EVACOMICS BLOG

Now that I'd cleared everything from CoFesta, I'm going to travel further back in time about my family trip to Tokyo in September!

I am finally getting into the finale of our whole trip: a grand treat at Ginza Sushikoh , located above Tokyo station on the 35th floor, worth 20,000+++yen! (SGD250/ USD200) My Japanese friend told me that it is a very famous sushi restaurant and is difficult to get a reservation there.

After our techie morning at the Digital Contents Expo, we took a cab to Ikebukuro, where we stayed for hours at the world's largest anime goods store: animate. Of course, we didn't go there just for shopping…

Ok, this is going to be a very techie post. We started day three with an early morning tour of Digital Contents Expo held at National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation （日本科学未来館）, which is located in Odaiba area on 24th Oct. We got to enter before it was open to public and the first exhibit was this virtual reality flight experience:

We attended TIMM Showcase Live event (23 Oct) from 4.30pm till 9+pm, a solid 5 hours of live Japanese music!!! This concert was organised for international buyers so the artistes were chosen by their record labels to promote to overseas market. Each artiste/group were allowed to invite a limited number of their own fans to the event. We were invited to sit at the second floor so we won't tweet about how tired our legs were from standing :P

Back to Cofesta report, we were at the NHK Studio Park on 23rd Oct morning with an exclusive tour of the studio and some presentations :)

The first event we attended was International Drama Festival in Tokyo, held at Tokyo Prince Hotel.

I am going to Tokyo again, but this time as a CoFesta Ambassador because of my activities related to Japanese content. So yes, I will be saying "Hello Tokyo" again tomorrow! ;D So what is CoFesta ? It is a Contents Festival that brings Japanese contents like games, animation, manga, characters, broadcast, music and film to international audience and vice versa. Examples of events underneath CoFesta include; Tokyo Game Show, Tokyo International Music Market, Tokyo International Film Festival, and Tokyo International Anime Festival. The festival is part of Cool Japan Project, which is funded by Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), Japan. I thank them very much for sponsoring my air flight and hotel accommodation during this period. In return, I will be blogging and updating about my experience. Don't miss out anything, so please like or follow Evacomics on various social media platforms now!

My family came to visit me in Tokyo from 1-5th September but I got very ill soon after... But I managed to recollect memories for this overdue post! What I learned: Baby stroller is called "baby car" in Japan. Meiji Shrine is difficult for elderly and baby strollers because of the long walk through the park and pebbles on the path. Elevators in train stations are very small. Gap between the train and platform can be very big. What my family learned: Toilets are always conveniently located inside the train station after entering the ticketing gates. Toilets are very clean and have bidets and water sounds to play with. No soap in many train station toilets. You can buy food inside train stations. People do not give up seats to elderly and toddlers in trains. Most train stations are not wheelchair friendly. Free newspapers everywhere. Beautiful wrapping. Many people were using plastic umbrellas and left them outside the shop. Nobody steals them. Safe to l

Terminating services and dying to pay them is never easy in Japan... but if you must leave, here is a detailed account of my experience: 1) Cancelling utilities (water, gas and electricity) They can come on your last day (only weekdays and half a Saturday) to tell you how much you owe them and pay cash on the spot. Otherwise you can also request them to deduct from your bank account if you had already setup automatic payment deduction. Gas will be stopped immediately but water and electricity will continue to run. ★Call 1-2 weeks ahead of time. 2) Selling off furniture Bulky trash, called "soudai gomi", is always troublesome to get rid off because you have to pay for their disposal. This includes bulky furniture and large futon. My friend's tip is to cut them up  or dismantle them into smaller pieces to reduce cost or free if you can squeeze into smaller bags. Alternatively, you can contact recycle shops like what I did to see if they can remove everything

I didn't know that Waseda University was so rich to purchase a property at Karuizawa, a popular summer retreat that is around 2.5 hours car drive away from Tokyo. Temperatures there were around 16-26 degrees whereas Tokyo was around 28-35 degrees. The guys who came here last year complained about the dirty shower rooms so they had to go to spa every night. But luckily for us, they just opened two new buildings so everything was clean and new. This was so much better than staying in those youth houses that my scholarship organization had arranged...  The only complain that I had was the shower room's location, which was at the cafeteria building and not in our dorm building (duh?). The guys had 5 shower cubicles but girls only had 2 (duh duh???). My sensei joked that maybe Waseda has a lot of guys...that shower for a long time...

Photos of Singapore food flooded my Facebook wall last week because my school held a study trip to Singapore. So thanks to my friends, I developed a craving for our famous chicken rice so I decided to gather a few friends, who had studied in Singapore before, for a chicken rice lunch at Harajuku. But alas, we didn't know that even restaurants could close for the Obon Festival (around 15th Aug)!!! Japanese will go back to their hometown during Obon, something like hungry ghost festival of Singapore, where we go to our ancestor's grave to clean it up. Strange that all Japanese knows this but it's not on the calendar at all! (My university campus is closed for 1 week so I had to go somewhere unless I want to stay at home to meditate for a week).

Off to see Japanese baseball again but this time, it is a match between professional teams and not university players like last time .

Well you'd heard of guys going to maid cafe and couples going to maid cafe, so I thought I'd write something special, like... "two old maids going to a maid cafe" instead... ...

My friend and I visited a Tanabata Festival at Kanagawa prefecture to experience how Japanese celebrate this festival on 7th July (Sun). Chinese don't really celebrate this even though it originated from a Chinese myth, so I was curious how Japanese adapted this festival into their own. This place was quite far, a 100min ride from Shinjuku area.

Actually, I wrote the previous post to document my journey towards my dream in case I forget the tiny details in the future. I never expected my readers to be interested to read the lengthy post and feedback. Yes, you all surprised me, so a big THANK YOU to you all! ❤     (≧ε≦  )  And yes, I do take down all the feedback to plan out my first comic book to be published in 2013 or 2014! However, as you know, I'm doing all work myself so it will take some time to develop Evacomics more. But here's what to expect this week: Mon: Weekly comic update (not cultural comparison this time, taking a short break from comparing) Tue: Tanabata Festival blog article! *Picture above is a print out for another comic competition that I submitted last month, even though the chances of winning is near zero. I just can't stop giving up... damn.

One of my professors recommended me to work for a company that he know well so he said that I should do a media kit to pitch my work. Embarrassed that I don't know what is a media kit, I quietly returned home to google about it. To my amazement, it is a booklet (sometimes with CD-rom) that explains what the company or individual do, including profile, reader demographics, work samples, etc. Basically the media kit/press kit helps the individual or company to pitch their services to another business (B2B). It's strange that art and design schools didn't teach this and I had to know this from a business school professor. I know the best software to design a booklet is Adobe InDesign, but I'd never use it before and I think it's about time I learn how to use it. So I searched youtube for a tutorial and picked it up within 30mins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaY3jWktT0w .Thanks Terry White and Youtube! So I rushed this booklet out within a week and printed it o

Went to Toshima Park within Tokyo on 17th June (Monday) because of the rare clear weather from the rainy season!

Went to do some sightseeing to see spring flowers for my first and last time on 15th June at Hitachi Seaside Park in Ibaraki prefecture and Ashikaga Flower Park in Tochigi prefecture.

This is called sakura soft cream replacing cloudy Mt. Fuji. I finally got to go up as I waited for weeks recovering from a bad cold, waiting for friend's schedule, gambling the weather and fighting for the bus tickets. But everything didn't work out so I eventually travelled up by myself on Monday (13th).