If Star Wars Was Set In Japan……

1. There just wouldn’t be a rebellion against the Empire.

2. Mos Eisley would have a lot more speeder accidents.

3. The deicison to hunt the droids would take the Empire years.

4. There would be a new emperor every 12-18 months.

5. Admiral Motti would have been let off the hook after apologizing with a deep bow rather than being force choked.

6. Local hunters would kill and eat the Sarlacc and claim it was both “culturally important” and “scientific research”.

7. Han and Chewie would turn themselves into the authorities despite the fact that the investigators had absolutely no clue how to catch them.

8. Textbooks would fail to mention the “Alderaan incident” but, when pressed, the writers will claim it was done to alleviate poverty on the planet.

9. Darth Vader would have tentacles and his interrogation of Leia would have been……..erm, different.

10. Every non-human looking alien would have big eyes, huge t*ts and not wear much.

11. Dagobah would be completely covered in concrete with vending machines as far as the eye can see.

12. Mace Windu would have to smile more or everyone would think he was “kowai” (scary).

13. The locals would constantly ask Han Solo stupid questions like “Do you have Ewoks on your planet?” and “Can you eat Tauntaun?”

14. Princess Leia would wear her metal bikini on Hoth whilst constantly saying “samui” (cold).

15. The Millenium Falcon would have a line of furry ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and ‘Hello Kitty’ toys in the cockpit.

16. Greedo would still be alive as neither he nor Han would dare to shoot first and upset the Wa.

17. Speeder bikes would veer all over the place as their pilots tried to ride them while holding an umbrella in one hand and sending an e-mail on their phone with the other.

18. Admiral Ackbar would be a delicacy.

19. The members of the cantina band would also be on every single commercial and TV show, despite having no discernable singing or acting talent whatsoever.

20. Princess Leia, as pretty much the only female in the entire galaxy, would have to get up ridiculously early in the morning to make lunch boxes for everyone.

21. The dark side would have it’s origins in Korea.

22. The death star would have thousands of unprotected weak spots as the bureaucracy argued over whose responsibility it was to fix them. The sheer volume of paperwork generated would take the bulk of the stormtrooper ranks just to haul back and forth between departments.

23. No-one would leave their home planet except to vist nearby, safety planets where everybody could speak their language.

24. Han Solo would still live with his parents.

25. There would only be `Japanooine` All else would simply be referred to as `Outsideraan`

26. Stormtroopers would never leave their starships except to check Outsideraanians speeders and ID badges.

27. The galaxy wide fireworks display at the end of Episode VI would have disastrous consequences as everyone shouted “Sugoooooooooooi” at once while furiously clapping their hands one inch in front of their faces. The shock wave would crumble most planetary infrastructure…but nobody would notice until the show was over.

28. The giant worm thing that lives in the asteroid cave would definitely be pixelated.

29. Greedo and Han would never be able have their conversation in the Cantina. Although Han would have studied Greedo’s language for 6 years in school, he wouldn’t be able to hold a basic conversation and would just nod his head the whole time instead….. and then he’d complain to the Mos Eisley cantina staff.

30. Luke and Leia would never be born because Anakin wasn’t interested in sex and thought relationships were ‘mendokusai’ (troublesome).

31. ‘May the force be with you’ would become ‘May you not disturb the wa’

32. Only certain people would be able to appreciate the changing seasons, or eat food with sticks.

33. There would be dire need for ‘women only’ escape pods.

34. Han Solo would constantly be complemented on his proficiency with a blaster and asked if they have blasters on his home planet.

35. The ewoks would compliment C3PO on his Japanese Ewokian ability, but then comment to each other about he still sounded like a forienger, and the ewok language of clicks and whistles is very difficult, if not the most difficult language in the Empire.

36. Death Stars would be getting built at the rate of one a week, only to be torn down after a few years and rebuilt again in a week. They’d have column upon column of neon signs going up the side of them, huge TV screens broadcasting the latest intergalactic hits from the Imperial charts (I-Pop), and lots of cute girls in Tie Fighters flying around outside handing out tissues.

37. Travelling by hyperspace would be a real drag during rush-hours, with thousands upon thousands of spacecrafts all piling in there.

38. Other questions the Ewoks would ask Han would include “Where are you from?”, “Why did you come to Endor?”, “Do you like Endorian food?”, “Do you like Ewoks?”, “Can you speak Ewokian?”, and “When are you going back to Tatooine?”. Han would get extremely riled by this, smile politely, then go and bitch about it to Chewie afterwards.

39. Boba fett would have to wait until Han Solo got a face change before catching him.

40. Older Ewoks would explain to Outsideerians that there are four seasons and constantly ask if their planet has four seasons too.

41. The secret plans to the Death Star would not be hidden in R2D2. Leia would write it all on her hands!

42. One of the most common beginnings to Ewok sentences would be “We Ewoks…”

43. Or “On Endor…”. The Endor way of doing things would always be the best, despite the fact that none of them had ever been more than 5km away from their home tree and seen any other life forms in generations.

44. The people living on the planet with the second biggest economy in the galaxy would sit at their desks looking busy for all hours of the day, yet actually achieving very little, while smaller less developed planets slowly but surely catch them up and overtake them.

45. There would be one or two storm troopers at work building the Death Star, while 20 or 30 others guided starships around them in exactly the same pattern as the landing strips and lights already placed there for the exact same purpose.

46. Travel more than 20 miles, and you would need C3PO and all 6 million of his languages and dialects to get around.

47. The Jedi schools would be full of teachers who could`t actually use a light sabre but knew all the theory behind it so everyone would ace it on the written test but fail miserably at the thrust and parry in practical usage. To remedy this the alliance would import thousands of “native Jedis” but would resist any attempts at real teaching.

48. Padawans would just say “muzukashii”, “dekinai” or “lightsaber no tsukaikata zen zen wakannai!”.

49. Nobody would ever notice Vader’s breathing due to all the snot-snorting, noodle-slurping and teeth-sucking.

50. Outsideraans would comment on many things but would be told they couldnt possibly understand as they werent Ewoks.

52. Whilst rushing to escape from the Giant Space Worm the the Millennium Falcon would already be full so Han et al would have to reverse themselves on at the top of the boarding ramp pushing their way on in the process.

53. Luke and Ben Kenobi would remove their shoes when they enter the Cantina.

54. The garbage in the trash compactor would have been properly separated.

55. Stormtroopers would never even draw their blasters.

56. The Battle of Hoth would be postponed due to it being “Samui!”

57. The stormtrooper would say “itai” when he smacks his head on the doorframe.

58. The Millenium Falcon wouldn’t be able to blast off until other spaceships have arrived so as not to upset the flight timetables.

59. The cantina band at Mos Eisley wouldn’t have been playing instruments. They would have been lip-synching and dancing choeographically.

60. Vader: “Luke, I am your father”
Luke: “eeeeeeee”

61. The names would be changed to Luke-kun, Han-chan, Chew-chan, Leia-chan (she`s very cute), Darth-sama, Yoda-kun (technically speaking he should be sama given his standing but he is just too kawaii to not be called kun or chan). Lando would just be called Land.

62. The Millennium Falcon would be shortened to Mi-fa, speedbike becomes spi-bai, Landspeeder, la-spi and so on. Everyone would refer to their blasters as burasutaa-chan.

63. All the AT-ATs would have baskets on them.

64. Han and Luke would hold umbrellas on the remote ice-world of Hoth.

65. Luke would utter the word “oishii” before drinking his blue milk.

66. Luke Skywalker would never, ever turn off the GPS Navi system in his X-wing fighter.

67. Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader would bow before their dual.

68. Luke and Uncle Owen would have bough their droids from ‘Droid Off’ rather than from Jawas.

69. Darth Vader would have one of those vaporiser things from ‘Tokyu Hands’ to sort out that terrible rasping throat.

70. Luke would have been too busy going to juku to shoot wamprats.

71. Stormtroopers wouldn’t carry their buraasta-chan loaded.

72. Every time Luke mentions joining the Academy his uncle just inhales deeply through his teeth and mutters or whines about any old thing.

We Love You Japan xx

I can not stress enough my gratitude to the message boarders on the ‘Lets’s Japan.org’ website whose many ideas contributed to this article. You know who you are.
** This article relies heavily on stereotypes and is just for fun and not intended to cause offence to Japanese people.
*** This ‘fun’ article was ready to publish about a year ago but then the awful events that began on March 11th happened and it just didn’t seem right to make even light-hearted fun of the Japanese at that time.
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London Filming Locations: About A Boy (2002)

I’m no bookworm but there is one author’s work who I always read and that is Nick Hornby’s and so its always interesting to see the film adaptations of his books such as Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About A Boy which, as the title suggests, is what this locations feature is on.

Hugh Grant plays Will who lives a comfortable, relaxed life due to the royalties which pour in from a Christmas song his dad wrote. As a result he has never worked and spends a lot of time reading about pop culture and watching TV in his apartment which is at 16-18 St James’ Walk (below) a little north of Farringdon station. All is not quite as it seems though as the entrance door was a specially constructed set-piece at the buildings side entrance. When you look at the screenshot it does look a bit strange that the front door is blocking the path!

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31 Oseney Crescent in Kentish Town (below) is the home to Marcus and his depressive hippy mum Fiona played by Toni Collette.

  

The Comptoir Gascon (below) at 63 Charterhouse Street is where Will shops at when Marcus is tailing him as he suspects that he doesn’t actually have a son.

Will takes single-mother Rachel to dinner at Hakkasan at 8 Hanway Place (below) just off Tottenham Court Road. This is where he comes clean and admits that Marcus isn’t actually his son in an attempt to be honest with her but it doesn’t quite turn out how he planned.

  

Rachel herself lives at 1 St Stephens Crescent (below) near Bayswater station and before the aforementioned date is the place where Will took Marcus and pretended that he was his son so she would find him more interesting.

 

For other London filming locations click on the links below:

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace    Trainspotting    Mission: Impossible    Lara Croft Tomb Raider    The Bourne Ultimatum   Harry Potter & The Philosophers Stone   James Bond    Quadrophenia    Bridget Jones’s Diary    Goodnight Sweetheart    Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels    Basic Instinct 2    Batman Begins/The Dark Knight    The Italian Job    Snatch    Rom-Com Special    Skyfall    Notting Hill    The World Is Not Enough

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Living The i-Life!

I can’t say I’d had too much desire to get an iPhone as I use the internet enough without checking Facebook and Twitter in between lessons. However, when my phone charger broke a few months ago I thought it was maybe a good chance to make the switch. At the same time I also got an iPad2 as Softbank (the Japanese mobile phone operator) had a special offer for them with the iPhone.

Despite initially struggling with the new way of typing mails (known as text messages in just about every other country in the world!) I soon got used to both that and the automatic error correction which can still be annoying sometimes but all-in-all the service probably works more in my favour than against it.

One reason I wanted an iPhone was for the map service which will hopefully be very useful when I embark on my cycling trips around Tokyo in search of certain places such as filming locations. However, I am still yet to use or even try using the maps feature as I don’t really like the idea of being tracked by google in any way.

Certainly not essential but adding to life’s satisfaction is the ability to access the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, hotmail, Google, YouTube, iTunes and a host of other things whilst on the move. The app which I’ve used the most has been the TuneIn Radio one which enables me to listen to hundreds of stations around the world. Needless to say, I am more than happy to settle for just listening to the BBC stations with the added bonus that 5 Live’s football commentaries don’t cut out at kick-off as they do on the BBC iPlayer.

 

The iPad was a bit of a godsend while I was in Paris, Edinburgh, London and my hometown over the festive period as many places and friends houses have wi-fi in Europe unlike Japan where, apart from McDonalds, very few places seem to offer free wi-fi service. When you’re inside its much nicer to use this contraption for surfing the net due to its clipboard size. It was great for watching UK television online whilst I was back in my homeland.

With my family having been on Skype for many years its been so nice to be able to chat to them via video on the iPad which I was never able to do on my old laptop which couldn’t handle that particular application.

The major downside of the iPhone and iPad is that Apple didnt allow them to work with Flash Player meaning that I couldn’t watch streaming of TV programmes and films as well as content put on many websites. Furthermore, the iPad is not really convenient for typing anything more than a sentence or two on social media sites. For these two reasons and the fact that my old, ageing laptop had pretty much conked out I decided to splash out last weekend on a MacBook Pro laptop having got used to using my girlfriends Mac. One big benefit was a very easy way of capturing screenshots of some of the various movie locations which I visit thereby enabling one to show a comparison of my photo in the modern day and the film-shot I try to replicate.

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Review: Films Set In Japan – Mr Baseball (1992)

As I was watching Brad Pitt in ‘Moneyball‘ on the way back to England recently I found it very hard to not keep comparing it to ‘Mr Baseball’ which, as far as I’m concerned, is the greatest baseball movie out there. Admittedly, I’m in a minority on that one and it’s fair to say that when I settled down to watch this light, sports comedy my mind was very sceptical as I had never really watched anything with Tom Selleck in (maybe I was frightened off by his huge moustache!) and I don’t like baseball! Ultimately though I ended up enjoying it.

Jack Elliot (Selleck) is an aging Major League baseball player who only has one offer on the table and that is in Japan with the Chunichi Dragons from Nagoya. As someone who has lived here for many years now, it is maybe more easy to understand and relate to the jokes and references to the differences between western life and life in the east. Not only that but it also includes differences between the two codes of the game not that I have a clue about that kind of thing!

Sure, this film features some of the regular jokes such as him knocking his head on the ceiling on his arrival in the land of ‘lots of little people walking and talking fast’ and cultural mis-haps like not taking off his shoes indoors, using the Japanese-style squat toilets, exchanging business cards (he gives his picture baseball cards in return) and getting in the bath before washing himself first which the only other gaijin team-mate compares to being like ‘jerking off before having sex!’

The Japanese are famous for eating their noodles noisily and when given the green light to follow suit he does in typical exaggerated fashion which really did have me laughing out loud as his slurping is so ridiculous. Selleck plays the rude, bad-tempered and arrogant American so well as he struggles to fit in to a society which is a world away from what he knows. In one particular scene he is fined for his attitude and promptly stumps up the cash with a bit extra thrown in for good measure. When asked what that money is for he says its for the next time and then he proceeds to put his bat through some locker room equipment.

Furthermore, he says what he thinks, particularly at his first press conference, but his interpreter changes his words to save face. However, he is left bemused when Selleck uses the ‘it aint over till the fat lady sings’ idiom which he isn’t aware of and so tells the rest of the team that a fat lady will sing for them after the game!

Unbeknown to him he starts dating the daughter of his coach played by Ken Takakura (who was in ‘Black Rain‘ and ‘The Yakuza‘) which results in him changing character in rather predictable fashion. As much as one can tell what’s going to happen in this film its a fun movie and one which anyone who has been here will be able to identify with in some way.

Tokyo Fox Rating 8/10

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Friends Reunited

Whilst back in the UK over Christmas I met up with more friends than I usually bother to which was really nice. Sherwood is a lifelong friend and I have known Sam since I was about nine and we always meet up every Christmas when we’re all back in town visiting our parents. This year we were out in our regular local pub on Christmas Eve when we bumped into Abby who was at the same schools as me throughout my 18 years in Market Harborough but other than a few Facebook updates I’d not really kept in touch with over the last decade or so.

     

As well as staying with my sister in London for three nights I also made my annual visit to Richard and Mizuki’s apartment in North London to catch up with them. I met Richard (above) through my work back in 2005 and a few years later I met his better half who became his wife. I spent a couple of nights with them (below) and a couple of nights with Marchy down in south-east London in the New Year. He is another friend who I’ve known since meeting in the boy scouts in the mid-late 1980’s and by chance we ended up in the same class at secondary school (along with the aforementioned Sam and Abby). He even followed (?) me on up to Hull a year after I had started University there.

     

On my trip up to Scotland I stayed with ‘Willy’ Steve who was a mate towards the end of my university days (although we did meet during our first year in Hull) and in the years after that when our Uni crew often met up for drunken nights out in Leeds where he lived back then in the late 90’s. Back in England a few days later I was on the train going to London when I bumped into another old mate from Primary school in the form of Richard (above) who I hadn’t seen for years and years. I was on my way to the capital city to fly back to Tokyo the day after but first I met up with two ex-colleagues. First was Bridget (below) who I worked with in 2007-2008 which was a great laugh and we became good friends and vaguely stayed in touch with each other over these last few years. We had lunch and a couple of drinks in Clapham before I moved on to Kingston where I had a couple more (and very expensive) drinks with James who only left Japan a few months ago.

 

It was really great meeting up with all of these people as well as my family and I will try and make more effort to see them and some other friends the next time I’m back in my homeland.

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Great Bowden In Pictures

This village is kind of like a suburb of Market Harborough in Leicestershire and on Chritsmas Day afternoon I went for a short walk round the area with my parents in the name of photographing some of the more interesting houses, pubs and shops loosely based on the pictures which appear on the 2012 Great Bowden calendar.

                                             

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Meeting Baby George

Without doubt the highlight of my trip back to Britain was seeing my nephew for the first time and no doubt if my sister is reading this then she will be spitting her porridge out at the computer screen in shock! She gave birth to George at the end of April last year and I finally got to meet the little fella on my arrival back in London on December 22nd.

 

He really is such a cute boy with his glaring blue eyes and soft fair hair and it was a joy to watch him going about his daily business which needless to say doesn’t involve much more than sleeping which he is very good at! The highlights of his day seems to be the milk bottle which he laps up like anything. Sticking things in his mouth is what he tends to do especially when remote controls and mobile phones are in his vicinity. Usually though it’s just his two fingers which remain lodged in his gob, even in between each and every mouthful of his dinner!

         

He’s got loads of nice toys which he likes to play with including my Christmas present for him which was a rainbow hoop builder-thing. However, give him an empty plastic milk carton and a wooden spoon and he’s in his element! It was fun watching him in his standing-up cart contraption playing the spot spoon and seeing him throw it on the floor whereby he then peered over the edge wondering where it was.

     

You’ve got feel a bit sorry for George though as he’s being brought up as a Nottingham Forest fan as his dad and Grandmother are both fans of our East Midlands rivals. Of course he hasn’t said, or been able to say, anything about this decision but its very rare that football fans get to choose their club!

        

Overall he’s a delightful baby (how long will that last for?!) and it shouldn’t be too long before he’s standing without help and speaking a more decipherable language than what sounds like the occasional ‘dada’. It will be interesting to see how much he’s advanced by the time I next see him.

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Edinburgh Filming Locations: Trainspotting (1996)

The reason I chose to go to Scotland was because I didn’t want to travel too far whilst back in Britain and also to hunt down some of the filming locations for ‘Trainspotting‘ (1996) which is one of my favourite movies. Although its ‘set‘ in Edinburgh most of the filming actually took place in the grimier Glasgow area but as that part of my trip never happened due to the strong winds circulating that part of Britain I was left with only the capital city itself which does include a couple of scenes during the films opening moments whilst ‘Lust for life‘ by Iggy Pop provides the soundtrack.

We first see Renton, Sick-boy and Spud running away from John Menzies on Princes Street (below) having just robbed it. That particular newsagents is no longer there but the Boots chemist store still is, albeit under construction when I was there.

 

Renton (Ewan McGregor) then leaps down these steps (below).

     

They are located right next to the Black Bull tavern (below) at 43 Leith Street.

He runs on to Leith street where a car pulls out of St. Ninian’s Row and nearly hits him.

  

His reaction is to just look at the driver and laugh!

  

He then runs off and joins his mates as they run under the bridge below.

  

It’s not just Glasgow and Edinburgh which provided the backdrop as London also appears towards the end of the film for a couple of shots (as well as a montage of classical London images) as featured in my London ‘Trainspotting‘ feature at the start of last year.

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Scotland 2012 Pt II: Edinburgh

Even though I ended up flying directly to Edinburgh from London Gatwick I was still on very limited time and only really had the morning of January 4th to look around the city. My University friend ‘Willy’ Steve kindly offered to put me up for the night and after a couple of expensive payphone calls to him and asking numerous strangers I finally got to his at about 9pm which was probably only a couple of hours later than I’d originally planned when I had intended to go to Glasgow beforehand. A quick pint of Tennants in a very local bar followed by a takeaway and that was about it with him until the morning when he returned to his job nearby and I left for four hours of exploration before taking the airport bus just after midday.

 

Having seen Easter Road marked on a map I thought I might as well go and see the home of Hibs so I headed in that direction and could see some floodlights but when I eventually got up close I was horrified to realize that it was the home of the relatively unknown Edinburgh City FC who play in the East of Scotland League! Easter Road was nearby but I’d lost interest by then and settled for seeing it in the distance from the top of Calton Hill which offered some great views of a really beautiful city. The wind was still kicking up one hell of a gale so I didn’t get too close to the edge.

               

I followed the Royal Mile (having missed the Scottish parliament and Palace of Holyroodhouse) all the way to the city’s most famous landmark; Edinburgh Castle. By the time I got there it had started to rain and as I was running out of time I didn’t go inside not that I really ever planned to.

 

I descended from the castle via The Mound and it’s impressive buildings. I finished my fly-by tour of Scotlands capital on Princes Street and that was just about it for me. Even by my standards my Scotish venture was overly short and I would have loved to spend a few more hours there but having considered scrapping Scotland completely the day before I was very glad I did make my debut in the country.

         

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Scotland 2012 Pt I: To Glasgow And Back (In A Few Hours!!)

Given all the weather problems in the UK over the last few years at this time of year I have been pretty lucky to have got through my plans each time. This past festive season has seen some of the mildest weather I’ve ever known at this time of year but that all changed three days ago.

When I got back from the Leicester game at Crystal Palace thought immediately turned to the following days trip up to Glasgow by plane in the wee early hours. This was to be my first ever trip to Scotland having never bothered as I always thought (when I lived in England) that I could go there anytime really. My flight was from London Gatwick on January 3rd at 7.15am which caused more heartache than I had realised prior to booking it. My mate Marchy lives in London and I just assumed there would be a tube station near his but due to the differet type of rock beneath the surface in that area of south-east London there aren’t too many underground stations. Thankfully he offered to give me a lift to a station in Greenwich from where I took a couple of lines to the Airport.

All was going well apart from a bit of a wait for the gate number of my flight to be announced. When I got on the plane the captain announced that it was very, very windy up in Scotland and that there was a chance that we may not be able to land but he was gonna give it a go anyway. I don’t think myself or anybody else really thought too much about those words until he repeated them once we were up in the sky………….and then just as we were (probably) on the border of Scotland he announced that it was bad news up north and that we had no choice but to fly back to Gatwick. I was pretty stunned but what can you do eh?! The rest of the passengers seemed to be in reasonable spirits under the circumstances though that was pushed to the limit with the worst ever descend back into the Airport. There was so much turbulence during the latter stages of the flight that I was on the brink of being sick. 

Finally back on the ground I was wondering what would happen and as it was I could have got on a flight to get back up to Glasgow for about 3pm but given that I was to be going on to Edinburgh early evening there didn’t see much point. I pointed out to the staff that I had a flight from Edinburgh to Paris the following day but it wasn’t possible to exchange the tickets for one just going to the French capital. I guess I was lucky enough to be able to change my original destination to Edinburgh but the afternoon flight was busy so I ended up having to wait till 5.30pm for that which was nearly seven hours away!

Posted in Action & Adventure, Euro Travel | 1 Comment