Saturday, December 19, 2009

Siggraph Asia 2009 day 2

Day 2 was a tour around the Shinjuku area and also the visit to Toei animation studios. We took a train, actually more than a train to get to Toei. ( kinda wasted quite a lot of time on transportation). But the cool thing about the trains is that the seat are heated!! The feeling of seating on a warm seat after freezing out in the cold was awesome.
And we have to walk for about half hour to get to the studio.



Toei animation studios looks pretty run down in the inside. I guess it's because they been here for decades. However, the equipment they use was probably very hi tech, Big ass Walcom monitors, Walcom tablet and their awesome animation program they made for themselves. The name of the program was Retas! pro.
They also have the old machine they used to scan the films for animation but they are not using it anymore.

After which we went to their gallery. The gallery is full of their products from models, to pictures,etc. Oh yes, They are very very very proud of their Digimon movie, One piece movie and one more anime series. They need about 3000 pictures for their backgrounds and for their characters in 2 weeks!!! Which I think its insane. Man, I'll never look at Digimon the same way again.
Yeap that's an giant ass Gundam from one of their anime series.
There is a few things I just don't get it in Japan. Firstly, the people there in Japan especially the school girls. It's like 9 degrees in Japan which I think it's very cold and these schoolgirls can just wear a skirt and walk like nobody's business when I am freezing my ass off.Secondly, Japan has VERY little trashcans around and the funny thing is that it's so freaking clean!! How is that even possible?!!?

After which we went for lunch in a western/Italian restaurant. Pretty expensive, it was about 1000 yen(around S$15). After lunch, we went to the "Sim Lim" of Japan, Akihabara. That place has full of electronics and also FULL of anime products; plushies, models, cards, comics, anything you name. Oh yes there is also a lightsaber chopstick there too!
We stayed in Akihabara for about an hour before we left for Harajuku which I think is the "Orchard" of Japan. At there, I see many branded shops and many shopping centers. We went to the Kiddy palace and bought quite a few souvenirs there.
Then we went for dinner at the same place we ate the last day but different food of course.

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