X-Radiation

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.

Dec. 13th

Took an early train from Nagoya to Iga City. Nice slow train ride.

Iga City is known as one of the birth places of Ninjitsu. The train for the last transfer to Iga City has a Ninja paint job.

We ate a picnic in the park  consisting of hotdogs with onions and some inari. I was a bit thirsty so I went over to one of my favorite vending machines in Japan.

We visited the ninja house and ninja museum in Iga’s Ueno park. The house was interesting, showcasing all the architectural tricks a ninja would use to enter, exit and observe visitors. There were also secret weapons stashes. The museum explained the origins of the ninja, ninja weapons and ninja costumes. They also had a somewhat silly ninja stunt show for children. After the show I spent an extra 100Y to throw shuriken at a foam target and managed one bullseye.

On they way back to Nagoya from Iga was stopped at the Rumiko sake factory to pick up a bottle of their newly released Nama Zake. I also tasted a sake that had been barrel aged in wood for 14 years. After the sake factory we passed through a district famous for ceramics whose main output appears to be ceramic tanuki… Racoon Dog idols with gigantic testicles meant to bring good luck and good health.

We got back to Nagoya and ate dinner at the Marusai, a fish restaurant. We had some special toro served on the bone and scraped at the table. I ate some sazae sashimi and a toro donbury. We also had a couple of fish heads and some hoke.

Dec. 11th

Back in 1996/1997 I worked on Titanic at Digital Domain and made friends with  an exchange artist from Japan’s Tokyo Broadcasting Station  named Sori. In 2001 at Sony Imageworks I made friends with another exchange artist named Tadao. I’ve kept in touch with them over the years and try to visit whenever I’m in Japan. It’s great to see that Sori is now a film director and Tadao works with Sori as his visual effects supervisor. They are a great team who work on great projects together.

Sori’s IMDB page

I went to luch with Tadao at a bento place owned by a famous theater actor, grabbed some coffee and went to OxyBot Studios to see what they are up to. I met the staff and saw some great work being done. Sori and Tadao have surrounded themselves with a friendly and talented group of artists. I’m looking forward to their future collaborations. Hopefully I’ll have another chance to catch up with them during this trip.

Dec. 12th

Took the Shinkansen Hikari to Nagoya to visit relatives. There was a bit of confusion at the train station. I was told to meet them at the “Gold Clock Tower” but they were waitng near the “Silver Clock Tower”. No biggie.

Had a great home made lunch of salmon sushi, inari and oden with plenty of beer. That night we went to Korona World. It’s a sort of family entertainment complex with a multi-plex, arcade, restaurants and karaoke but the centerpiece is a sauna and bath house. I guess it’s not considered an onsen because the water source is not a naturally heated spring. In addtion to a wide array of indoor and outdoor baths they have the largest sauna I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge room with three adjunct “stone sauna” rooms. In the middle of the main room there are large steel doors with rail tracks coming out. There’s a fence around the tracks and a parabolic reflector above. On a schedule, the doors open to reveal a giant oven. There are two mining carts full of rocks basking in the oven. The carts enter the room and the doors close behind it. A rush of heat bounces off the parabolic reflector and fills the room (click the link to see the video).

We finished up with another round of baths and I was ready to crash out for the evening.

Dec. 9th

Departed SFO for Narita via Seattle. Had planned to wake up at 4am for final packing and get to the airport by 5:30am but overslept and woke up at 5am. Managed to get out the door ten after five and made it to the airport just after 6am. Went to the international terminal but found out that my flight to seattle was, in fact, domestic… duh. Jammed through the airport and checked in with just moments to spare. Had a four hour layover in Seattle and got to Narita in one piece on Dec. 10th.

Dec. 10th

Got some Yen from the ATM and picked up my rental cell phone.  Made it to Shibuya on the Narita Express. Pain in the ass schlepping bags through Shibuya Station. Could not find the elevators. Somehow manages to get a small but bloody cut on my hand but there was no pain so I didn’t notice for a while. A confused Gaijin with a bloody hand wandering around Shibuya station. Got my bags down the stairs but had to push them back up over the crossing near the West exit to the hotel. Settled in for a moment before heading out to meet Tak and Mihai from Digital Frontiers in Naka-Meguro for some sushi.

Had a great dinner at  “Yoshi Zushi” よし寿司

Mixed sashimi platter – Yuzu Ika, Toro, Hamachi, Aji, Ebi, Small white fish whose name I forgot. Drank a lot of beer and nihon-shu.

Second course was yaki-miso shirako, fresh shiokara , hotate with uni sauce and kujira steak.

Finished up with some engawa, tamago and aji nigiri.

Went to Karaoke with Mihair & Justine until 4am. Brought along a bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask to share. Belted out some punk and metal and generally hammed it up for a good time.

My proposal for a crowd animation course at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 in December in Yokohama, Japan has been approved! I’m really looking forward to organizing this course and attending the conference. We’ve got some stellar talent presenting at this course representing work from Pixar, ImageMovers Digtial, Digital Frontier, Massive Software and OLM Digital. More info to come!

My friend Callum pointed me to this article that was posted last year about my visit to South East Asia.

Last night I had a chance to try out that corn juice beverage. Yup. Tastes like corn. Sweet corn, with maybe a hint of salt. Not bad really.