MonkeHacks #60

First of all - sorry for skipping a week! It’s been a really crazy two weeks. I’ve had little to no time at all to do any kind of administrative work, so by extension the newsletter did not get written. I write this from a bullet train heading to Sendai - I’m on my way to visit my relatives there.

So much news to share - let’s dig in. I’ll talk about the Google LHE, the rest of the Japan trip so far, among other things. We’ve been taking little clips of the adventure to string together a vlog, so I hope I can share this journey with you all in the near future.

Weekly Ideas / Notes 

• The big one: alongside Rhynorater, Rez0 and Lupin, I won MVH at the Google LLM Bugswat LHE in Tokyo! The scope (which I cannot disclose) was quite limited but we managed to find quite a lot. Restrictive circumstances force creativity and that’s more or less how we dug deep and found some great bugs. Our team walked away with MVH and Most Surprising/Creative Bug, as well as the eternal Best Meme award. I will absolutely write about the Most Creative bug once it’s fixed.

• I landed at 7am in Tokyo on the first day, so I went to Yoyogi Park in Tokyo with Nathan (njcve) and Jim (green-jam) and we chilled out there for a while to kill some time. We had one social day and then two event days following that, which took place in the giant Google offices in Shibuya. The offices have an excellent view of the Shibuya Scramble Crossing. Google’s offices are located in the Shibuya Stream building, which is one of the more towering skyscrapers in the Shibuya district. On each day, we commuted for 15 minutes by train from our Airbnb in Meguro to Shibuya station and grabbed breakfast on the way. At night, we hacked on the LHE scope, and Roni pulled an all-nighter to work on his incredible research. There’s something liberating about staying near a convenience store and getting snacks at 1am to fuel some productive hacking.

• After the event we spared a day to do a few nice things in Tokyo - we met Justin’s old friends from when he lived in Yokohama, and we all went to an onsen. There was also a 100-degree Celsius sauna in this onsen, which was brutally hot (that’s 212 degrees Fahrenheit for you American nerds). rez0 is scarily accustomed to cold baths, and I question if he even feels temperature. They were all lovely people. A few of us had a late night ramen.

• Following this all, we travelled down to Osaka. In this case “we” being myself, Roni (lupin), Kodai (staff on Caido) and Sou (mokusou); Justin and Joseph both have family responsibilities, so they left after the event - but not before we all had some expensive grilled meat in Haneda Airport. It was excellent.

• Once in Osaka, we had okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and yakisoba - all great dishes from the Kansai region of Japan. It’s hard to describe just how hard the yakisoba and other foods hit after a long period of intense work. The weather was awful and it was around 13 degrees Celsius while we were in Osaka, with random downpours and a strong breeze. I also managed to drag Sou bouldering, and he enjoyed it. We went to a karaoke bar run by an acquaintance of mine, and we sang, and Lupin played the drums very skilfully.

• A few days later, we took the regional train to Kyoto. We visited the Toji temple and had dango and hojicha. Hojicha is a leafy brown tea, but Lupin told us that it “tastes like mud”. For lunch that day, we sat down in a small, well-rated sushi joint run by an old guy - and wow. It was the best sushi of my life. I’m not a huge sushi person but even I could tell that this sushi was crazy good. Ironically enough, our next stop was Kyoto Aquarium. They had seals and dolphins and Japanese giant salamanders, which are critically endangered if I’m remembering them correctly. We were all quite exhausted by this point.

• The next day was Roni’s birthday, but he was unfortunately a bit ill and was more or less bedridden all day. Sou, Kodai and I decided to go to the bamboo forest in Arashiyama because it was a lovely 20 degrees Celsius, which is the optimal temperature to be exploring a city. In short sleeve shirts, we walked through the bamboo grove and admired the surrounding area. When it comes to these attractions, the crowded tourist areas tend to peter out pretty fast if you push past the Instagrammable spots and into the unknown. We walked for another 20 minutes along the same path and arrived at a secluded temple. It was almost empty so we sat there in peace and took in the silence and the sounds of nature. It was incredibly peaceful. We went bouldering after, and the gym had a relatively high standard. We headed back to the Airbnb afterwards and went to a sento, which is a kind of small onsen that doesn’t use hot spring water. It really helped with muscle recovery.

• We travelled to Kobe the day after that to have some beef. We had some A5 grade Kobe beef, which was almost a spiritual experience for me. It was so, so good. We killed some time sleeping on the grass in the sunshine in Merikan Park by the bay and we climbed up an observation tower. Following that we returned to Yokohama by train and parted ways.

• And that takes us to now - Sendai. I’m taking time off until May, so it’ll be a short issue next week. We took clips of our adventures so I’m hoping that it’ll turn into a cool video.

Resources

It was… oddly quiet!

• Hacker Spotlight - Rhynorater: A good post about a good friend.