Confessions of a researchaholic

The first author of a paper could not attend the conference due to visa issue, so I ended up dragging myself all the way to Tokyo as a backup presenter (and session chair for a technical paper session that needed a chair).

High-level take aways

The weather in Tokyo was surprisingly sunny and warmer than San Francisco when I departed. The locals later told me that this was unusual.

Restaurants in Tokyo (or at least the area I visited this time, basically around the Yamanote line between Shimbashi and Yurakucho) have great quality, quantity, and variety of food, and are very efficient in terms of ordering, serving, and payment.

I could actually get away with speaking English (with humans) or not speaking at all (with machines) almost all the time, contrary to my previous trips to Japan (last in 2016). I don’t know if that is because of the particular neighborhoods I visited this time or the general trend of globalization and automation.

Tokyo International Forum, where the conference was held, has a very interesting glass architecture. I especially like the open space between the two main sides, and the glass walkways connecting the two.

Facial mask can be a dialer for the desired level of incognito. (Keep it on when I want to be left alone like walking outside or rushing to an event.)

Sunday December 1

I booked JAL for the first time as it has the best schedule for my needs.
The flight from SFO to HND was quite empty, so I had an entire row of 3 seats all for myself. The leg room was very wide even for the economy seat, and the inflight services and (seafood) meals were very good. There were also self-help snacks, including milk and dark chocolates from Morinaga.

I watched several in-flight movies, including “Deadpool and Wolverine” (yet another head-spinning multi-verse thing from Disney/Marvel) and the first 3 episodes of “Obi-Wan Kanobe” (very good, but I guess Disney+ intentionally did not want to give out the remaining episodes).

Monday December 2

After arriving at HND, I took the Tokyo monorail and the JR Yamanote line to the hotel, which is conveniently located near the track. The monorail ticket machines in HND did not take credit cards, so I had to use cash. For JR my PASMO card still worked.

Beneath the train line are many different shops and restaurants, making a good night scene.

Came to a nearby convenience store to buy some fruits and nuts for dinner and breakfast, including some giant apples and pears.

Tuesday December 3

Woke up early (as expected from a westward jet lag) but found the small hotel gym already quite occupied (and the elliptical not functioning properly).

Advanced toilet technology again!

The conference registration was quick and smooth and I also booked an evening tour from the complementary cultural program.

The first major event was the papers fast-forward for the entire morning from 9 am to noon. Since the fast-forward video already has narration, I just needed to stand on the podium and managed to take a photo of the audience.
There were some glitches in the session, mostly presenters queuing on the wrong side of the stage.

Met JY, co-author of two papers whom I have never met in person before, during the WiGraph lunch. The conference chair mentioned about the unusual/philosophical front-matter of the art paper program (which I read and like the frankness/originality) and his upcoming perform for Real-time Live.

Exciting live coding session before the electronic theater show during which “Prends Chair” made a strong impression on me.

Tokyo Kaikan is a very good venue for reception, but too many people were chasing too few (albeit good) food.
On the positive side, the long queues/waits can be good for blood sugar level and socializing.

Wednesday December 4

The “a piece of cloth” keynote is very good, even though I don’t have much technical expertise in the area.

The Ultraman production session is fun (baby fish-like monster).

My wife mentioned that there are many good Indian restaurants in Tokyo and I told her that I would prefer Japanese food while there. Unfortunately, all the Japanese ones in that particular food court I visited took cash only, so I went to an Indian one that accepted credit card (with Indian servers/chefs speaking good English).
As common in Tokyo, there was a queue but it moved fast, and the curry was good in a non-spicy way.

Met CY, co-author of several papers, in person for the first time for his technical communications talk, which he ran out of time due to deliberate articulation.

The “AI” art paper session contains several interesting presentations (in terms of concepts more than techniques).

Presentation for compositional neural textures went well, questions during the discussion phase includes: hierarchical representation, user study for usability, neural cellular automata for 3D.

Dinner with CY, who mistakenly ate my order, in an Okinawa restaurant, which turned out to be quite good.

Thursday December 5

The Weta “Alien Romulus” production session was gory in a good way: blood, asymmetry, and boiling. (Which also motivated me to watch the movie on my return flight.)

The Sony keynote session is very well rehearsed but has more style than content.

Shogun production session: interesting cliff, landslide, and crowd techniques.

Was planning to try out Japone, a popular eatery in a food court, for lunch, but it took cash only, so I went to a nearby curry shop which turned out to have good food, fast/convenient ordering (via kiosks), and an environment tailored for solo diners (very common in Tokyo).

Food options near the convention center include food trucks and American chains like Shake Shack and Krispy Creme.

Live drawing of a live drawing session!

Got a good view of the city from Tokyo Skytree as part of the cultural program tour I signed up. The dinner was so so (the least good I had in Tokyo).

Friday December 6

Was planning to buy some hot boiled eggs from a 7-11 near my hotel as part of the breakfast but couldn’t find any, but glad to find some private-labeled 73-percent cocoa chocolate.
During the checkout the clerk asked me whether I needed a bag which I didn’t notice.

Fireside keynote: wanted to work on production as a way to get people together.

Nice visuals in the Arcane production season by Fortiche.

Had curry lunch for the third straight day, but this time in Hoddaiko style which was very good.

Awesome real-time live! (which I can appreciate even more after presenting a MAX Sneaks demo). Nice to learn about the Japanese rap battle culture.

Sushi don dinner in Ginza – very fresh (and my only raw fish meal for this Tokyo trip)!

Walked through the giant glittering shopping district which reminded me that there is no good or bad consumer spending as long as it is keeping the economy humming (and people happy).

Saturday December 7

Walked around the Chiyoda area in the morning, including the Imperial Palace and the Hibiya Park, and then the Tsukiji fish market area after hotel check out. The entire area was packed with people (to the point that some shops posted signs asking people not to eat on spot).

Had lunch in a random Japanese restaurant (outside the fish market area which was too chaotic and crowded) and had a (non-curry) mackerel set lunch which turned out to be quite good.

Took Keisei Skyliner (from Nippori station), which has more frequent services than Narita Express (from Tokyo station), to NRT. Unlike my usual practice, I arrived at the airport too early (and almost lost my passport), and thus got some time for sketching while sipping hot matcha.

The return flight was quite full, but the duration was shorter than the incoming flight. I managed to watch “Alien Romulus” (thanks go the production session) and also “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and did a quick finger sketch of a nearby passenger right before landing.

Great talk by Efros about big data + nearest neighbor algorithm.

Take out lunch from Cow Cafe, my favorite vegetarian restaurant in downtown LA.

Great poster for blue noise engraving.

Andrew Glassner gave an accessible talk about quantum computing.

The last new techniques in animation session was well attended and my first non-paper talk (aside from the appy hour in 2017) received more questions than my past paper talks.
The 411 theater is also a nice place for talks given the staggered seating arrangement.

Almost got hit by a car while crossing the Pico-Figueroa intersection, but fortunately the driver screeched to a stop in time.

Bumped into a guy whom I chatted with in the afternoon, realized that we will be on the same flight, and took the metro to the airport together.

Any talk from NASA about astronomy fascinated me; a particular interesting point for this one is about artistic rendering which is needed to visualize far-away exoplanets.
In fact, we need some sort of artistic touches for almost all scientific visualizations, as the raw data is often invisible to the human visual system (e.g., out of the visible light spectrum).

Chaired the “colorful topics in imaging” paper session in the morning.
(I actually did not know if one of the presenters will actually show up until the turn of that paper, but fortunately she was there just not in the front row.)

The committee lunch in Sol Agave took too long and the place was too noisy for conversations, so I ended up chatting with the guy sitting opposite me via a mobile app, even though the food is decent (salad, fish tacos, and churros).
In a noisy party, everyone can try to talk over other voices, causing a positive feedback loop for volume.

The exhibition is smaller than past years, but I still found some interesting demos about digital painting.
The https://feather.art/ app looks worth trying.
The Rebelle watercolor did not seem as realistic as Fresco’s equivalence.

I skipped all the dinner parties, bought some vegetarian food from a nearby Whole Foods, and ate my dinner in my hotel room while watching the electronic theater streaming.
(The content is OK, not as great as previous years.)

Highly recommend the Eniac 6 keynote talk; pay particular attention to the part about how they did not receive the recognition they deserved.

TVCG editors lunch in Pine and Crane DTLA: the food turned out to be quite authentic (I tried dan-dan noodle, seaweed salad, and shaved ice), and saw Jensen Huang in the same restaurant.

Most of the bouncers in downtown LA finally stopped asking me for ID (probably thanks to my white hair threads) but I might have reached the age for which attending 3 consecutive parties would be too much for my stomach/brain to handle all these party food/chats.
Fortunately, my soul can still enjoy all the LA street art.

The quantum computing keynote is excellent!
A future direction is about combining classical and quantum computing to solve problems that are more suitable to tackle by individual components via a hybrid approach.

Took two former advisees to El Patroncito Mexican Cuisine for lunch.
Last time I enjoyed their fish tacos and the relative quietness compared to other restaurants closer to the convention center.
I tried their fish soup this time, which was good, even though the wait was long.
Many more conference attendees showed up than I thought would given the relatively remote location of the restaurant.

Tried several very interesting demos in the VR village.

A year ago on a flight for SIGGRAPH 2022 the passenger sitting next to me told me that he was a student also attending the conference but his paper submission was rejected. I told him just to resubmit.
I bumped into him again tonight at a party. He told me that he resubmitted the paper and it got accepted this time, and he will present it in a paper session that I would be chairing.

I took the LA metro for the first time today from LAX to downtown LA via line C (light rail) and line J (bus).
The whole trip took about 1.5 hours, and the cost was only \$1.75.
(I guess I only paid for line C, as the operator of the J-bus told me that the ticket machine was broken and waved me through.)

The experience is not bad; the TAP app actually worked on my moto-x4 (for both trip planning and payment), the cars were clean and (aside from the bus connecting the airport to the metro station) not too crowded (on a Sunday afternoon).

I noticed that I was one of the few passengers who are not black or brown for the whole trip.
On the J-910 bus I saw a druggie couple sitting right opposite to me, who seemed physically weak and dozed off all the time.

There was a union strike right at the front door of the hotel where I stayed.

There is a Whole Foods store right near the hotel, so I bought some hot takeout for dinner while watching the paper fast forward in my hotel room.

I felt a bit too low on battery to attend the SIGGRAPH 2023 paper committee party tonight.