Attending Vue Fes Japan

It's been more than 3 years since I visited Japan, but if it were up to me I'd come every year. What I have never done, however, is visit in autumn! I've only visited Japan in summer, but I've heard it's a country very marked by its seasons. So I'm looking forward to seeing this new side of the country.

Now, despite the title of the task, I'm not really coming to Japan only for Vue Fes. I've been meaning to visit Japan in a different season for a while, and I've also been meaning to go back to Kumamoto, where I spent a couple of days in 2016. Given my recent unemployment, and seeing that Vue Fes was coming up, I thought it would be a great opportunity to kill 2 or 3 birds with one stone. I'm not unemployed anymore (though I haven't announced what I'm working on yet), but I'll be able to work remotely. So the trip is on!

There are 2 main things I want to do in Kumamoto. The first one is visiting Reigandō Cave, which is the cave where Miyamoto Musashi spent his last days. If you've been reading my site for a while, you'll already know how much I like all things Musashi. Something else I really like is Manga (and yes, Vagabond is one of my favorites). So it shouldn't surprise you that my other goal in Kumamoto is to visit all 10 One Piece statues. We'll see if I can manage!

Having said that, it's not like I'm not excited for Vue Fes. On the contrary, I'm really looking forward to it! Besides the fact that it's being held in Japan, it also features a keynote by Evan You. And as you may already know, I love Vue. Not only is it my favorite frontend framework, I've also been building a framework for Solid Apps with Vue at its core, and I have finally managed to get a job working with Vue (again, more on that later!). In fact, I'm so excited about this conference that I submitted a couple of proposals for talks. Alas, as you can tell by the lack of my name in the schedule, they weren't accepted 😅. But it should be pretty fun anyway!

I'm just getting ready to board the flight to Tokyo, and I have to say, Kumamoto was awesome! I managed to see everything I wanted, and more.

On the One Piece side; yes, I visited all 10 statues (pictures below). On the one hand, it wasn't that difficult, given that I managed to see the first 5 on the first day (Robin --> Nami --> Zoro --> Usopp --> Franky). On the other hand, it wasn't that easy either, because I had to take multiple trains, buses, and walk a fair amount (I even took a taxi!). By the time I got to Franky, it was already dark :(. Fortunately, I managed to visit it again today, just before going to the airport :).

Given the initial success, I was able to take it easy the rest of the days and mix other activities. On the second day, I visited Jinbe --> Luffy --> Chopper, and Sanji --> Brook on the third. Other than the statues, I found a couple other One Piece-related things I didn't know about. For example, in the Kumamoto Station there is a 2-side mural commemorating the Kumamoto Revival Project (which is the reason the statues exist), and I had the privilege of riding a One Piece Shinkansen for my visit to Fukuoka. Not to mention seeing One Piece stuff basically everywhere :D.

But of course, One Piece wasn't the only reason for my visit to Kumamoto. I also came because of Miyamoto Musashi, and that didn't disappoint either. I started with the visit to Reigando Cave, but I also went to Ganryuujima, the Shimada Museum, and Musashi's Grave. I also used these days to re-read The Book of Five Rings (which is quite short, by the way; I would have re-read Musashi, but that's a bigger commitment). Specially in the first part (Earth), I couldn't help but wonder about how my main craft, programming, is disappearing... And then I realized that Musashi's craft, the Way of the Sword, also disappeared a long time ago. I guess everything is bound to disappear eventually, and we have to move on to newer crafts. At least I'm fortunate that I was already into product, not just coding, and I should be able to make the transition. Though I will miss typing the code myself. I wonder what Musashi would think of all of this (actually, guns already existed in his time, so the sword was already losing its value... He may have been one of those programmers who refuses to use AI 😅).

Anyway, all of these places are very much apart, and certainly not near the center or any other "hot spots". In any other situation, that could have been a problem. But in my case, I'd say this added to the experience, because it also meant that I spent most of my time in rural Japan :D. I have to say, I've lived my whole life in Spain, but in many aspects, there's nowhere I feel more at home than in Japan. All the geek stuff aside, everything is so well organized, people are so polite and helpful, and the food is so good anywhere you go. Of course, I know Japan also has its dark side (overwork, etc.), but my experience every time I've visited has been outstanding. Looking forward to enjoying the 2 weeks left!

That's it for now. If you were expecting to read something about Vue, I'm sorry that you're suddenly learning all about One Piece and Musashi 😅. I promise that my next update will be all about Vue Fes, which is now 2 days away (or not, if something comes up that takes over my next update as well 🙈, but I doubt it given that I've already spent a lot of time in Tokyo before).

Pictures

And just like that, VueFes is over!

I really enjoyed this conference, it was very well organized and had a good variety of topics. Unfortunately for me, though, most of the presentations were in Japanese, and the live translation to English... let's just say it wasn't great 😅. So I ended up skipping most of the Japanese presentations, and spent a couple of hours working at the rest area 🤷.

Regardless of that, I wasn't too idle. I managed to speak to a couple of interesting people, and also with some core contributors to some of my favorite projects: Vue, ElysiaJS, AniList, etc. Still, I can't say I'm satisfied with my networking, because I definitely could have spoken with more people. Sure, the language barrier was a problem, but to be honest I didn't make too much of an effort to speak to more people. This has been a problem at most conferences I attended, specially when there isn't an official "ice-breaker" or networking game.

But, the few people I spoke with, it was fun! Of course, whenever people asked me about my work, I talked about Solid... and very few people knew about it 😅. I'm still amazed that Solid is so obscure given that it is a project by the same person who created the World Wide Web... and that was at a conference full of developers making web applications! So yeah, we Solid developers have a rough road ahead.

On the bright side, and by pure coincidence, a couple of days ago I found out that Tim's book has recently been released in Japan! So I got my hands on one, and had the privilege of seeing how they misspelled my name 🙈:

私はテクノロジーを支える人たちに刺激を受けている。彼らの想い、エネルギー、決意こそがより良い未来への原動力だ。ノエル・デマーティンはここ5年間、Solidアプリケーションの開発に取り組んでいる。「Solidはウェブにとって（そしてソフトウエア業界全般にとって）最善の選択肢だと今でも思っている。成功する見込みがわずかしかなくても、挑戦しなかったら後悔する」と書いている。

(According to this, my name is "Noel Demartin")

So yeah, all in all, the conference was good, and I'd definitely attend again if I find another excuse to visit Japan at the same time. But I don't think I'd come to Japan just to attend it. Even today, my favorite conference is still FOSDEM.