraction of the aquarium, the whale shark. There were a couple in the tank, and it seemed like a lot of fish liked to follow them around. The shark acts as the mascot for the aquarium, and the gift shop has a lot of different sized plush toys of it.
One of the rays swimming around. It is pretty big, and it has a passenger on it's back.

5F:
A curious sea lion. This one stopped to look at some of the visitors, and later it stopped when one of the aquarium workers got its attention. It proceeded to follow her around when she walked back and forth.
A Napoleonfish resting on the tank floor. It doesn't look to happy.
A school of small fish.
A large sea turtle. It seemed like it was looking at the visitors.
One ugly fish. I was just floating there, looking extremely unhappy.
An ocean sunfish. It's a pretty neat looking fish.
Giant spider crabs. Pretty creepy; I wouldn't want to run into one of these in a back alley.

4F (and on):
A bunch of tiny jellyfish. This is one of the photos that actually came out well.
A pretty sweet jellyfish. I think this is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.
Another, different type of jellyfish.
It's hard to see, but this is a clione, or sea butterfly. They are really tiny but really pretty, like little ocean angels.
More jellyfish. I don't know if that's my silhouette in the back or someone else's behind me.
This jellyfish was stuck to the side of the glass, along with the others in the tank.
A group of jellyfish.
I'm not sure what this is, but it's possibly a type of crawfish.
Lots of clownfish swimming around.

And, no trip in Japan would be complete without a little bit of Engrish and delicious snacks:
I don't even know what it's trying to tell me.
Ice cream wrapped in kid's cone-type food with chocolate!

(Check out all of the aquarium pictures here and here!)

(Next time, we take our second trip to Kyoto for the Gion Festival: "Going, Going, Gion!")

Back to the Past (7/3/10, 7/4/10)

July 3rd, 2010: Since we missed out on going to the Osaka Museum of History last weekend we decided to go earlier in the day this weekend to check it out. Although we planned on leaving early and checking out the Umeda Sky Building after lunch, we didn't end up leaving the house until about lunch time. We took the same train route to the museum as we did last week and were able to get a student discount using our ISIC cards (¥400 instead of ¥600).

In order to view the museum in the intended manner, you first take an elevator to the 10th floor and make your way down the building. The museum itself only occupies the 7th to the 10th floors, with some of the lower floors reserved for special exhibits. We were able to view the museum in its entirety in about two hours, taking lots of pictures along the way. Although I couldn't read most of the descriptions of what was showcased, I enjoyed the miniature buildings and towns and the view of Osaka Castle from the corner windows of the museum.

By the time we left the museum and got back to Umeda, it was already 4:30PM and very rainy. We decided to find our way to the Sky Building some other time when it was earlier in the day and not raining. From Umeda, Jared I., Paul, and I decided to stop at Ishibashi and get McDonald's for dinner. It was my first American meal since I've been in the country and it was delicious! I got a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, fries, and a Coke and it filled me up for the rest of the night. It tasted exactly the same as an American McDonald's (not surprisingly) but looked much better.

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July 4th, 2010: For our first major sightseeing trip, we traveled to Kyoto for a whole day. We left at around 8:15AM and took the train(s) to Kyoto (about an hour of travel time). Once there, we walked down a busy city street, stopping by a small store to pick up snacks. After crossing a bridge over a river, we walked through a small side street of traditionally decorated Japanese buildings. At the end of the street we emerged at a somewhat sketchy looking area of town but it was fairly empty, probably due to the fact that it was still pretty early in the morning. We walked down the streets for quite a bit, not really knowing where we were going or where Khoa was taking us because there wasn't anything particularly historic about where we were. Eventually we followed a street to the top of a hill and were greeted by a large temple! Finally, our sightseeing could begin!

Past the gates of the temple was a large set of stairs that led to an area of even more temples and shrines. There was one big temple where some sort of ritual with chanting and percussion was going on, and several paths to smaller shrines and a graveyard. We first walked over a small footbridge that was over a pond with many lily pads and some large fish, possibly carp, at the surface of the water. This path led to a small wooded area with a shrine, a small stream, and a tall monolith. After observing this area, we decided to take a look inside the large temple in the center that was emitting the sounds of a traditional type of worship. The signs outside the temple informed us that we had to take off our shoes, and that there were no pictures allowed inside. We sat down on the tatami floor and listened to the men in robes chant, hum, and perform this traditional service. It was a rather relaxing experience, although I had no idea what was going on. When we were done inside the temple, we exited the building and started for another large set of stairs to the side of the temple.

At the top of the set of stairs there were three paths that led to several more temples. Unfortunately, the paths in front of us and to the right of us were off-limits, so we took the left path, the only path we could, to see what we could see. This path led to a small area with a traditional hand-washing area, a bell, and two more paths! The first path we took was the one directly in front of us, which brought us to a large area that was completely filled with graves, or merely stones that represented those that have passed away (I'm still not sure if there were actually people buried there since the graves were so close together). We wandered around and took a bunch of pictures, and then walked up the second path. This set of stairs led to another building where a man was working something or performing some traditional form of worship. We only stopped for a second to take a look, and then descended the large set of stairs we entered from back to the main temple area. Everything we saw was weathered by time; the steps and stones were worn with moss growing on them, the metal bells and fountains were rusted and dull, and the engraving on the graves was faded.

Having seen mostly everything that this area had to offer, we descended a second set of stairs back to the main entrance of the temple-filled area. Taking a small road off to the side of where we started led us to a park area that was filled with trees, a large pond, and many many pigeons. We stopped by a small food stand to get snacks; some of use purchased hot dogs from the American-type food stand and some of us bought crepes next door. I got a strawberry cheesecake crepe that was very delicious, although not very filling. I would have followed it up with a hot dog, but I decided to become friends with the pigeons instead. From a distance, you could see the pigeons congregating around people who were tossing food to them, and they even jumped up onto the rocks besides the people who were feeding them and on the people themselves! I couldn't pass up an offer to feed the local fowl, so I took out a bag of Cheeze-Itz that I had since before the plane ride to Japan, sat down on one of the stone blocks, and began dropping crumbs for the birds. At first only a few came by, but soon they were standing next to me and even jumping on my lap. When I was done, I walked over to where everyone else was, casually tossing pieces onto the floor to the group of pigeons that were on the ground. Then, out of nowhere, three of them flew up and landed on my arms! I wasn't the only one who was taken by surprise, and the people passing by seemed to enjoy it. I was able to take one picture of one on my arm, and I believe someone else in the group got one of all the birds on me.

We walked down another path that was decorated with ancient looking buildings, and we were brought to another area with more temples that looked different from the ones we had seen before. These temples were bright orange and looked as if they were recently renovated. There were also many paper lanterns hanging around the temples, including two large ones where we exited. Afterwards we climbed yet another set of steps to a fairly busy summit that was filled with many stalks of bamboo with wish tags on them. Making our way to a less congested area, which ended up being a parking lot, we could see the great view that was provided by our high altitude. Behind us was a gigantic statue in a memorial area which I later learned was a statue of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara at the Ryozen Kannon. We took a bunch of pictures in this area, and then we headed down to a crowded market street.

Although we visited this street later, we initially just walked through to get to another area with some small temples and the biggest one we'd seen all day. This temple was called Kiyomizudera (Pure water temple). Again, most of the small temples looked newer than the first ones, but they were still quite impressive. We paid ¥400 to get into the temple, which led to even more sights past the initial temple. From the big temple we had another amazing view of the skyline, which included lots of trees, buildings, and mountains in the distance. Moving along, up a set of stairs, led us to a crowded area with a traditionally-dressed man talking to the crowd. There were many stands selling good luck charms, and there were two large stones some distance apart called "The Famous Love Stone(s)". A sign near the second stone said that if you were able to walk from one to the other successfully with your eyes closed, your love wish will be granted soon. I obviously did not need to perform this action, but some guy bumped into me before I learned of this challenge and I wasn't sure why (I'm not sure if he was actually successful, though).

Continuing on, we walked through another path that was surrounded by lots of beautiful foliage and another view of the previous skyline. There were some places to eat along the way, but we didn't stop at any of them. The path we were on made sort of an elongated U-turn that went down to an area much lower than the large temple where we entered. At the end of our path, and at an intersection that led back to the temple, was Otowanotaki Spring, a small fountain-temple and the main attraction of Kiyomizudera, with a large line of people in front of it. At the fountain you can walk up under the roof that the water runs off from and wash your hands and/or take a drink for good luck. Visitors are provided long metal ladles to catch the water and can also purchase a "holy cup" to put in the ladle and keep as a souvenir. The line was deceptively long; the wait was very short and we all took our turn at the fountain. The water was nice and cold, and very pure (just as advertised).

Returning to the market street on which we accessed the temple, we walked back down in the general direction of the restaurant where we would eat dinner. Since it was early, we stopped by a small restaurant and ordered appetizers. I got a melon shaved ice, which is probably the most delicious melon-flavored item I have eaten so far. When we were done, we traveled back to the very start of our trip and walked down another somewhat "dirty" street towards the restaurant. This street wasn't sketchy like the first streets we traveled down, but was populated by some not-so-child-friendly establishments. We didn't investigate these places any further than reading the signs, but doing just that provided some entertainment. The restaurant we ate at was in this area; it was an all-you-can-eat (in 90 minutes) yakiniku place that cost about $20 per person. A grill is installed in the table and customers order raw meat to cook and eat. We decided to order beef items, which included many delicious pieces and some interesting ones (like tongue and heart). No one but Khoa wanted to eat the tongue, and I actually tried a piece of heart (cow heart, not this kind). Everything I ate was very good; the heart was okay once I tried not thinking about what I was eating. I finished my meal with two dishes of plain soft cream (vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles) and then we made the journey back home.

Overall, the trip to Kyoto was very enjoyable. It was dirtier (in many regards) than Osaka, but the historic sights were great. We will be going back soon to check out the Gion Festival, so stay tuned for a bunch of photos and a blog post later this month!

(Check out all 560+ photos of the weekend here, here, here, and here!)

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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!")