After spending time in the Far East, USC senior Michael Caloz has reached a conclusion.

“Japan has permeated American pop culture,” he said. “The samurai is just as recognizable to Western youth today as the European knight. The Japanese influence on the West is perhaps most pronounced in our electronic media.”

Caloz won a Research Study Abroad scholarship to study in Tokyo last fall. The RSA scholarship is offered through the East Asian Studies Center and is funded by a grant from the Freeman Foundation. Scholarship recipients take study abroad classes, including intensive language training, and are expected to conduct independent research under the guidance of a USC professor.

Caloz is a double major in East Asian languages and cultures (“Basically, Japanese,” he said) and interactive media (“Basically, video games,” he added). When he was designing his research, Caloz decided to combine his two interests: He developed a project comparing the video game industry and gaming cultures of the United States and Japan.

His research methods were simple and direct. “I pretty much just kept a notepad with me,” he said. Caloz visited arcades and gaming shows, but he did not have to go out of his way to gather research material. In Japan, he said, games are much more accepted among a much wider demographic. For example, “Middle-aged women play Gameboys on the subway,” he said, “and nobody thinks it’s weird.”

One of the highlights of Caloz’s time abroad was the Tokyo Game Show, the second biggest gaming conference in the world. The largest is Los Angeles’ E3, or Electronic Entertainment Expo. E3 is open only to members of the industry, while the Tokyo Game Show opens to the public on its second day.

Japanese gamers who attend the Tokyo conference are fanatic about “cosplay,” or dressing up like characters from their favorite video games. The tradition is encouraged by the conference. “They had all these booths set up so people could change when they got there,” Caloz said. “And then each person has a routine. When you ask to take a picture with one of them, they’ll go through a whole series of the character’s poses from the game.”

“It’s really much different from America,” Caloz said. “Gaming conventions are sort of geek culture here. But this is the thing to do in Japan.”

Do you know of someone who takes learning, especially undergraduate research, beyond classroom walls? If so, please e-mail Professor Mark Kann at mkann@usc.edu to suggest a feature for this column.