Star Wars Celebration Japan, Day Three.
I still haven't gotten the video from my student that I'm waiting for, but I found another view of it on youtube. The entry is now complete... Update: that video clip is now included.
Star Wars Celebration Japan, Day 3.
I woke up far too early and couldn’t get back to sleep again, so it turned out to be another day short on sleep. I sent an email to one of my students who was coming down for the convention for the day giving him the train connections to get from the airport to the convention center, saving him some time looking at maps and such in the stations.
Once again, I got on the bus at 8am, this time with only one of the staff from Kotobukiya. Turns out the other guys had been sent back to work. We were also joined by a couple other people from the same hotel; we all recognized each other from the previous two days of the convention.
In line, I was joined by Yukiko and Sayaka from yesterday. Anthony Daniels walked by again, as did several of the other actors. Jeremy Bulloch recognized me and we exchanged a quick word as he was walking by. I then pulled Watson, my woodbaby puppet out of the bag. I had been debating bringing him or not, but decided to do it anyway. I put him on and started getting a lot of stares (in a good sort of way), and after a few minutes, people started coming up to take pictures.
Later on in the day, as I was walking around with Watson on my shoulder, I was getting a lot of picture requests, and a lot of people coming up to see it up close. Even Steven Sansweet, head of fan relations for Lucasfilm, came over to take a closer look, and we spoke for a few minutes. But that’s getting ahead of things…
After standing in line with the puppet for a while, I decided to take a walk up and down the other lines where people were waiting for the simple day pass or the one day premium pass. More looks, lots of pictures, lots of people talking to me. I’ve found that a lot of people who want to come up and talk to a foreigner but won’t because they are too shy, find the puppet a good ice breaker.
I got back in line and hung out with my line friends until the doors opened. Upon entering, Sayaka, Yukiko, and I made a beeline for the snowspeeder replica.
Yukiko, by the way, got to ask Mark Hamill a question at his second interview (which I’d skipped, having caught the first one). She was very excited because he gave her a hug, as well as the water bottle he’d had on stage. She now has it signed, and later today she got her photograph taken with him.
From the snowspeeder, we went our separate ways. I counted up how much money I had left, and decided to splurge, too expensive or no. I got in line for Mark Hamill. The wait was just over an hour. My student arrived at the convention while I was in line, and we met up thanks to cell phone technology. I gave him the David Prowse autograph ticket I’d picked up for him, so he didn’t have to wait in the ticket line and could go straight to the autograph line, and we waited in our separate lines. He finished before I did, so I sent him over to the Star Wars shop so he could pick up the goods he wanted. I was still in line when he finished that (I’d waited nearly an hour to buy stuff the first day, the lines were nearly non-existent for the premium pass holders by the third day. Then again, a couple of the items were sold out, too), so I sent him over to see the Clone Wars preview. I finally got to the front of the line for Mark Hamill, and I prefaced it with “With all the toys, books, and posters I’ve got, this is what I’m asking to get signed.” He looked at it, and said he missed working with Jim Henson and Frank Oz so much… we talked about the Muppet show a little bit, I got some nice comments on Watson, and I told him I liked the voice work he’d done for the Batman animated series and several video games. We got to talking about what I was doing in Japan as well, and again I started to feel a little bit bad because of the other people in line were waiting, but… I was talking to Mark Hamill (I’M TALKING TO LUKE SKYWALKER!!!!!!!), and he was interested enough to be asking me questions. Take the opportunities where you can. By the way, he said that my DVD was the first one of those he’d ever been asked to sign, so WOOHOO!
From there I floated over to the Young Jedi Academy stage, where a group was taking some kids through “lightsaber training” to catch another show by a fan group that dresses up as Jedi and does some lightsaber practice.
They did a couple of displays, then called for three volunteers. My hand shot up, and I was picked. They gave us three toy lightsabers, and had us practice four blocks, then put us in the middle of the stage one at a time. The first was a mom who was there with her kids. The costumed Jedi came running at her, the MC called out which blocks she should do, and she tried to keep up. Then they came at her again, and let her strike them all down. The next guy (I have his email, he’s a dentist in Tokyo) did the same routine, but was much more proficient at it. Then came my turn. They’d given me on of the toy lightsabers that collapses back into the handle, so I had closed it down and walked up to the center spot, where I flicked it open, gave it a twirl, and took up Obi-Wan’s Episode III ready stance. The crowd loved it. Then they attacked, the MC called out blocks, and I did another flourish at the end of it and came back into the Obi-Wan pose. As they attacked, I did the lateral swings they were looking for, but added a 360 degree turn for the last one. Then one of the Jedi came back at me again, and we played for a couple of seconds until he gave me the obvious opening to which I threw a kick (clearly missing, just a play kick). He played along with it and staggered back, came forward again, I did the Jedi Force Throw action, which he again played along with, and then it was over. The crowd went wild for me, it was awesome. Turns out my student had finished the Clone Wars preview and caught my stint on stage with the video mode of his digital camera. He’ll be giving me a copy of it, and I’ll link to it later.
And link to another one on youtube... You can follow the link back to see some of the groups' display at their youtube site. This section is the three of us from the audience getting pulled up on stage. The section of me going through the routine starts about 5 minutes in.
Somebody else got quite a few good photos of it here, too.
From there I got in the theater for the Anthony Daniels talk. He’s a very good storyteller, and very funny and interesting. A copy of his talk can be found here: Just one note, though. His George Lucas voice adds a lot to the story, which doesn’t really come through in the link. When he quotes George Lucas, just imagine something akin to someone doing a Steven Wright impression and lowering the energy level even more.
After a bit more walking around, I got back in line for the Ray Park (Darth maul) interview. It was interesting, but unfortunately for the Japanese audience, he had the same idiotic translator whose Japanese was really good but couldn't tell a story for crap that Mark Hamill had on the first day. 7 seemed to be the magic number for Ray Park. He said he started martial arts at age 7. He watched the Star Wars movies at age 7. He moved to London at age 7. Just about everything else came back to his seventh year somehow.
After the Ray Park talk, there was only about half an hour left of the day before they closed the doors. My student and I walked around a little bit, and I said farewell to several of the people I’d met over the last couple of days, and then it was time to go. My student went off to visit his parents who live somewhere in the Tokyo area, I spoke with several other fellow fans, then made my way back to the hotel, where I crashed. My alarm was set for 4:45am the next morning, since I’d have to get up early to start the trek back to Chitose. A bit of post-convention depression set in, not wanting to have to go back to “real life”, but I dropped off to sleep remembering the fun, and looking forward to seeing Nana on the morrow.
Star Wars Celebration Japan, Day 3.
I woke up far too early and couldn’t get back to sleep again, so it turned out to be another day short on sleep. I sent an email to one of my students who was coming down for the convention for the day giving him the train connections to get from the airport to the convention center, saving him some time looking at maps and such in the stations.
Once again, I got on the bus at 8am, this time with only one of the staff from Kotobukiya. Turns out the other guys had been sent back to work. We were also joined by a couple other people from the same hotel; we all recognized each other from the previous two days of the convention.
In line, I was joined by Yukiko and Sayaka from yesterday. Anthony Daniels walked by again, as did several of the other actors. Jeremy Bulloch recognized me and we exchanged a quick word as he was walking by. I then pulled Watson, my woodbaby puppet out of the bag. I had been debating bringing him or not, but decided to do it anyway. I put him on and started getting a lot of stares (in a good sort of way), and after a few minutes, people started coming up to take pictures.
Later on in the day, as I was walking around with Watson on my shoulder, I was getting a lot of picture requests, and a lot of people coming up to see it up close. Even Steven Sansweet, head of fan relations for Lucasfilm, came over to take a closer look, and we spoke for a few minutes. But that’s getting ahead of things…
After standing in line with the puppet for a while, I decided to take a walk up and down the other lines where people were waiting for the simple day pass or the one day premium pass. More looks, lots of pictures, lots of people talking to me. I’ve found that a lot of people who want to come up and talk to a foreigner but won’t because they are too shy, find the puppet a good ice breaker.
I got back in line and hung out with my line friends until the doors opened. Upon entering, Sayaka, Yukiko, and I made a beeline for the snowspeeder replica.
Yukiko, by the way, got to ask Mark Hamill a question at his second interview (which I’d skipped, having caught the first one). She was very excited because he gave her a hug, as well as the water bottle he’d had on stage. She now has it signed, and later today she got her photograph taken with him.
From the snowspeeder, we went our separate ways. I counted up how much money I had left, and decided to splurge, too expensive or no. I got in line for Mark Hamill. The wait was just over an hour. My student arrived at the convention while I was in line, and we met up thanks to cell phone technology. I gave him the David Prowse autograph ticket I’d picked up for him, so he didn’t have to wait in the ticket line and could go straight to the autograph line, and we waited in our separate lines. He finished before I did, so I sent him over to the Star Wars shop so he could pick up the goods he wanted. I was still in line when he finished that (I’d waited nearly an hour to buy stuff the first day, the lines were nearly non-existent for the premium pass holders by the third day. Then again, a couple of the items were sold out, too), so I sent him over to see the Clone Wars preview. I finally got to the front of the line for Mark Hamill, and I prefaced it with “With all the toys, books, and posters I’ve got, this is what I’m asking to get signed.” He looked at it, and said he missed working with Jim Henson and Frank Oz so much… we talked about the Muppet show a little bit, I got some nice comments on Watson, and I told him I liked the voice work he’d done for the Batman animated series and several video games. We got to talking about what I was doing in Japan as well, and again I started to feel a little bit bad because of the other people in line were waiting, but… I was talking to Mark Hamill (I’M TALKING TO LUKE SKYWALKER!!!!!!!), and he was interested enough to be asking me questions. Take the opportunities where you can. By the way, he said that my DVD was the first one of those he’d ever been asked to sign, so WOOHOO!
From there I floated over to the Young Jedi Academy stage, where a group was taking some kids through “lightsaber training” to catch another show by a fan group that dresses up as Jedi and does some lightsaber practice.
They did a couple of displays, then called for three volunteers. My hand shot up, and I was picked. They gave us three toy lightsabers, and had us practice four blocks, then put us in the middle of the stage one at a time. The first was a mom who was there with her kids. The costumed Jedi came running at her, the MC called out which blocks she should do, and she tried to keep up. Then they came at her again, and let her strike them all down. The next guy (I have his email, he’s a dentist in Tokyo) did the same routine, but was much more proficient at it. Then came my turn. They’d given me on of the toy lightsabers that collapses back into the handle, so I had closed it down and walked up to the center spot, where I flicked it open, gave it a twirl, and took up Obi-Wan’s Episode III ready stance. The crowd loved it. Then they attacked, the MC called out blocks, and I did another flourish at the end of it and came back into the Obi-Wan pose. As they attacked, I did the lateral swings they were looking for, but added a 360 degree turn for the last one. Then one of the Jedi came back at me again, and we played for a couple of seconds until he gave me the obvious opening to which I threw a kick (clearly missing, just a play kick). He played along with it and staggered back, came forward again, I did the Jedi Force Throw action, which he again played along with, and then it was over. The crowd went wild for me, it was awesome. Turns out my student had finished the Clone Wars preview and caught my stint on stage with the video mode of his digital camera. He’ll be giving me a copy of it, and I’ll link to it later.
Click to viewAnd link to another one on youtube... You can follow the link back to see some of the groups' display at their youtube site. This section is the three of us from the audience getting pulled up on stage. The section of me going through the routine starts about 5 minutes in.
Somebody else got quite a few good photos of it here, too.
From there I got in the theater for the Anthony Daniels talk. He’s a very good storyteller, and very funny and interesting. A copy of his talk can be found here: Just one note, though. His George Lucas voice adds a lot to the story, which doesn’t really come through in the link. When he quotes George Lucas, just imagine something akin to someone doing a Steven Wright impression and lowering the energy level even more.
After a bit more walking around, I got back in line for the Ray Park (Darth maul) interview. It was interesting, but unfortunately for the Japanese audience, he had the same idiotic translator whose Japanese was really good but couldn't tell a story for crap that Mark Hamill had on the first day. 7 seemed to be the magic number for Ray Park. He said he started martial arts at age 7. He watched the Star Wars movies at age 7. He moved to London at age 7. Just about everything else came back to his seventh year somehow.
After the Ray Park talk, there was only about half an hour left of the day before they closed the doors. My student and I walked around a little bit, and I said farewell to several of the people I’d met over the last couple of days, and then it was time to go. My student went off to visit his parents who live somewhere in the Tokyo area, I spoke with several other fellow fans, then made my way back to the hotel, where I crashed. My alarm was set for 4:45am the next morning, since I’d have to get up early to start the trek back to Chitose. A bit of post-convention depression set in, not wanting to have to go back to “real life”, but I dropped off to sleep remembering the fun, and looking forward to seeing Nana on the morrow.