Yeah.
It's been a while.
So sue me.
Things have been busy as hell, what do you want from me?
Fine.
Just because your complaining I'm going to write all of this
justified right.
Yeah, not so big now huh?
See who's really in charge?
I thought so.
Okay, you've learned your lesson, back we
Yeah, not so big now huh?
See who's really in charge?
I thought so.
Okay, you've learned your lesson, back we
go.
Conference Queuing
Week 22
Conference Queuing
Week 22
Well, I don't really have too much to say about the start of this particular week. Things were going as per usual. The changeover for Sean occurred this week and so, guess what, I'm super fucking busy. Insanely so. Not so much in regards to number of hours put in for class time, but outside of class I've been putting in a lot of extra time too due to the lack of a manager at my school. Kayoko and I get to pick up all the slack. Admittedly, my esteemed colleague does about 90% more work than I do, but I do my best to help too and always make sure I leave the school at the same time as she does. As one Monique can attest, I hate to leave a coworker with unfinished work. Working alone sucks. My ability to help is severely crippled by my lack of practical Japanese anyways...
On the plus side I got to teach all of my new students for the first time this week. They are, to a man/woman, awesome. I'm really happy to get the chance to meet and teach all these new people. Much of the classes this week were devoted to introductions and a bit of small talk. Tons of fun though and, to break temporality, it was also fun the week after.
Saturday was absolutely exhausting though. Bone-crushingly so. I was sucking back genki drinks at the 4 o'clock point in order to make it through the last few lessons. I'm just glad the students are so awesome, because it would have been very hard to make it through otherwise. There was some kind of moon viewing festival going on in Koganei park that night but, due to extreme exhaustion and the lateness of my arrival home (close to 11) I just veged out on the computer for a few hours before calling it a night.
Besides, I had to get up early the next day because it was time for
On the plus side I got to teach all of my new students for the first time this week. They are, to a man/woman, awesome. I'm really happy to get the chance to meet and teach all these new people. Much of the classes this week were devoted to introductions and a bit of small talk. Tons of fun though and, to break temporality, it was also fun the week after.
Saturday was absolutely exhausting though. Bone-crushingly so. I was sucking back genki drinks at the 4 o'clock point in order to make it through the last few lessons. I'm just glad the students are so awesome, because it would have been very hard to make it through otherwise. There was some kind of moon viewing festival going on in Koganei park that night but, due to extreme exhaustion and the lateness of my arrival home (close to 11) I just veged out on the computer for a few hours before calling it a night.
Besides, I had to get up early the next day because it was time for
THE TOKYO GAME SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, font control got away from me there for a second.
Yeah, Tokyo Game Show, TGS, the Japanese equivalent to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Something I had planned on attending since the day I left Canadian soil.
And it did not disappoint.
Well, it did a little bit, but not too much.
TGS is usually held at a large conference complex called Makuhari-Messe in Chiba. The place is pretty close to Disney Land and is apparently quite famous for the number of large-scale auto shows that are held there. I was enroute for decidedly geekier reasons.
After dragging myself out of bed and arriving a 1/2 hour after the doors opened at 10:30 AM I was 1200 yen poorer but a wealth of potential gaming richer.
I say potential of course because my god, the lines...Everywhere, for everything. I'm not really surprised it was that bad, but still. The fact that you had to sign a piece of paper while you waited in line to buy something at a store kind of prevented me from spending any money on merchandise while I was there. Not that I saw much worth buying, but meh. Too much queuing in my opinion. As Shin put it later on "Japanese people love to line up for things." I don't know about everyday life, but at TGS that's certainly the case.
When you first walk into the dimly-lit and cavern that is the first of the three conference halls occupied by TGS 2008 you were confronted by the first booth, a giant display screen devoted to Koei's retreads of the same basic game formula, Dynasty Warriors. To the left, SNK and King of Fighters 12 (!). Following that Electronic Arts, Microsoft and so forth and so forth.
My first stop was the EA booth just for the novelty of playing a game in the booth of the biggest western third party developer in the Far East. Well, maybe the biggest. I'm not sure which is larger, EA or Activison-Blizzard. Regardless, the point is a played a western game at TGS first. How ironic, no?
The wait was relatively short, and the shortest of the day for me. It only took about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line and play my first game of the show which also made it the first I've ever played pre-release: Mirror's Edge.
The demo was a pretty decent vertical slice I guess. It seemed like it was part of a complete level, but it could have been assembled from others just as easily. I guess the guy providing narration for that demo on the link says that it is. The game was really good. Tight gameplay, although maybe a bit spartan for my tastes so far. We'll see what the full version is like.
After the demo ended I headed on over to the second show floor to get a feel for the rest of the show. The area between the two show rooms had apparently been invaded by cos-players, as there was quite the collection of interesting wardrobe choices there. For those who don't know, much like Harajuku girls, cosplayers dress up in elaborate costumes and hang around posing for tourists/attendees to snap a few shots. Since we were at a videogames conference the costumes here were, of course, video game themed. In my opinion, the pair playing Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice win for their choice of a relatively simple, but well done, costume. The Resident Evil/Biohazard guys came in second.
The second show floor was much like the first, packed. I wandered around here too, especially at the Canadian section, which was unfortunately mostly shut down. I rounded a corner towards the end of my perusal of the vacant booths and promptly came to a halt in front of the two employees working representing the Canadian governement. One of them was Japanese, the other Canadian. The latter noticed my Montreal Canadians hat as soon as I came into sight and we both did a double take...me primarily because I hadn't seen anybody in the vicinity so far, her because of the blatant wearing of my nationality on my sleeve...or head as it were.
Speaking of which, Canada takes its bilingualism wayyyyyy too seriously. I mean, the signage at the booth was in French and English. In Japan. You know what would have been really useful? Some Japanese on the signs, that's what. Because this is the TOKYO game show. Not E3, not Montreal, TOKYO. This is not rocket science people.
We had a short conversation that ran along the lines of "what brings you to Japan" before I took my leave and headed back across the display area to rendez-vous with Ryan.
With my fellow gamer in tow, I headed off to find the Sony booth and, awesomely enough, Little Big Planet. Ryan and I got grouped up with another gaijin by the name of Chris and we proceeded to wait another 1/2 hour for our turn at the controls. The game was a ton of fun, although the controls felt a little loose at the time. The avatars have a lot of expression and are super fun to make around with. We were guided along by a Sony employee who made the experience that much more awesome. Because, you know, everything Sony touches turns to gold...that one was for you Colin. My Sackboy Sephiroth ended up taking the win over my two competitors. Very cool game.
We wandered around a bit more after this, lamenting the fact that the closed Square-Enix theater required an early morning arrival in order to obtain a pass to see the show inside. Soon thereafter the floor got ridiculously busy. Just insanely so. Going anywhere required about 10 minutes of shuffling in crowds of people packed shoulder to shoulder. We travelled back across the complex a short while later in order to meet up with Shin, who had arrived earlier.
Shin almost immediately confessed that he wasn't much of a gamer, which I thought was pretty awesome. With Ryan as a casual gamer and myself as a hardcore representative, we had the whole spectrum covered. I guess it was a pretty crazy experience for Shin.
And so, after some more wandering, we ended up ensconced in the comforting grasp of the hour long waiting line outside the Capcom booth for a chance to play Resident Evil 5.
Resident Evil 4 was by far one of the best games to appear on the Playstation 2, so RE 5 on the PS3 and 360 has a lot to live up to. From what I played, it did not disappoint. It may not be as fresh as the last iteration in the series, but damn if it isn't still a ton of fun. Plus the graphics are sharp enough to cause minor retinal damage.
The actual gameplay demo of this last game was preceded by an incredibly awkward introduction done by an actor dressed as one of the characters from the game...It really smacked of a PR team brainstorm gone wrong, an idiotic way to make their game stand out. In all honesty, the day that stupid stunts like this are no longer present at games conferences will be a sign of games being taken seriously as an art form rather than just another 'mindless' entertainment.
Frustration!
After Resident Evil 5 we wandered around a bit more before going through the demo for Mirror's Edge again. I'm really looking forward to this game. This brought us to about 4:30 though, and it was about time to head out. We took our leave of Makuhari Messe and headed downtown to Harajuku for another great dinner at Fonda De La Madrugada. Don, Yuka and a couple of newer teachers with GEOS met us there. It was a great dinner, as always, and one of the other teachers knew a damn good song to request from the mariachis.
I headed home after coffee at Starbucks, tired but happy to have seen TGS. I was a bit disappointed that I got to play so few games and that I didn't run into any of the media-types that I would recognize but hey, c'est la vie.
Monday was uneventful. I spent it mentally preparing for the next week of tightly spaced classes. Other than that, I pretty much spent the day relaxing.
That's it for another week from Tokyo. Stay tuned for more posts later in the week (hopefully)
As always,
Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello
Yeah, Tokyo Game Show, TGS, the Japanese equivalent to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Something I had planned on attending since the day I left Canadian soil.
And it did not disappoint.
Well, it did a little bit, but not too much.
TGS is usually held at a large conference complex called Makuhari-Messe in Chiba. The place is pretty close to Disney Land and is apparently quite famous for the number of large-scale auto shows that are held there. I was enroute for decidedly geekier reasons.
After dragging myself out of bed and arriving a 1/2 hour after the doors opened at 10:30 AM I was 1200 yen poorer but a wealth of potential gaming richer.
I say potential of course because my god, the lines...Everywhere, for everything. I'm not really surprised it was that bad, but still. The fact that you had to sign a piece of paper while you waited in line to buy something at a store kind of prevented me from spending any money on merchandise while I was there. Not that I saw much worth buying, but meh. Too much queuing in my opinion. As Shin put it later on "Japanese people love to line up for things." I don't know about everyday life, but at TGS that's certainly the case.
When you first walk into the dimly-lit and cavern that is the first of the three conference halls occupied by TGS 2008 you were confronted by the first booth, a giant display screen devoted to Koei's retreads of the same basic game formula, Dynasty Warriors. To the left, SNK and King of Fighters 12 (!). Following that Electronic Arts, Microsoft and so forth and so forth.
My first stop was the EA booth just for the novelty of playing a game in the booth of the biggest western third party developer in the Far East. Well, maybe the biggest. I'm not sure which is larger, EA or Activison-Blizzard. Regardless, the point is a played a western game at TGS first. How ironic, no?
The wait was relatively short, and the shortest of the day for me. It only took about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line and play my first game of the show which also made it the first I've ever played pre-release: Mirror's Edge.
The demo was a pretty decent vertical slice I guess. It seemed like it was part of a complete level, but it could have been assembled from others just as easily. I guess the guy providing narration for that demo on the link says that it is. The game was really good. Tight gameplay, although maybe a bit spartan for my tastes so far. We'll see what the full version is like.
After the demo ended I headed on over to the second show floor to get a feel for the rest of the show. The area between the two show rooms had apparently been invaded by cos-players, as there was quite the collection of interesting wardrobe choices there. For those who don't know, much like Harajuku girls, cosplayers dress up in elaborate costumes and hang around posing for tourists/attendees to snap a few shots. Since we were at a videogames conference the costumes here were, of course, video game themed. In my opinion, the pair playing Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice win for their choice of a relatively simple, but well done, costume. The Resident Evil/Biohazard guys came in second.
The second show floor was much like the first, packed. I wandered around here too, especially at the Canadian section, which was unfortunately mostly shut down. I rounded a corner towards the end of my perusal of the vacant booths and promptly came to a halt in front of the two employees working representing the Canadian governement. One of them was Japanese, the other Canadian. The latter noticed my Montreal Canadians hat as soon as I came into sight and we both did a double take...me primarily because I hadn't seen anybody in the vicinity so far, her because of the blatant wearing of my nationality on my sleeve...or head as it were.
Speaking of which, Canada takes its bilingualism wayyyyyy too seriously. I mean, the signage at the booth was in French and English. In Japan. You know what would have been really useful? Some Japanese on the signs, that's what. Because this is the TOKYO game show. Not E3, not Montreal, TOKYO. This is not rocket science people.
We had a short conversation that ran along the lines of "what brings you to Japan" before I took my leave and headed back across the display area to rendez-vous with Ryan.
With my fellow gamer in tow, I headed off to find the Sony booth and, awesomely enough, Little Big Planet. Ryan and I got grouped up with another gaijin by the name of Chris and we proceeded to wait another 1/2 hour for our turn at the controls. The game was a ton of fun, although the controls felt a little loose at the time. The avatars have a lot of expression and are super fun to make around with. We were guided along by a Sony employee who made the experience that much more awesome. Because, you know, everything Sony touches turns to gold...that one was for you Colin. My Sackboy Sephiroth ended up taking the win over my two competitors. Very cool game.
We wandered around a bit more after this, lamenting the fact that the closed Square-Enix theater required an early morning arrival in order to obtain a pass to see the show inside. Soon thereafter the floor got ridiculously busy. Just insanely so. Going anywhere required about 10 minutes of shuffling in crowds of people packed shoulder to shoulder. We travelled back across the complex a short while later in order to meet up with Shin, who had arrived earlier.
Shin almost immediately confessed that he wasn't much of a gamer, which I thought was pretty awesome. With Ryan as a casual gamer and myself as a hardcore representative, we had the whole spectrum covered. I guess it was a pretty crazy experience for Shin.
And so, after some more wandering, we ended up ensconced in the comforting grasp of the hour long waiting line outside the Capcom booth for a chance to play Resident Evil 5.
Resident Evil 4 was by far one of the best games to appear on the Playstation 2, so RE 5 on the PS3 and 360 has a lot to live up to. From what I played, it did not disappoint. It may not be as fresh as the last iteration in the series, but damn if it isn't still a ton of fun. Plus the graphics are sharp enough to cause minor retinal damage.
The actual gameplay demo of this last game was preceded by an incredibly awkward introduction done by an actor dressed as one of the characters from the game...It really smacked of a PR team brainstorm gone wrong, an idiotic way to make their game stand out. In all honesty, the day that stupid stunts like this are no longer present at games conferences will be a sign of games being taken seriously as an art form rather than just another 'mindless' entertainment.
Frustration!
After Resident Evil 5 we wandered around a bit more before going through the demo for Mirror's Edge again. I'm really looking forward to this game. This brought us to about 4:30 though, and it was about time to head out. We took our leave of Makuhari Messe and headed downtown to Harajuku for another great dinner at Fonda De La Madrugada. Don, Yuka and a couple of newer teachers with GEOS met us there. It was a great dinner, as always, and one of the other teachers knew a damn good song to request from the mariachis.
I headed home after coffee at Starbucks, tired but happy to have seen TGS. I was a bit disappointed that I got to play so few games and that I didn't run into any of the media-types that I would recognize but hey, c'est la vie.
Monday was uneventful. I spent it mentally preparing for the next week of tightly spaced classes. Other than that, I pretty much spent the day relaxing.
That's it for another week from Tokyo. Stay tuned for more posts later in the week (hopefully)
As always,
Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello
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