So I attended SoCG’s CG Week 2025 at Kanazawa, Japan.
This is my experience at CG Week.
What’s SoCG
For those of you who don’t know what SoCG is, I’m too lazy too explain so go read it on their website: SoCG Website
In a nutshell, it’s a conference in the field of computational geometry. CG Week is an international forum for advances in computational geometry. For more information on CG Week 2025 Check out the website: CG Week 2025 Website
How?
So how did I, a undergraduate freshman, go to such an event?
Well, this year I enrolled in college at POSTECH. One of my seniors here said that it’s a good idea to contact professors who researches in a field I’m interested early on. So naturally, I wrote an email to professor Eunjin Oh, a professor who runs a computational geometry lab at POSTECH.
Soon after, I met with the professor. My first impression of her was that she was extremely cheerful, which I guess is a good thing. She was also really happy to hear that I attended last years combinatorics & algorithm summer school at KAIST. Other than that, I mostly asked her about stuff like her main research area, recent news about CG, etc. Eventually, she asked me how I got interested in CG. I talked about why, and mentioned that I enjoyed looking at papers from SoCG during high school. Then, when I mentioned SoCG, she immediately said that she could take me to this years CG Week, and that her lab was in the middle of registrations.
And that’s how I earned a week long trip to Japan for completely free.
Before Japan
I wasn’t going alone, of course. I was going to be moving with the seniors at professor Eunjin Oh’s lab.
So before the trip, I met with the people at the lab, and bought plane tickets as well as registration for SoCG.
That was a long enough introduction, so lets move on to the actual trip.
6/22 : Arrival
I met up with 4 of the lab members (all male) at the airport. After all necessary steps, we boarded the plane and took off to Japan. I actually had a trip to Japan just earlier this year, so it was kind of weird feeling to be going back so soon.
Anyway, we arrived at Komatsu Airport without much trouble. After arrival, while waiting in line to get out of the airport, I met with the final lab member going to CG Week. Apparently she was just a few months away from finishing her PhD, and came with her husband. Initially she was going to move separately, but we somehow ended up together by coincidence.
After leaving the airport, me and the 4 lab members took a bus and then a train to Kanazawa station. After arriving we put our luggage at the hotel we were staying at. The hotel staff was in the middle of cleaning the rooms, and check-in was supposed at 4 o’clock, so we weren’t able to go in to our room yet.
After that, it was lunch time, so one of the seniors found a ramen place nearby with high ratings. However, we had to wait in line, and it was super hot outside. While I’m not a fan of waiting in line to eat stuff, I didn’t mind too much. Turns out the other seniors (specifically two) really didn’t like that. Eventually we got in after over 30 minutes of waiting.
I forgot to take a photo of the ramen, so here’s an imaginary picture.
For me, the ramen was ok, but definitely not worth the 30 minutes of waiting. Apparently two of my seniors hated it, making them want to go back to Korea, and just mentioning that restaurant made them annoyed. And so, ramen was banned during the trip. The other 2 seniors liked the ramen.
Even after lunch, our hotel room was still in the middle of cleaning, so we decided to check out the mall next to the station. On the 4’th floor there were cardboard cutouts of some characters from Hasu no Sora Jogakuin School Idol Club.
On the 5’th floor there was Uniqlo, and some of the seniors seemed to be interested in clothes. Not me though, so I just mindlessly followed along.
At this point one of the seniors (the oldest) was getting tired and wanted to sit down. We checked Starbucks and some other places, but there wasn’t really anywhere, and it was hot, so we just decided to head back to the hotel, hoping we could actually go in. And just as we headed out, it started to rain.
The rain wasn’t heavy though, so we just walked through it, not like we had any other options though. After all that, we finally made it in to our room.
Again, I forgot to take a picture of the hotel room. It was actually quite nice, with 4 beds and extra space to lay out blankets
Upon entering our room, some of the seniors took a wash, and then we all just crashed out on each of our beds. The original plan was to wake up around 5 to 6 for dinner, but when we woke up it was more close to 8 o’clock.
Still, we had to eat some dinner, so we went to station where one of the seniors found a tonkatsu place. Sadly they closed early, so we just went to a curry place nearby. Also I forgot to take a picture.
It turns out this curry place was something famous in Kanazawa.
After eating the curry (which everyone thought was good), we went to a convenience store, and on the way of returning to the hotel, we stopped by at an izakaya. We ordered beer, I ordered something called Cola サワ, which is basically beer mixed with cola. We mostly talked about one of the seniors (the lab director, to be precise) past, which was fun.
We returned to our hotel after drinking, stopping by at Family Mart (a convenience store) on the way.
And that was the end of the first day at Japan.
6/23 : Registration
Next day, we woke up at around 12 o’clock. I say we, but it’s just me and the lab director. The others woke up earlier and went out for a morning jog. I wanted to tag along, but I lost motivation every morning.
We started the day by going to eat lunch. We went to the tonkatsu place we failed to go the day before. The price was expensive (I ordered probably the cheapest one and it cost around 1600 yen), but the tonkatsu was good, so I guess it’s worth it. All the other people liked it as well.
Forgot to take a photo again. I promise this will be the last one.
After lunch, it was time for registration at SoCG. This years CG Week was held at Kanazawa hotel, which was right next to the station, close to the hotel we were staying at. So we headed over there, and upon registration we were given a name tag and some extra souvenirs including a map of Kanazawa, a notebook from JAIST (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), a SoCG 2025 T-shirt, etc. There was also a gacha machine that we could play to earn something. I got an acrylic black cat.
Once registration were done, the staff set up one of the rooms so that people could drink and eat some snacks while talking with others. Now, I didn’t know anyone at the conference, and it seemed like that was the case for the others as well. So we were just all standing together when one person called Isaac came to talk to us. We briefly introduced ourselves, and asked if he has a talk. Turns out he was giving the SoCG 2025 best paper talk, so that was something.
We didn’t stay for long, and after leaving the building, the lab director said he had stuff to do and went to our hotel room. The others, including me, decided to go the 21’st century museum during the time we had left. However, on the way there, one of the seniors found out that the 21’st century museum doesn’t open on Mondays. So we quickly swapped plans and decided to go to the Kanazawa castle, which thankfully wasn’t far.
It was very clean and quite spacious. Also there were a bunch of stores around that sold ice-cream with gold wrapping. Two of the seniors that came bought and tried it. I tasted some of the gold wrapping, and it tasted like nothing. Probably wasn’t worth the price (at least 900 yen).
Once we were done looking around, we took a bus back to the station, and headed for dinner. We booked an all-you-can-eat oden place (I think it was an izakaya), and planned to have dinner with all the lab members including the professor, but the professor said that she was too tired to come. So it was just me and the 5 other lab members.
The oden place itself was good. There were various types of oden, which were all good, and also we ordered beer. Again, I ordered cola サワ, which I liked because the taste of alcohol wasn’t strong.
Didn’t take a photo. I promise this will be the last one.
While eating we talked about the conference. The senior who came with her husband was just a few months away from graduation, and told us some tips on networking with others. Basically after introducing ourselves it’s a good idea to introduce our research fields, or in my case field of interest. Other than that we talked about what we did after coming here, and other random stuff. It was fun.
After dinner was done, we said goodbye, and after a quick smoke break (two of the seniors smoked), we headed to do karaoke, which one of the seniors wanted to try out. The seniors sang some Korean song (can’t remember the title), two seniors sang Aimyons 3636 and Marigold. I sang Yonezu Kenshi’s Lemon, 残酷な天使のテーゼ (NGE OST), and Vaundy’s 怪獣の花唄.
We stayed for an hour, we left and returned to our hotel. On the way we stopped by Family Mart. At the hotel, some of the seniors drank more beer they bought from Family Mart and talked about random stuff. It was fun to watch.
And that was the end of the day.
6/24 : CG Week Day 1
Today was the first day of the conference. We woke up and got ready at around 8:40~50, and headed to Kanazawa hotel.
The conference started and 9, and at the beginning it was just introductions, code of conduct and other boring stuff. Next was the best paper award, given to the paper “A Linear Time Algorithm for the Maximum Overlap of Two Convex Polygons Under Translation” by Timothy M. Chan and Isaac M. Hair. The corresponding talk followed immediately.
After this talk there was a coffee break. There were a lot of people there, but I knew no one, and that was the same for the other seniors I was with, so for the most part we were just awkwardly standing around, eating snacks.
After a few more sessions, it was time for lunch break. But before going to lunch, we met with our professor, along with Professor Otfried Cheong, author of Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications. He is a professor I really look up to, so that was nice.
For lunch we went to an onigiri place. I ordered two types of onigiri, one which was literally just rice with something sprinkled all over it. For what looked like just rice, it was actually really good, which was surprising.
After lunch we returned to the conference and continued listening to the sessions.
Once the sessions were over we returned back to our hotel. We had to decide what we were going to eat for dinner, and since there was an okonomiyaki really close to our hotel, we went there.
I forgot what kind of okonomiyaki we ordered, but it was good. I never ate at a place like this (with a giant grill-like thing in the middle), so it was a nice experience. We also ordered beer.
After we were done we returned to our hotel. Two of the seniors went out for a cigarette, while the other two were doing work. The work was about a paper he was working on which was about matching.
Some time passed, and one of the seniors said that he wanted to watch something like a movie. Since he hasn’t watched anime before, me and one of the other seniors looked for something that would be okay as a starter, and settled on One Punch Man.
Guess it wasn’t really his type of film though, which was kind of sad.
Anyway, that was the end of the day.
6/25 : CG Week Day 2
Same as yesterday, we woke up at around 8, got ready, and headed to the conference. There was an invited talk at the beginning, which was about FPT algorithms in computational geometry. This was actually very interesting and fun, and probably one of my favorite talks out of the entire week.
After some sessions it was coffee break. During the coffee break the senior I was with started talking with a person from Tokyo University, called Atsuyuki (first name, I can’t recall his last name), and naturally I started talking with the person he was with, called Inoue (last name, I can’t recall his first name).
They were both from Tokyo University, and were working on their PhD’s. Their field was actually about graph theory and edge coloring, rather than CG, and had a talk planned the next day about topological graph theory. I don’t remember a lot of my conversation with Inoue, but I do remember talking about ICPC and atcoder.
Once coffee break was over, we listened to some more sessions, and it was lunch time. Me and the other seniors were at the first floor, when Atsuyuki and a post-doc from DGIST came to us, asking if it was okay to have lunch together.
So the 7 of us went to the food court in the next building, and decided to have hamburg steak.
It was certainly nice to have a Japanese person with us, since Atsuyuki was able to translate the menu, talk with the waitor and so on, which was a big help.
After returning to the conference, there was still some time left until the next session, so I was able to talk with Atsuyuki. I mostly talked about Japanese, because I always wanted to listen from an actual Japanese person to questions like what the difference between 恋(koi) and 愛(ai) is. It was very fun and interesting.
There were a few more sessions we listened to, and it was almost time for dinner. Unlike the other say, todays dinner was at the conference, where the people at CG Week prepared a banquet so that people can eat and talk with each other.
During the time we had left, one of my seniors worked on his paper, while another senior and I decided to have a closer look at the mall in the neighboring building. So for the first time during this trip, I was able to look around completely freely.
The 4’th floor of the mall had stuff related to entertainment, so that was where I mostly looked around.
In the place where those cardboard cutouts were places was a small corner where they sold manga, but it was too small, and didn’t sell anything I was interested in.
After some looking around, I found a giant gacha station, and a Pokémon center. The Pokémon center was nice, but I didn’t know Pokémon good enough to buy anything.
After searching though, I found that there was a bookstore close by in the station. So I quickly headed there and searched for books. I was mainly looking for お隣の天使様にいつの間にか駄目人間にされていた件 (The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten) light novel 11, and オオカミは月に恋をする (The Wolf Falls in Love with the Moon) manga 1 and 2. The former is quite famous and I was able to find it. However the latter is relatively unknown, and came out recently, so the bookstore sadly didn’t have it.
Returning to the conference, it was time for dinner. It was a little different from what I first imagined, but I have to say, it was pretty good.
There was a lot of food, and also many drinks, such as coke, wine, and beer. Of course, I only drank coke.
There were a lot of people, and I wanted talk to them, but because of my terrible social skills I spent most of the time around my seniors. Also, I said that there was a lot of food, but there were way more people, and thus almost no food was left pretty quickly.
After just standing around and talking to people I knew (including a KAIST undergraduate sophomore I met the day before), I finally mustered up enough courage to talk with someone new.
I talked with (if I remember correctly) a professor from a university in Australia. He introduced himself, and said that his main research area was road networks. I also introduced myself as a freshman, which surprised him, and said that I was interested in geometric algorithms and data structures. He talked about a project that was going on at his university related to ray tracing graphic cards. It was interesting.
I returned to where my seniors were, and got a chance to talk with another person from POSTECH, but from another lab. People were beginning to leave at that point so we also decided to leave. On the way out, we met another woman, who said that her friends liked K-pop, and asked if we were Korean.
We returned to our hotel, and before going to bed, decided to watch a movie. It was a Korean movie (can’t remember the name), and while it was okay, it wasn’t really my style.
Anyway, that was the end of the day.
6/26 : CG Week Day 3
Same thing, wake up at around 8, and go to the conference. We were actually a little late this time. The first talk, which was an invited talk, was about computational origami. It was a topic I first heard about, but was very interesting to listen to. Also, this might be a good time to mention that they had put out some cool stuff to play around with, related to origami.
The also had a rabbit folded from one paper, but I forgot to take a photo of it, sadly.
After some sessions and a coffee break, we went for lunch. This time, instead of the food court we always went to, we decided to go to McDonalds. There was some special menu called a samurai burger, but I just settled with a simple teriyaki burger, since it’s cheap. There wasn’t anything too special about it.
Once lunch was over, it was more sessions. I managed to talk with Inoue a bit more, about his talk that was later today, and also about J-pop and Yorushika, which was nice. Not much happened at the conference today.
For dinner, instead of going to a restaurant, we decided to get food at a store with everyone from the lab, since tomorrow was the last day of the conference and most of us (everyone except me and the head of the lab) would be leaving.
We all met up and headed to the store. I started off by loading a handful of konjak jellies, as that was the one thing my sister told me to get. Then I looked around, and got stuff like sushi and some sort of fried meat. The others also bought beer, but I was a little worried that the store might check my passport if I did. It’s a little late to say this now, but according to the Japanese law, I am not old enough to legally drink, but whatever.
Coming back to the hotel, we laid everything out, and it looked great.
We ate and talked about random stuff, like having relationships, the time when one of the seniors took a trip to Egypt, and so on, which was fun. We also went to the convenience store a few times to refill beer (this time I drank as well), and I found this bag of chips with Miku drawn on it.
Anyway, we talked for a very long time (up to over 3 o’clock), and that was the end of the day.
6/27 : CG Week Day 4
This was the last day of CG Week. We got up at around 8, and went to the conference.
After listening to a few sessions, all of the main sessions were over, and what was left was the awards ceremony, and some additional workshops. However, since most of the lab members had to leave early, and because I didn’t really know the stuff related to any of the workshops, we left early and said goodbye to those who were leaving first.
Then it was just me and one of my seniors. It was around time for lunch, so we decided to go to Omicho market, which is a market full of seafood related stuff, and also pretty close by.
There were a lot of places to eat from, and most of them sold sushi. The prices were very expensive though, so we settled for a place that was relatively cheap. It was still expensive, but it was very good. Also, the senior I was with said he’d pay for mine as well, which I was extremely thankful for.
On the way to the market I saw a bookstore that seemed to have some size, so while my senior went to take a cigarette, I checked it out.
The bookstore was indeed larger than the one I went to before at the station, and I was able to find the second volume of Omori, and the second volume of オオカミは月に恋をする, which I failed to find before. The downside was that apparently the manga was more popular then I initially thought, and the first volume was sold out.
After buying the manga, my senior said that he was going to go to Starbucks and do some work. I didn’t have anything special to do, so I just followed him and read what I bought. Also we saw some interesting stuff on the way.
We stayed at Starbucks for a while, and it was time for dinner. My senior searched for a place to eat, and we decided to go to a place that sold some type of beef (I forgot what it was exactly). I ordered gyudon, and it was probably one of the best meals I had during this trip.
Also, while we were waiting for dinner, we met with the post-doctor from DGIST by total coincidence, and got to talk with him for a bit.
Our original plan was to go to an izakaya after dinner, but both of us were quite tired, so we just stayed at our hotel and called it a day.
And that was the final day of the conference.
6/28 : Return
It was the final day of Japan, and the day we were returning to Korea. We packed our bags, headed out, and went towards the station. The plan was to take a train to Tsuruga, and another to Osaka, where we would have a few hours to look around.
Nothing too special happened on the train rides. Still, it was kind of sad to be going back after all the fun I had.
Once we arrived at Osaka, we first had lunch at a food court. I ordered gyudon, which I forgot to take a photo. My senior ordered some season special menu, but he didn’t seem to like it that much.
After lunch, we had about an hour or two to look around. During this time my senior went to Don Quixote to buy souvenirs, and I headed towards Animate, which was supposed to be a 15 minute walk. However, google map was being shitty and couldn’t properly get my location. So I ended up guessing my way towards Animate. It was also super hot, like almost 40 degrees Celsius. Still, I somehow made it.
I was originally just planning on buying the first volume of オオカミは月に恋をする, which I failed to get at Kanazawa, but the fact that I went through all the trouble just to get one book annoyed me, and I ended up buying 9 other manga. It cost almost 9000 yen, and it was probably the most I spent during the entire trip.
There wasn’t much time, so after going to Animate I immediately returned to the station and met up with my senior. We bought two tickets for a train to Kansai airport, got on the train, and both of us slept during most of the ride.
We arrived at Kansai airport, went through all the steps to board the plane, and for dinner we got something called an onigiri burger. It was just some ham and stuff sandwiched between rice, but it tasted good.
After that it was just waiting and boarding the plane to return to Korea.
And that was the end of the trip.
The entire week at Japan was extremely fun, and I am extremely happy I got to attend CG Week, something I really wanted to do since high school. Therefore I am extremely thankful to professor Eunjin Oh, who made all of this possible, and all the people at her lab for making the trip all the more enjoyable. I hope I can go again in future.
As a final, here is a list of all the books I bought during my trip. There are 13 total.
- お隣の天使様にいつの間にか駄目人間にされていた件 (The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten) - Light Novel volume 11
- お隣の天使様にいつの間にか駄目人間にされていた件 (The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten) - Comic volume 1~5
- Omori volume 2
- ホリミヤ (Horimiya) - Official Fanbook, Page.100
- オオカミは月に恋をする (The Wolf Falls in Love with the Moon) - volume 1~2
- ボーイッシュ彼女が可愛いすぎる (My Boyish Girlfriend is Too Cute) - volume 1~2
Anyways, that’s all for now. Cheers.