unforum

[tsumetaihana]

Hi, I'd been following this thread after reading about it on Mari's blog ( http://smt.blogs.com/mari_diary/2006/08/six_degrees_of_.html ) yesterday.

This is probably just a strange coincidence, but I decided to run with catherwood's info and look up Seijo College.

[DarkHuman]

here's a older season too.

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/16a2a/1d0e4/

just search for weiss and kaysersberg

[Thomas Bookmore]

[TascoDLX]

[ramsfan]

Thomas
Thanks for doing this. My French is OK, but perhaps not up to explaining something as odd as this. I guess I was hoping that some kind of trail had been left there. If he was just an ordinary tourist and the photo could have been taken anywhere it may not help, but if he was around the place long enough to have made some mark it may help enormously. I'd emphasise the international scope of the game, number of competitiors, last card and now we're all focusing on your town, in the hope that it will pique enough civic interest to help us. But if they're gearing up for the forthcoming wine festival or whatever they may give you short shrift.
EDIT Oh and aliendial, have you positioned searchers all round the globe ready to strike when the cube location is discovered?

[Dragonscales]

I'm still a bit suspicious - do we actually know what we will be typing in as the answer yet? The place, the time?

Ben

[ixalon]

[tc]

I found about Seijo Gakuen and managed to find a website created by/for ex-Seijo students in Alsace. So I sent an e-mail to the person in charge of this association last night. So far I have not received any reply. (He must think I am a lunatic, though)

They have 151 members who are currently registered in the association.
Looks as though they are having a reunion on 23rd September.

For everybody's interest, I will attach the link as below. But I am afraid it is all in Japanese. There was no member list in this website and I couldn't find anything associated with the name "Satoshi".

http://fine.ap.teacup.com/applet/lycee_seijo/msgcate2/archive

[Thomas Bookmore]

Just got off the phone with the Tourist office in Kaysersberg. Time for a
heads-up !

The man I was on the phone with confirmed that the picture was likely to have been taken in the Kaysersberg area (showed him the website). Not a very touristic place from what he could see, but the architecture and landscape definitely felt familiar to him.

About Seijo College and Japanese citizens in the area : the reason why the college was running and why there seemed to be so many Japanese peeps there was because of Japanese companies Sony and Ricoh, who would send their employees to their European branches.

Eventually, European employees would be properly trained and less and less Japanese people would come all the way to work there. Since these Japanese citizens would come to live there with their families and children, they also went back home with them : Seijo college closed in 2003 (not 2005 ) because of the lack of pupils (and that's a pity ; it was a beautiful campus).

Firms Sony and Ricoh have now relocated respectively in Ribeauville and Colmar. I'll try to give them a call later today, eventually pass the site adress on. I'll also look into a 'former students of Seijo' association, but I'm not too optimistic on this one right now.

Cheers, Thomas.

[ixalon]

[Dragonscales]

[Dragonscales]

I mean the website below Satoshi on the www.billion2one.org website.

:p

Ben

[Thomas Bookmore]

[ramsfan]

Thanks very much for doing that Thomas. Having looked at lots of Google images of Kaysersberg I feel more sure it's there than the guy living there. Can't imagine every Alsace town has a similar grouping of riverside properties. I guess we could email Ricoh and Sony in Japan, cos it does seem quite an out of the way place for a Japanese tourist to be by chance. However I realise I'm regarding it as an ordinary picture whereas it may have a particular significance to the game, i.e he could have been sent there to get the photo, in which case any links may be spurious.

[Thomas Bookmore]

Got off the phone with the Sony Alsace branch. Firm policy is that they don't give out any details about any former employees of the company :p

I reached the Ricoh company, but their human resources office is away on vacation until September. Firm policy on employees' personal details will probably be the same though !

Just to make sure, I pulled an in-text search through Google on both company's sites - keyword 'Satoshi' returned nothing.

What to do what to do...

-EDIT-
Pulled a quick search on japanese cultural associations in Alsace, and came up with a short list that can be found at http://japondestras.free.fr/ I'll start emailing them all, and see if they can forward our request or help us. Fingers crossed !