Ippoippo

Yesterday, we saw the main display of the Art of Star Wars show in Japan, in the International Forum in Tokyo.

Whereas the show in Meguro mainly had Episode 3 derived drawings, the IF show covered a lot from both trilogies. There were a LOT of static displays, including the ‘life size’ vehicles used in making Epsiodes 2 and 3 (Bail Organa’s Speeder (Ep3), Anakin’s Star Fighter (Ep3), Obi-Wan’s Star Fighter (Ep2) and the Yellow speeder from Episode 2). There were LOADS of the models used as well in the making of Episodes 4-6. The Star Destroyer model was fecking huge!!!

One thing I was kinda shocked by is finding out how small Natalie Portman is! Her white Padme costume from Episode 2 was there. She’s tiny!!!

After wandering around the exhibition Yuko shocked me, and suggested that we go and watch Episode 3 again! Had planned on watching tomorrow after Japanese class (which I’m doing in the day this week, since I’m on holiday)… but thought what the hell.

Today, we visited Meguro (目黒区美術館) to take a peek at the Art of Star Wars display. No photos, as cameras were not allowed. There was a large section dedicated to Episode 3, but there was also a room with stuff from Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. Together with some prints of concept art work, there were some props, models and costumes from the films.
Most impressive was seeing Peter Mayhew’s Chewbacca costume. Feck… that man was tall!! Likewise, Ian McDirmid seems to be a bit of a shorty. His Emperor Palpatine grey cloak seemed pretty short to me.

There is also another show over at Tokyo’s International Forum (東京国際フォーラム), which we will visit tomorrow. We had planned on going today, but on the way we got distracted by a pub! Damn hot weather, and needed a nice cool beer!

Rather bizarre. George Lucas and gang have showed up in Tokyo to promote Star Wars Episode 3. Just seems wierd because, I saw it almost two weeks ago now, there were more preview showings last Saturday as well I believe. Surely, they should have been here for the first of the preview showings???

Well, it’s not doing it now, but from about 19:00 last night until 10 minutes ago, its been tipping it down here.
Temperature has come down a bit as well, only 23 degrees (C) today! Got summer type temperature for the UK, but more like a mid-May temperature in this part of the world.

It’s certainly very different to the weather this time one year ago! (Let me see, about this time last year, I was down in Toi with the in-laws, on a “Welcome to Japan” holiday… sweating like a horrible sweaty thing!).

Yesterday was kinda cool. Yuko’s mum and dad came over to visit, as they Yuko’s mum wanted to return her kimono (and also a box full of Yuko’s football shirts from World Cup 2002!). Yuko however, made me cook Roast Chicken for them, so thank goodness it wasn’t as hot as it would normally be at this time of year.

Star Wars Episode 4 was on Japanese TV last night, so we thought we’d watch it with Japanese dubbing. Actually, I did laugh during the opening. Quite often on Japanese TV, they’ll stick up the main Cast list in both katakana script and romaji, and usually they dispense with the end credits for Western films (since not many people can read them). How I chuckled to see Obi-Wan Kenobi was acted by a chap called “Arec Guiness”. Me, childish, yep!
For some other reason they’d edited parts of the film as well. The sequence when Beru calls over to Luke to make sure the droids can speak “Botchi” disappeared. So did the horrible whining of Luke, “But I was going to Toshi station to pick up some Power Convertors”. Hell, I worried myself when I actually noticing these bits missing as well. Feck, I’m a geek!
What was fun, was seeing how much of the Japanese I could actually understand. It helped a lot knowing what they were saying anyway in English.