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Kao Goes to Japan

Written by Kao

Monday, 05 January 2009

This past November/December, I was fortunate enough to participate in a short-term study abroad program to Japan through my school. Our group consisted of myself, 15 other students, and two faculty. We spent close to two weeks in Tokyo and Kyoto, going to meetings with game development companies, meetings with animation studios, and of course going on visits to cultural sites in Japan. It was an absolutely amazing experience, and I'm happy to share a few photos from the trip with you all. I'll post photo galleries for each day we spent in Japan, providing descriptions for a few of the images I think may have special interest to you.

Day 1:

On our first day in Japan, one of the things we did was go to the Square Enix Showcase, a store featuring a great deal of merchandice from games produced by the company. After a little shopping, we were treated to a great Q&A session with two Square Enix representatives.

The subway system in Tokyo is crazy! And the map pictured here is apparently the simplified version, too!

Later on in the day, we went to Akihabara, which is sort of the technological capital of Tokyo. Located there is a store called "Super Potato," a store specializing in retro gaming merchanice. There was so much incredible stuff there! Pictured here is a copy of an old, original Legend of Zelda poster. I picked up a Famicom (Japanese NES), the Famicom Disk System (disk drive attachment for the Famicom), and the Disk System versions of both The Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link.

Day 2:

Day 3:

On the third day, we went to Toei Animation, the animation company behind many popular shows such as Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Digimon, One Piece, and so many more!

The company even generously allowed us to take pictures and video as we toured their building. Can you imagine a big American animation company (i.e. Disney) letting us do that?

Day 4:

Our fourth day in Japan was very exciting, as we got to go to Grasshopper Manufacture, the company behind titles like Killer 7, No More Heroes, the new Fatal Frame, and more. We all signed non-disclosure agreements, so I'm unfortunately not really to talk about anything I did or did not see at the company. However, we all got to meet Suda51, the famous game designer who runs the company. I even got my picture taken with the man! :)

Day 5:

After our trip to the Ghibli Museum, we went to Microsoft Xbox Japan for a series of presentations. This cool banner was on the wall in the room where the presentations were given.

Day 6:

On the sixth day, we went to Bandai Namco (known as Namco Bandai here), definately one of the largest game companies we visited in Japan. I think one of the most exciting portions of that visit for me was when they took us over to their motion capture studio (I didn't take any pictures of that, sorry) and we got to see them record motion for an upcoming game in the background while we had Q&A session.

Day 7:

The group I was with spent the seventh day in Harajuku and Shibuya. Pictured here is Shibuya crossing, an extremely large and busy intersection. It's a pretty cool experience crossing it!

Day 8:

Day 8 was our first day in Kyoto. We spent the day travelling mostly, but in the afternoon we were treated to taiko (Japanese drum) and koto (Japanese harp) lessons at an elementary school in Osaka.

Day 9:

Day 10:

Day 10 was an exciting day for me.. It's Sneek-Around-The-Nintendo-Buildings Day!! Nintendo is a very, very large game company, and as such, we were unable to get permission to visit or have a tour. However, that didn't stop us from going to their main headquarters, their R&D building (their previous headquarters, and their old, original headquarters from the 1800's. We even tried to get into two of those buildings! At their main headquarters, we got perhaps 40 feet from the door before a guard came rushing out from his post to stop us. Our second attempt was at their original headquarters where I discovered that the side door was unlocked and entered with a couple people from our group. Sadly, we were spotted before too long and told to leave.

Day 11:

I hope you all enjoyed the photos. Thanks for taking a look! :)

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