Bart's blog

Back to work and broke

2006-11-03T14:40:00.000+09:00

So vacation is over and I'm back to work and all broke after spending lots of money for the trip to Kyoto. The cost of living and the hotel wasn't that expensive - the biggest cost were Shinkansen tickets, although it's very convenient, fast and generally recommended. Kyoto was fantastic, it feels very different from Tokyo, much smaller and quieter and more atmospheric. There are many old wooden houses that give you the glimpse of old Japan, but you have to look for them and I strongly recommend visting Gion area, where you can spot a lot of maikos walking around. Kyoto is also a religious center for Japanese buddism and shinto, so there are lots of temples and shrines to see, but they are usually very crowded, which is quite annoying. However, I recommend seeing Kinkakuji, Ryoanji and Kyomizutera (where you can appreciate the view of the city). Also, if you get a chance, hop on a train to Arashiyama, a small town west of Kyoto, a very beautiful and pleasant place surrounded by mountains, where you can see bamboo forest and chill out in one of the many small parks adjacent to the temple.

There are some pictures on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84624703@N00/.

Vacation!

2006-10-16T19:45:00.000+09:00

Finally! I have a little vacation this week and I'm going to Kyoto for the first time. Since I work in Tokyo, it's kind of hard to get out except for a short trip during the weekend, like say, to Kamakura (which I really like). I love Tokyo so I don't complain, but it's not a big secret that Tokyo is very much modern city, has suffered a lot of destruction throughout its history, so if you're looking for historical landmarks there's not much to see. So I'm really happy to be going to Kyoto to get a taste of some old and historical Japan.

On unrelated note, here's a link to my flickr page with some nice pictures I took a week ago. http://www.flickr.com/photos/84624703@N00/. The weather was so awesome, it was just after taifun, which made Tokyo miserable as it was *pouring down* for *three days straight*. Usually after the taifun (Japanese spelling, hehe) the weather is clear and sunny, and that was the case two weeks or so ago.

On even more urelated note, you have to visit this band's site: http://www.bornnaked.net/. Unfortunately Born Naked is now defunct but *you can download all their albums for free* from their website! Highly recommened, it was produced by Tim Alexander, one of the best drummers alive in my opinion (Primus, rings a bell?). And their drummer is *sick*. Just listen carefully to "About Leary" on the Red Disc -- my God!! One of the coolest drumming I've heard in a long time!

Tokyo Game Show!

2006-09-24T22:23:00.000+09:00

This Friday I went to Tokyo Game Show. It was a developers day, meaning only game developers could attend on this day, so it wasn't crazily crowded, although a fair amount of people showed up, as expected. I was really excited, since this was my first TGS ever, and it was a great show. PS3 games had a good showing, lots of stuff on display that you could play with. I really liked Unknown Realms, a game I had not heard about before, it had a great visual style, which is not really surprising considering this game comes from the designers of Shin Megami Tensei series. On 360, I thought Lost Planet was pretty awesome, I had chance to play it online with my buddies. Sega had a Wii spot, which was pretty cool and they were some incredibly pretty girls playing with the Wii controller :) Here are some pictures for you (quality sucks because I was taking them with my cellphone).

Lots of PS3 boxes:

Bootbabes:

Some cool breakdancing going on:

Elebits on Wii - a gravity gun action in the house using the Wii controller, looks like a lot of fun :) And of course a cute girl.

2006-09-03T15:58:00.000+09:00

Since I was busy/lazy and haven't updated this site in quite a while, here's a short accumulated update with some photos. Lots has been going on recently, most notably I've attended CEDEC, which is a Japanese version of Game Developers Conference. That was very cool, I've met lots of fellow developers and was lucky to attend one of the coolest developer parties ever :).

Also, I went clubbing in Roppongi recently to Club Yellow and danced all night while Ko Kimura was DJ-ing. It was fucking impossible to find this club, but we finally asked the locals and got there. It was great, I've always wanted to see Ko Kimura live. The crazy thing was they opened the dance floor at 5am (!), so until that time we bounced around at the lounge area and met lots of nice people. Well, after they finally opened the bigger dance area, which was filled with smoke and lights and really atmospheric, we danced until around 7am and then left and went to Tsukiji to have some fresh sushi. Ooohhh, it was so delicious! Nothing beats fresh otoro after all night clubbing :)

Some time ago I went to Comike here in Tokyo, which was fucking crazy :). Here's a nice cosplay photo for you:

Here's a random Tokyo photo taken around Ueno Station. I went there to recover my camera after I've lost it on the train coming back from Kamakura. Some kind Japanese soul found it and returned it to Lost and Found at JR (Japanese Railways). Thank you !!!

And I really like this Roppongi photo I took:

SIGGRAPH 2006

2006-08-06T12:05:00.000+09:00

I just got back from SIGGRAPH 2006 that was held in Boston, MA. This was my first time at SIGGRAPH so I was pretty excited about it. The conference was very good, I attended a lot of great sessions and papers and interestingly, many of the sketches that my friends told me are usually pretty poor turned out very good this year and a lot of them were very practical for real time rendering, which is my field. There were many PRT sessions this year, most notably Spherical Harmonics Exponentiation paper from Microsoft that broke new ground to rendering SH lighting effects with arbitrary deformable objects. To be honest it's still ways off before it can be used in games, but a very interesting nevertheless. There are many more technical things I could write here but they would probably put most readers into coma, so I'll skip that. Overall it was very cool to be at SIGGRAPH this year. Random Boston photo for you:

I didn't get a chance to see much Boston, our schedule was pretty tight, but it seems like a very nice city. But after being in Tokyo for almost 2 months, I had difficulties adjusting to the food and the people and all that. I've probably gained some weight. I'm glad to be back :)

2006-07-18T12:38:00.000+09:00

This weekend was a long weekend here in Japan. Monday was off because it was Umi No Hi (Day of The Sea). Isn't it cool? The national holiday to celebrate the Sea? Anyway, on Sunday I went to Kijijoji to see TsuShiMaMiRe, one of my favorite local bands. I discovered them some time ago by stumbling accross Benten Records website (http://www.sister.co.jp). I have a weakness for all female rock/alternative bands so I checked most of the bands by downloading some sample music. TsuShiMaMiRe was my favorite - a strange blend of punk, funk, ska and their own very feminine ingriedients. So I really wanted to see them live.

What an awesome show that was! It was a very small club, only maybe 50 or 80 people, total of four bands gave their best and boy was it fun. TsuShiMaMiRe was excellent and I fell in love with Mizue on drums :) ! It's hard to describe their music, visit their site for sample music and more info: http://www.tsushimamire.com. I bought their CD at the show and got a cool poster as a present!

I also saw Gito Gito Hustler for the first time and they blew me away. These ladies rock hard! :) Check them out here: http://www.gitogito.org. I definitely want to see them again. After their show they came down and we drank beer and jumped together to the Emeralds, the last band that played that night. It was a great night.

Some blurry pictures for you.

Gito Gito Hustler

TsuShiMaMiRe:

Elvis was there too!

The Emeralds

2006-07-15T00:35:00.000+09:00

So I moved in! Last Thursday I left my temporary apartment and moved in to my long term apartment. The apartment is in Kamata, only 2 stations away from work. It's quite small, but it's completely new, clean and on the 8th floor. Kamata station area is quite lively, there are lots of shops and a big market place. It's also a bit run down and old, but that has its own charm to it :)

Here are some random pictures:

Shibuya at night

2006-07-08T21:56:00.000+09:00

I went to Shibuya tonight and had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, my puny camera didn’t do a good job capturing the spirit of Shibuya at night, but I hope you can still get a glimpse of it:

I took this photo while having a double espresso at Starbucks:

You really have to be there to experience the crazy street crossing, millions of people, young Japanese and their awesome fashion, narrow streets packed with people and clubs, restaurants and little adult entertainment venues :). A must have for anyone looking for real spiring of Tokyo.

Coming back to Oimachi, where I live, I took this awesome picture:

I love how everyone is wasted here in the evening

2006-07-01T21:49:00.000+09:00

So I arrived in Tokyo yesterday after a bit hectic air travel. The plane to Munich got delayed so I missed my flight to Tokyo and had to waste 8 hours to haul my ass to Frankfurt and then get an evening flight to Narita. At least they put me on JAL flight and it was my first time on Japanese Airlines - good food, they serve green tea and nicer flight attendands.

After arrival, tired as hell, I was overwhelmed by the hospitality of my Japanese friends from the company I’ve started working for. They took me to the office, showed me arround, I was a bit dizzy after the travel but I did manage to meet a bunch of people and of course I’ve forgotten their names already . Later on, they showed me to my temporary apartment, which is conveniently located next to the office, and then we went to have sushi and got wasted on beer. That was a lot of fun! Afterwards I died at 11 pm but got resurrected at 3 am by Mr JetLag and couldn’t sleep anymore…

Today, I’m not feeling very well, but I decided to check out Akihabara. I bought some essentials like longer LAN cable and plug converters, checked out prices here and there and got back to my apartment to chill out a bit.

My high tech toilet with warmed up seat for added pleasure:

My bed in a tiny but cozy room:

View from the balcony of my temporary apartment:

Street walking towards Oimachi station:

Busy Akihabara:

XBox 360 stand with Ghost Recon available to try out:

Nintendo DS Lite! Look, how cheap!

Mac Store in Akihabara. I’m not sure whether this is the same as official Apple Store but they have a great selection of accessories:

And these chips are soooo tasty I had to make a picture so that I won’t forget how they look like. They are wet and sticky as if dipped in a soy sauce:

Just created!

2005-07-15T06:19:00.000+09:00

Stay tuned for real updates ...