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Here's to the final post of my blog. Banana muffins without nuts to everyone!

Even after waking up on my last day in Japan I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do that morning. Either head to Osaka for shopping: yodobashi camera, jump store, pokemon center. Or visit the tiny tiny game studio called Assemblent. I decided on Assemblent as it would be something different and I wasn't planning on buying anything. Basically it was a coin toss and either path would have been fine.

Assemblent was a small two story Japanese house with the studio on the second floor. Besides the head of the company five other people work there. Unfortunately they weren't there that day as they had got an unexpected call about job from another company. Koichi Abe the head of the company truly felt that not making employees work over time or on weekends was key to better performance and employee morale. Due to past personal experiences from working at other companies he wanted to start a new company where overtime would not occur. He wants and wants his employees as well to look back on the experience of making the game after it has hit the shelves and be able to say that they enjoyed doing it.

He showed us a small demo of a DS hooked up to his computer. The game the company was currently working on was an educational software for the ds to help people understand how to take care of the elderly. After that he let us play a super scope game which was the first one he ever worked on. It was a fun game and it was neat since it was a one on one battle type game versus robots.

Besides working on smaller ds games the company also helps in making larger games by working on portions of a game. For example they did the 3d battle animations for the gamecube fire emblem.

After assemblent I headed back to the hotel and decided to just chill there until it was time to meet yuri and takeo at 4 near astro boy at kyoto station.

I met up with yuri and then decided to see if Ian and Ari wanted to come along as well to the matcha cafe. I figured it would give yuri and takeo a chance to use there english with them. I am really thankful to yuri, takeo and mayumi for speaking with me in Japanese. It was tough being surrounded by so much english at times during the trip and it also didn't help that I really haven't had the time to study Japanese due to focusing on my animatinon courses the past few months. Getting the chance to speak with them in Japanese even though only for a short while meant a lot to me. Thanks!!

Mayumi had class so she wasn't able to meet up until after we sat down, but it was good timing as we still hadn't ordered yet. I suggested to Ian to try the warabi mochi as it was a favorite of mine from the last time I was in Japan. He liked it but thought it was strange how it seemed to take out all the moisture in one's mouth. I didn't remember that part of it but sure enough when I tried it that's what happened.

I then asked if we could go to a book store to see if they had the japanese version of bone in stock. We went but like the other book store i went to in Tokyo they no longer carried the book. We then decided to go up to the top of the stairs of Kyoto Station to check out the view at night. Took some pictures and then decided to go have dinner. We found a really good okonomiyaki place. I had the hiroshima version which has yakisoba sandwiched in the middle. I think it was one of the best dinners I had in Japan for the trip. They were even able to successfully make it without meat or fish. It seemed Takeo had a good time talking with Ari in english. Everynow and then I would pick up parts of their conversation and I remember Takeo using the word confectionaries. Technically the use of the word was fine, but it's usually not used as its more of a more formal word to talk about fancy chocolate or candy. I didn't think to correct him though as he was in mid conversation.

Another funny conversation came when Takeo said that he would like the u.s. goverment to really pull off a jurrasic park. Ian came back with a funny comment saying that if you make gundams we'll make dinosaurs.

Finally Ian besides thinking the food was "fishy" was sure that the soft serve ice cream yuri got with her meal tasted like rice. After my second try I guess I kind of tasted rice, but I'm still not sure. If anthing there was definitely a different taste that came at the very end. Yuri and mayumi sure didn't think it tasted like rice but I decided to go along with Ian yet in a joking fashion pretending that the rice flavor would just burst forth after eating the ice cream for a while.

Anyways even after dinner Ari and Ian still wanted a Mega Mac, so we headed to a McDonalds. By the time they got their food there was only about 15 minutes till closing. So they had to eat quick.

We said goodbye at the train staion and I told them I'd be back in July.

The next day was a full day of travel. I got to watch Elf in Japanese. It was done well but I still prefer the original since Wil Farrel is essential.

Anyone seen ginger flavored ice cream lately?