Scotland Pt II: Was The Shortest of Trips to Edinburgh Worth It?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by tokyofox

The original plan had been to fly up to Glasgow from London Gatwick Airport and then move onto Edinburgh once I’d done all that I had to do there. However, the initial flight to Glasgow that was abandoned mid-flight meant I could only fly directly to Edinburgh as an alternative. Consequently, I was then on even more limited time and only really had the morning of January 4th to look around the Scottish capital.

My university friend “Willy” Steve kindly offered to put me up for the night, and after a couple of expensive Continue reading →

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Scotland Pt I: To Glasgow & Back in a Few Hours!!

Posted on January 6, 2012 by tokyofox

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 | 2 Comments

Leicester Raid The Palace

Posted on January 3, 2012 by tokyofox

I went to my first away game since the 2002-2003 season yesterday as I made my way down to Selhurst Park with my mate Marchy to see Leicester play Crystal Palace. It turned out to be a successful day as we managed to get our tickets (a whopping £30 each!) at the ground without any problem as we couldn’t get them online due to the postal service being unable to send them out in time. Lack of public transport on Boxing Day and better things to be doing meant I didn’t go the the home game against Ipswich and the New Years Eve game at home to Portsmouth was on Sky TV so I couldn’t collect the tickets at either of those games.

  

I stayed at Marchy’s house in London on New Years Day and we made our way to the ground in the morning as it was a 1pm kick off. City Manager Nigel Pearson named a couple of players in the wing back positions that I’d never even heard of! Our seats were of the very old-fashioned wooden variety and the sun was shining right into our eyes throughout the whole game which we stood up for for the entire 90 minutes. There was also a big pillar in our way and the beer was £3.80 a pop but its amazing how these things get forgotten about when you win which is exactly what we did!

 

Ex-Palace man Neil Danns capitalised on a goalkeeping error when Price’s quickly taken kick hit the back of his fellow Eagle and fell to Danns who curled a fine shot in on 18 minutes having cut in from the left. We doubled our lead after 37 minutes when cult-hero Bamba got on to a Danns free-kick at the far post. This lead didn’t last long as Palace scored a few minutes later and went in search of an equaliser but fortunately it never came and apart from a few shots going wide of the post I was confident we would hold on.

 

As I mentioned the sun was shining in the eyes of us 1,255 Leicester fans so when the play stopped I tended to give my arm a rest from blocking out the sun. For that reason I didn’t see our substitute Howard being sent off for shouting something at the linesman in the last 15 minutes. A good start to 2012 for us Foxes and if we continue to beat teams like Palace who are above us we may just make the end of season play-offs.

Posted in Leicester City, Sport | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

TF Top 20……Filming Location Trips For 2011

Posted on December 31, 2011 by tokyofox

2011 has been quite a productive year for hunting down filming locations in the likes of The USA, Jordan, Germany, England, Belgium, Turkey, Czech Republic and Japan. Click on the links below to see more.

1. Back To The Future (Click here)

USA August 2011 118  USA August 2011 061

2. The Bourne Supremacy (Click here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 306  Dec2010-Jan2011 322

3. Lolo Rennt (Run Lola Run) (Click here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 333  Dec2010-Jan2011 354

4. Star Wars (Click here and here)

USA August 2011 339  USA August 2011 373

5. Memoirs Of A Geisha (Click here)

kansai GW 2011 036  kansai GW 2011 246

6. In Bruges (Click here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 377  Dec2010-Jan2011 410

7. Terminator (Click here)

USA August 2011 015  USA August 2011 105

8. The Last Samurai (Click here)

kansai GW 2011 354  kansai GW 2011 165

9. James Bond (Click here, here, here, here and here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 184  Dec2010-Jan2011 194

10. The Karate Kid (Click here)

USA August 2011 093  USA August 2011 096

11. Indiana Jones (Click here)

Jordan 2011 151  Jordan 2011 159

12. Trainspotting (Click here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 072  Dec2010-Jan2011 181

13. The Grudge (Click here)

november 2011 034  november 2011 073

14. The Bourne Ultimatum (Click here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 070  Dec2010-Jan2011 429

15. Mission: Impossible (Click here & here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 267  Dec2010-Jan2011 151

16. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Click here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 048  Dec2010-Jan2011 425

17. Harry Potter & The Philosophers Stone (Click here)

Dec2010-Jan2011 172  Dec2010-Jan2011 050

18. Wasabi (Click here)

kansai GW 2011 124  kansai GW 2011 127

19. Into The Sun (Click here)

April 2011 067  April 2011 088

20. Austin Powers International Man Of Mystery (Click here)

USA August 2011 415  USA August 2011 434

Other 2011 locations for the films listed below can be found here

The Bourne Identity; Amadeus; XxX; About A Boy; Bridget Jones; Snatch; Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels; Quadrophenia; Eyes Wide Shut; Basic Instinct 2; Mike Bassett: England Manager; The Italian Job; 3 Ninja’s Kick Back; Kagemusha; Sinbad & The Eye of the Tiger; Lawrence of Arabia; Red Planet; Transformers; Midnight Express; Topkapi; Murder on the Orient Express; Oceans 11; Walk Don’t Run; Monster; Into The Sun; Lost In Translation; Babel; Kill Bill and last but not least Godzilla.

Posted in Films, Japan Filming Locations, Japan Travel, London Film Locations, Movie Locations, Star Wars, Star Wars Filming Locations | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Santa Brings Me The Latest Leicester Shirt

Posted on December 28, 2011 by tokyofox

When my mum asked me a few months ago for some christmas present ideas I couldn’t really think of too much so I said I’d have a Leicester City shirt which is something I always used to get for my birthdays which coincided with the start of a new season. This list was presented in late October/early November at a time when Sven Goran Eriksson was still in charge. As I’m in Japan I thought I’d get Yuki Abe’s name on my back but since Nigel Pearson returned to the club he has been out of favour.  With rumors of him maybe returning to Japan to play, this shirt may only be valid for a short time though his inclusion in yesterday’s boxing day game was positive relief for me.

 

UPDATE: Yuki Abe left Leicester by mutual consent on January 22 and was announced as an Urawa Reds player with a #22 shirt a couple of days later. I thought that getting this shirt had been lucky for him as he played most of the games from Boxing Day onwards. Sadly, ths shirt didn’t stay up-to-date for more than a month!

Posted in Family, Japan Life, Leicester City, Sport | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

TF Film Review: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Posted on December 20, 2011 by tokyofox

The fourth installment in this film franchise is a rarity in that it was actually released in Japan before The UK. It comes out in the The UK on Boxing Day but usually these films are released in Japan months after the rest of the western world. Of course I also wanted to see it as I’m a fan of the movies.

One local reviewer here reckons that the action isn’t quite up to that of the recent Bond and Bourne films and though I’m a huge fan of those movies I disagree with that train of thought as ‘Ghost Protocol‘ was full of action that made my palms very sweaty. It’s no secret that it was filmed in part in Dubai and the worlds tallest building features in an enthralling scene followed by one of the films more comical moments thanks to Simon Pegg’s portrayal of the bumbling English computer nerd who has a far more important role in this movie than one was expecting.

Other locations include Budapest, Mumbai and Russia where someone blows up the Kremlin and frames the IMF thereby activating the ‘Ghost Protocol’ and leaving it up to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his three buddies to save the day without any support.

 

One of my main gripes with the previous trilogy of ‘Mission: Impossible‘ movies was the over-use and over-reliance on the use of latex face masks and I’m glad to report that this cop-out way of telling a story is kept to a minimum. Running in at over two hours I was gripped by this flick throughout which is a rarity for a guy like me who has poor concentration.

Tokyo Fox Rating 9/10

You can see the Mission Impossible filming locations here
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Tokyo Filming Locations #10 – The Grudge (2004)

Posted on December 17, 2011 by tokyofox

This American re-make of ‘Ju-On’ begins at Yanagibashi bridge (1 minute) where the Kanda river runs into the much bigger Sumida-gawa river. Peter is on the 6th floor of his apartment at 1-2-2 Yanagibashi (below) with his wife/partner in bed when he looks at her fairly normally and then just purposely falls over his balcony plummeting to his death below.

 

When I did my Kanda River bicycle ride back in April little did I know that the starting point was also where ‘The Grudge’ was filmed. It can be seen again on 65 minutes when Karen (Sarah Michelle-Gellar) visits the suicide scene. I was standing on the wall next to the river taking a timed photo with my tripod (whilst holding it aloft to get the highest position possible) when a guy came out and Continue reading →

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Tokyo Filming Locations #9 – Wasabi (2001)

Posted on December 14, 2011 by tokyofox

Jean Reno of ‘Mission: Impossible‘ (1996) fame is the French cop who goes to Tokyo in this 2001 French film directed by Luc Besson. Entering Japan at Narita Airport Terminal 2 (18 minutes) Reno’s character Hubert arrives in the electric town known as Akihabara after 23 minutes (below) when he gets out of a taxi on the main street and walks down one of the little side streets to the office where he has a meeting with the lawyer who reads out his ex-girlfriends will and informs him that he has a daughter.

Takashimaya department store (below) at 2-4-1 Nihonbashi is where Hubert takes his annoying daughter (Ryoko Hirosue) on a shopping spree with some yakuza baddies trailing them which leads to some amusing (?) scenes of Hubert discretely fending them off whilst she is oblivious to it all.

Next up is the Imperial Hotel at 1-1-1 Chiyoda (below) which appears on 47 minutes and is where Hubert books into ‘pretending’ that the young under-age Japanese girl is his daughter. The irony is that she actually is not although she is unaware of that fact.

Screen Shot 2015-09-07 at 12.47.03    Screen Shot 2015-09-07 at 12.47.10 

Fujisawa Golf Club in Kanagawa prefecture (66 minutes) plays part to the driving range scene which sees Hubert do a trick shot that would make Tiger Woods proud. He calls it “a hole in two” whereby he takes out two guys with an outrageous cartoon-like shot.

The film gets its title from a scene (72 minutes) where Hubert eats a load of the green-coloured horse-radish mustard stuff without as much as a flinch. It’s not just Tokyo which features though as moments later he takes the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto where we see him on JR Kyoto station platform and soon after he and former intelligence colleague Momo are at Kiyomizudera temple (below) where they go and investigate Miko’s death.

Screen Shot 2015-09-07 at 12.48.57    Screen Shot 2015-09-07 at 12.49.04 

Among the wooden placards is a special one which he finds quite quickly and inside it is a letter from the late mother of their child which he reads as he walks through the temple grounds (below).

Screen Shot 2015-09-07 at 12.50.53    Screen Shot 2015-09-07 at 12.51.00 

He continues to the main viewing platform (below) which offers spectacular views of the place although it wasn’t so good for us photographers when I was there as the sun was shining too brightly to capture it well.

 

Back in Tokyo, Wako department store (below) at 4-5-11 Ginza in Chuo-ku (also seen in ‘Godzilla‘) pops up on screen after 76 minutes.

I’m reliably told that Harumi Passenger Ship Terminal (below) was used as a location though I’m not too sure which scenes were filmed there. This is situated across Kachidoki Bridge coming from Tsukiji and if I was to guess I’d say that some of the interior airport shots such as the immigration and bag search scenes were captured there.

  • UPDATE: Please check all the wonderful comments below for better information about some of the places mentioned in this very old post!
Posted in Japan Filming Locations, Movie Locations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

Tokyo Filming Locations #8 – Monster (2008)

Posted on December 12, 2011 by tokyofox

Slagging off this film in my review nine months ago still didn’t stop me from hunting down some of the shots which appeared in perhaps the worst movie I’ve ever seen! Most of them were shown in a flash inbetween the cleavage shots of the girls but as a man who works in Shibuya twice a week it was quite easy to recognise the briefest glimpses of Tokyo scenery. On their arrival in Japan we see the girls walking down Centre Gai on 6 minutes past Tenkappin Restaurant (below).

 

If you turn right just a bit further down you see the view seen above. The girls film a short piece to camera at the place seen below which is situated at Shibuya crossing just before Centre Gai street.

 

Every three minutes this world famous crossing descends into chaos as hundreds and hundreds of people cross in all directions and has been seen in a countless number of films. This one is no exception as the shot above is seen. The green train below and the famous Hachiko dog statue are within spitting distance of each other outside Shibuya station and both these angled shots can be seen in the blink of an eye.

  Monster10

The girls go to the Ministry of Environment (below) at Kasumigaseki 1-2-2 in Chiyoda-ku for a meeting with some guy about global warming when there’s a big shake which they at first think is an earthquake but later discover is a monster which gives the film its cr*p title. Despite this very little, if anything at all is seen of the deadly monster.

 

They try to make their way to the supposed safety of the American Embassy (above) though I’m not sure if it actually appears on screen due to the “recovered tape” style filming of the film which was damaged in part by the mysterious monster and these annoying “effects” are used far too often to cover up the many loop-holes.

The wooden torii gate at the entrance to Meiji Shrine (below) outside Harajuku station is seen on 37 mins even though the caption prior to it says that its Shinjuku-gyoen Gardens. Even though its supposed to be January the two American girls are wearing just vests as they walk along the path in fear of the monster whilst Japanese people in the background are just going about their own business oblivious to the fact that theres a monster on the loose. Truly an awful film and I’m mildly embarrassed to have even featured these locations on here. Almost worth watching though to see how bad it is!

 

Posted in Japan Filming Locations, Movie Locations | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

Tokyo Filming Locations #7 – Into The Sun (2005)

Posted on December 9, 2011 by tokyofox

Steven Seagal delivers what he’s best at (?) in this 2005 film and by that I can only mean that he plays the one-man killing machine as he takes on Japanese yakuza. Japan Sword shop at 3-8-1 Toranomon (below) is the first location to feature on 11 minutes and it is seen again after 24 and 37 minutes.

 

I’m not 100% certain but I think what is captioned as ‘Chinatown, Tokyo’ on 15 minutes is the one in Yokohama as Continue reading →

Posted in Japan Filming Locations, Movie Locations | Tagged , , , , , , , | 21 Comments