Week 1: Arrival

I arrived at Osaka Airport at noon and proceeded through customs and baggage claim worrying about whether or not I could find my way to the apartment I was going to stay at for the night. When going through customs I was asked the purpose of my stay in which I replied excitedly with ”留学する！”　（りゅうがくする）、which meant “to study abroad”. With that, the customs officer smiled asked if I was studying at Osaka University ,“大阪大学で？”, to which I happily responded with yes, ”はい！”. Before starting this program I have just finished taking my first year of Japanese, and one of my biggest goals this time in Japan was to improve my Japanese, and of course, to go to Akihabara –one of Japan’s most famous electronics and anime district — as many times as I could.

I was supposed to meet with my girlfriend who was travelling down from Tokyo to meet me in about 2 hours, so I made sure to figure out the correct way to get to our meeting spot, which was Osaka’s main station. Relieved to find out the whole ride was going to take about an hour I proceeded to take my time and look at the scenery around me. The airport I landed in was Osaka’s Kansai Airport which was located on a man-made “island” off the coast of Osaka, and was quite a ways away from any large nearby city. That being said, I was surprised about how non-airport like the place seemed like. Right outside the airport, by the train station, there was a Hawaiian themed event going on where they were selling Hawaiian goods (Leis, music CDs, etc) and promoting Hula with some live shows and music. I knew about this from my girlfriend before coming, but it still surprised me how popular Hula was in Japan.

At the train station itself, there were students from Osaka University volunteering to help foreigners find their way to wherever they were planning on going to. Not knowing exactly how to purchase a ticket and get to Osaka’s main station, I proceeded to ask them for help. They were extremely helpful and before long I was on my ride to the station!

The next day was orientation so after dropping off my girlfriend at the station to head back to Tokyo, I proceeded to head to campus. I left pretty early to head to Osaka University so I thought it would’ve been nice to walk as much as I could (rather than take a bus). This is where I messed up. Apparently Osaka University has three main campuses: Minoh, Toyonaka, and Suita. Sutia was the campus I needed to go to, but I somehow ended up at Minoh campus. Now I had two choices to make; walk back the way I came to the train station and take that to the other campus, or explore a bit and take a bus. Looking at my handy dandy Google maps app, I saw that if I walked a little bit I can catch a bus to the other campus.  I left early, so I still had time to take the bus to the other campus, or so I thought. Bad idea. Very bad idea. I ended up missing the bus and having to walk all the way to the other campus, up many, many hills (one of which is in the picture above).  Below is my end result AFTER I used the hand dryer to dry most of it.

Aside from the small mishaps, the first week went by great. I was assigned to an all-guys dorm with 4 other students who were doing the same program as me so we went out together on the first night. We ate at a ramen restaurant called “Golden Dragon”. It was pretty good, but tasted really Chinese for some reason, like I was eating a bowl of Chinese beef noodle stew. Turns out the owners were actually from Taiwan and the restaurant was a popular ramen shop for Taiwanese tourists. (Insert Ramen video here)

After that, we went and walked around Osaka’s famous Dotonbori Street and I got some takoyaki (grilled octopus balls). It was extremely delicious! Fun fact: Osaka style takoyaki and Tokyo style takoyaki are very different in texture. Tokyo style takoyaki tend to me more crispy on the outside and overall is chewier. Osaka styles takoyaki is generally more softer and mushier.

For the lab, I was assigned to Osaka University Graduate School of Information Science and Technology’s Computer Vision Lab supervised by Professor Hashimoto Masanori. Upon entering the lab on the first day I was greeted by the Assistant Professor, Professor Jaehoon Yu as well as my mentor for the duration of my research, Koichi Mitsunari. They gave me a short tour of the lab room, which was very clean and cozy, and showed me where my desk was. The room itself felt like a family room; there was a giant fridge stocked with drinks and ice cream, a couple TVs, a Wii-U and PS3, and a computer stocked with some very high-end hardware and Steam to “research” games with. The lab itself consisted of roughly 25 lab members and out of all of them there was only 1 single girl whom many of the lab members referred to as “お姉さん” or older sister.

The task I was given was to assemble and program an Arduino Braccio, which is a programmable mechanical arm, and have it user computer vision to pick up a cube marked with an AR marker. Besides this, I also needed to be able to project 3D chess pieces above these marked cubes in Augmented Reality, or AR. My first week’s goal was to simply get the arm moving and get all the required libraries and packages installed for computer vision work. I used a USB serial connection to communicated with the Arduno Braccio and Open CV to do most of the work.

(Enter videos here)

We also went out for dinner at a nearby mall and ate a really nice buffet there. This mall is called Expo City and was the location of the World Expo of 1970. It has a big movie theater and tons and tons of restaurants as well as various stores. I was also given a bike by a fellow lab colleague which allowed me to bike to school from my dorm and save $8 – 11 USD a day on public transportation (thank god).

For the first weekend, my girlfriend came down again and we traveled to Hiroshima. I’ve always wanted to go there and see the famous Itsukushima Shrine, known for its “floating” torii gate. However, since it was summer, the water receded and the torii’s base was visible.

I have a bunch of pictures of my whole trip in Japan which will be linked on the sidebar!