X-Radiation

May 20th

The suit was ready at the front desk first thing in the morning. We started the day early and made our way to an art school in Xi’An to give a presentation for both the art school students and the students and staff from the Maya Group studio and school (no relation to Autodesk). The folks at SideFX gave me some T-shirts and mouse pads and I used these to great effect to energize the crowd by tossing a few of them out at the start. It was a similar presentation to the one I’d made the other day. During the Q&A, there were only a couple of questions but as soon as I made it clear that those who asked questions got a T-shirt we were flooded.

We moved the afternoon seminar a few blocks away to an auditorium at the Maya Group School. I presented an introduction to crowd animation and some Q&A as well as passing out some Houdini instructional DVDs. After this presentation Mr. Hu arranged some photo ops with the staff and students of The Maya Group and they made me an honorary dean of the Maya School.

Mr. Hu hosted Daniel and I to a 72 course vegetarian dinner in a private dining room the size of a Westside condo. The chef is a Buddhist monk who manages to make tofu really taste like chicken. We had a private serving staff of 10 beautiful women as well as a private en suite bathroom. The restaurant actually had about a dozen such rooms. Between courses 46 and 47 we attended a private concert by musicologists playing 1500 year old instruments uncovered in archeological digs in 1978. The toasts were nonstop and we knocked back 7 bottles of baijiu. I got to meet some really great folks: Mr. Nu, Mr. Ree, Mr. White and Ms. Li Li. Mr. Nu and Mr. White introduced me to a few Chinese drinking games. Mr.Ree decided I would be his Shifu and he my disciple. Once this relationship was consecrated by a secret ceremony Mr. Ree was required by the dictates of ancient Chinese customs to drink three times for every drink I took.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

This one goes out to Mikee and all my homies at the Hamilton Whisky Society.

After dinner Santa Gundam and Rie lead us  to a small whisky bar called Alco-Hall.

For relaxing times...

I proceeded to totally geek out with the proprietor, Nashimoto-san, over all things whisky. He’s a total whisky otaku and the bar has one of the most amazing collections of whisky I’ve ever seed in one place. He probably has over 1000 bottles in his stash. We made a few selections and also tasted his recommendations.

Nashimoto-san is also the regional Glen Livet whisky ambassador and shared a little bit of Glen Livet new make with us. Oishii!

Lots of pictures of whisky bottles after the jump!

(more…)

Kobe Beef meat locker. Cooled with big blocks of ice.

Santa Gundam, AKA Inappropriate Santa, lead us on a beef and whisky expedition to Kobe. We took the Shinkansen to Kobe for a gourmet Kobe Beef foodgasm. Had a bit of a delay as Santa Wrong Station bailed off the train one station early but we made up for lost time had one of the most amazing dinners ever.

Blow by blow after the jump!

(more…)

Went to Nakano with Paul. Checked out the otaku collections and ate takoyaki at Gindaco. Yum!

We found a sort of Tokyo version of Philz Coffee called Wada Coffee.  Not quite the same as Philz, but enjoyable. Mom and pop shop. Pop heats water  over an open fire in a metal kettle and strains it through a filter one cup at a time while Mom does the table service.

Met up with various Santas to check out the Team*Lab design studio.

Very cool stuff. It’s sort of a tech incubator and hacker co-op. Our host Takashi Kudo introduced us to the team. They have been working on some impressive CG animations that retain the look and texture of traditional Japanese art. First we watched “100 years sea” then they showed us a project called  “Flower and Corpse” which was recently on display at the Louvre. We had a nice round table discussion with some of their animators, designers and developers.

One of their creations, SketchPiston, combines crayon physics with various interactive techniques. I think my favorite is the SketchPiston V.4  Bamboo Play Room they made for Wacom. It’s a music synthesizer combined with crayon physics. Way cool!

Ate a nice dinner of Kaiten Zushi near the hotel and dropped in to a seriously epic karaoke session in Shibuya before hitting up the Maruhachi Izzakaya for some late night eats.

The day after SantaCon we met Nori, our Man in Osaka for a tour of the Suntory Yamazaki distillery near Kyoto. We took the Hikari #505 from Tokyo to Kyoto then transferred to the Kyoto line for the trip to Yamazaki Station where Nori met up with us. Nori is a great guy who showed us around Osaka and the Nissin noodle museum last year.

Panorama of one side of the Suntory Yamazaki distillery

After the distillery tour we visited the whisky tasting room where we sampled Yamazaki and Hakushu 12 year old whisky. It was delcious. The Yamazaki is one of the smoothest most drinkable whiskies out there.

My friend Satoru Shimizu arranged a gift of 10 year hakushu in a very nice bottle for me and my friends. After the tour we hit the gift shop with gusto,  procuring several expressions of Suntory products that you just can’t find in the states including a cask strength 15 year old and several cask strength sample expressions, each aged in a specific wood meant to be a component in the final Yamazaki or Hibiki product. I also picked up a small bottle of the corn grain whisky they use in the Suntory blends.

After shopping we went downstairs to the Yamazaki Whisky Library and tasting bar. I wish I could get a library card and check out bottles from this library. It’s an amazingly extensive library of whisky from all over the world.  I guess I’ll just have to be content with photographic evidence for now.

We spent a couple of hours and quite a few yen trying out the different whiskies available with The Yamazaki 25 year old at one end of the spectrum and the New Make at the other end. It was a fine time and by the end of the afternoon we’d worked up quite an appetite so we revisited Aoki-san, the Taisho at my  favorite restaurant in Kyoto called “Okariba” for some of his Omakase specialties. You can see my earlier post about Okariba here.

This time our meal consisted of the following items:

Grilled Wild Boar Skewers

Steamed Bear Shoulder in lemon shoyu

Smoked goose

Venison

Horse Sashimi (Basashi)

Misoyaki Vegetables

Grasshoppers

Bees and bee larvae

Okinanwa Snake Whisky

Giant Killer Bee Whisky

A Very Large bottle of sake

As much beer as we could drink.

We made it back to Kyoto station in time to catch the last Hikari Shinkansen of the evening back to Tokyo. We called it a night since we had to get up early for our flight to Okinawa the next day.

Today we gave our presentation on crowds during the courses sessions at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 in Yokohama.  I was very happy with the content and variety of  presentations. I owe a debt of gratitude to each and every presenter who agreed to be part of the course.

A Fuzz of Crowd Animators L to R: Mihai Cioroba, Paul Kanyuk, Tak Yoshida, Marc Salvati, Stephen Regelous, Xray Halpein

After the talk Paul, Tak, Mihai and myself went back to Toki for a celebratory noodle dinner and coined the term “A Fuzz of Crowd Animators” to refer to a group or herd of crowd animators. It’s sort of like “A Gaggle of Geese” or “A Murder of Crows”.

More pictures after the jump…

Stephen filling us in on Massive 4.0

I spent the second day of SIGGRAPH Asia attending the conference and getting ready for my presentation on Friday. In the morning I went over to the exhibiton hall and caught up with Leyla, John and Richard from Side Effects Software. My friend Matsuno-san from OxyBot came to the show. We went over to the nearby mall for an Indian food lunch with Tak, Mihai, Paul, Matsuno-san, Soren, M. Kennedy ans Stephen.

In the afternoon I attended a session called Chiptune Marching Band which was a great workshop run by Jamie Allen and a Japanese guy named Joe. They walked us through building a oscillator and amplifier circuit with the parts they provided and then circuit bending it into a musical instrument. It was a stellar workshop! You can check out their web page here:

http://chiptunemarchingband.com/

After the workshop we marched through SIGGRAPH Asia playing the instruments on the way to the art gallery to include them into a presentation on Chiptunes. Later, I donated my “Xrayzaphone” to one of the particpants after the instrument she built mysteriously disappeard. The thing looked like a bomb anyway, so I’m not entriely sure I would have been able to get it on the airplane.

That evening we attended a nice reception held by NVIDIA, spent some time talking to Laura and Dominic then headed out to a small club in Yokohama for a party organized by Polygon Pictures. The music was a lot of fun with a techno drum trio as well as a Residents “cover” band called “The Yokohama Residents”. I used the word “cover” loosely because while they may use the Resident’s visual tropes and audio inspiration their particular brand of music was much more dance friendly… but still enjoyable.

(more…)

This morning I spent some time catching up on correspondence and updating the blog. Hooked up with Tak, Mihai and Paul for lunch and took them back to Toki. It was just as good as last night. Superb noodles.

Headed over to the conference to catch part of the Autodesk users group, but it was all in Japanese. Went over to the Nvidia users group and met up with Laura, Dominic and Wil.

Bumped into Marcos at the Nuke users group meeting then headed over to the Papers Fast Forward, meeting Sebastian along the way.

The papers fast-forward presentation was excellent. There were a handful of papers relevant to crowd animation and lots of other interesting material. One presentation was done in rap, another was done like an episode of South Park and yet another concluded with, literally, a pie in the face.

After the presentation I went out for sushi with Colin, Thomas, Andrew, Keith, Paul, Tony and Bill  from Pixar, Leo from Polygon Pictures  and Stephen from Massive.  It was a truly epic dinner. Ten gaijin sitting around a table carved from a very large tree. Mounds of sashimi including a still wriggling lobster. A plate of big yaki-ebi, bowls of ankimo, very large pitchers of beer, plates of Tai heads,  miso made from the leftover bits of live lobster and final serving of nigiri sushi and various maki. Everyone rolled out of the place stuffed.

Walked back to the Seamen’s hall with Paul and made it back around midnight.

Looking forward to tomorrow.

Dec. 15th

Woke up early and checked out of the hotel. Met Sneery and his friend Ming in the lobby. Headed out to Shinjuku to grab some food. The plan was to scout out the basement food shop at the Isaten department store and eat at the park on their roof.  I also wanted to check out their whisky selection.  We got there a bit early so went for some coffee to wait until they were open.  I got several croquettes (Okonomi, Imo, Ebi, Kani) and one big Ebi Fry. We picked up a bottle of sake and went up to the roof to enjoy the fruits of our hunt.

We wandered around Shinjuku for a while. We saw some guy taking what looked like a small dog out for a walk but I did a double take when I realized it was a spider monkey.

We ran across the local franchise of my favorite Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant, Little Sheep.

We found a really great liquor store with an amazing selection of rare whisky called Shinanoya.

I got back to the hotel, grabbed my bags and hit the train for Yokohama. I put on my Santa suit and registered for SIGGRAPH.

Hooked up with Oyabun Santa, Santa Maki and Baby Santa Juno.  Got back to the hotel, linked up with Santa Michael and wandered around Yokohama’s china town looking for some dinner and damn if we didn’t find it.

We ended up at this place called “To Ki” or “Toki” and had some of the best noodles ever. It’s a style from the Shanxi province of China called dao-Xiao-mein. At Toki, Chef Wang uses a large chunk of freshly kneaded wheat  flour dough and hand shaves flat strips of raw noodle dough into a big wok of boiling water. The cooked noodles  have a rough and chewy texture with a very unique fresh wheat taste.  We also tried their delicious Mabo Tofu and a spicy Salt & Pepper shrimp dish, similar to what I’ve had before but this was probably the best version I’ve every had.  Simply outstanding.

Stopped off at the combini to get some desert. Picked up some Sweet Potato flavor haagen-daaz ice cream and hit the sack pretty hard.

Dec. 14th

Got up very early. Ate breakfast and ran some errands in Nagoya. Had lunch as a place that’s been awarded the Scovie for their spicy mabo tofu. I had the spicy tan-tan-men ramen and made the mistake of asking for it extra spicy. OH MY GOD! I managed to get through about half of it before giving up in lip quiverring agony. I paid for that later in the evening.

I got on the shinkansen back to Tokyo and got to OLM Digital around 3:30PM.  I got a tour of the facility. They work on 2D animation for Pokemon as well as 3D effects, notably for the more recent films of Miike Takashi. I worked with my OLM host Ken on our SIGGRAPH Presentation then headed out to Ebisu for a chankonabe dinner with Marc, Ken, Ayumi, John from WETA and myself. I can’t remeber the name of the yokozuna that owns the place but it’s famous for shio chanko. The meal was delicious.

Got back to the hotel and started to pack for Yokohama while paying the price for the spicy tan-tan-men experiement.