Hiroyuki Sanada News

Hoga Central collaborating with Toei Uzumasa Studio

I know, I know, I still have not finished my home work of Tokyo Dome report, but there is one announcement.

My main site - Hoga Central - has been on hiatus for more than a year, but I have decided to re-start again.  I am getting some help from Toei Movie Land (Uzumasa Studio) this time.  Detail is on today's entry in Hoga Blog.

Hoga Blog - Toei Movie Land

Toei is the home of most of Hiro's early works - ninja and samurai movies in the 80's.  Shochiku, another movie studio, also has a period drama studio set in Uzumasa, the same area in Kyoto, and "The Twilight Samurai" was shot there.  So it is one of the great places to visit in Japan for Hiro fans.  Please visit Uzumasa when you have a chance to visiti Kyoto!!

Mist

"Endoscope Day" and "Hiro Corridor" in Shinjuku

I am finally back to the US from Japan.  It was a fun stay, but Internet connection was very limited and I had a hard time posting blogs, so at home with faster connections, I am much releaved.

Taking a small break from my "Speed Racer Tokyo documentary series", here is a small news and nice pictures.

Sanada-san has been a spokesman for Olympus, an international brand of camera and medical/optical devices, for some time.  His TV commercials run from time to time, but for the past week or so, I encountered his TV CM much more often than usual.  Each time he comes up on TV screen, my 7-year old son screams, "Mom, Sanada-san!!"

It is not my imagination - there is a reason for it.  July 14 was supposed to be the "Endoscope Day" (I don't know who decided it...) in Japan.  It is a word play - "endoscope" in Japanese is "naishi-kyo", and if you take the first sound of 7-1-4 (nana, ichi, shi) becomes "naishi".  (Lots of industries use such word play and make up their own products "day" there.)

So anyway, Olympus ran lots of CM, with Sanada-san who takes endoscope check-up at the doctor's office.  (It is not exactly the product CM for endoscope itself - after all, it is not a mass product - but rather a corporate image CM, to position Olympus as the cutting-edge technology company who contribute to the good of the people.)

And in addition, "Hiro Corridor" appears in the western exit of Shinjuku station in Tokyo (the busiest train station in Japan).  Brother Chikuwabu took these NICE photos and RinRin uploaded onto her blog.  Olympus posters are placed on the lighted columns in series, so if you see from one side, it just looks like a Roman temple with Hiro photos on them.  Brother Chikuwabu states that the place is actually much brighter in human eyes, but with digital camera, if you want to take the posters well, outside looks much darker.  But it actually increases the mysterious atmosphere, so I love its effect.

http://blogs.dion.ne.jp/hiderinkomari/archives/7389448.html

Enjoy!

Misty

Speed Racer Premiere Report (3) The Luncheon and Kaneda's costumes

The place was called "En" restaurant.  The luncheon was supposed to start at 12 noon, and I was a bit late.  The restaurant serves modern-traditional Japanese cuisine.  (See "Speed Racer" photo album on this blog, on the right column.)  RinRin has reserved a small tatami room.  From the glass walls, we could see Tokyo Dome, where the premiere event would be taking place.

When I arrived, most of the people were already there.  Some familiar faces were there.  I have met RinRin and Akira before, and I also met Ayayan and Yuki at AEGIS events.  We sat along two long tables, with RinRin and Akira facing Emily, Yuko and Neko - the three Taiwanese amigas.  RinRin was distributing the "SHIN" fan that she made.  They were so beautiful!!  (I will take a pic later and will put it up on the album.)

After this, my memory is quite fuzzy.  The sequence of events were not accurate AT ALL....

We all toasted for this happy event, as well as to wish happiness and health of Sanada-san.  Food was great.

Akira showed off her special art nails.  She took a "Musha" pic and a checker flag design, shrunk it down to a nail size, and printed out on a special "temporary tattoo" paper.  Then stack it on her nails.  It was UNBELIEVABLE!

We all had a small name tag on the table, and everyone wanted to have Akira draw her "cat Akira" character on that tag.  So she kept on drawing.

Sakura came over to Taiwan team table from the other side.  She studied Chinese, prepared and practiced a greeting in Chinese specially for that day.  I guess Taiwan team understood (because I had no idea what she was saying...) and everyone clapped loudly.  It was SO SWEET!

RinRin and Neko were talking with a mixture of English and text language (Chinese and Japanese share some common kanji characters, and even though they are pronounced differently, the meaning of the character is the same, so we can somewhat understand each other by writing kanji characters) about "Shin Hanshichi Torimono-cho".  It is a NHK TV drama series in 1997 and relatively unknown among Hiro's works, because it is not made into video/DVD and is VERY hard to obtain the copy.  But IT is the most favorite piece of RinRin's.  Hiro plays Edo-era (18th century) civilian detective - smart, sexy and cool.  RinRin found out that Neko knew about it, and that its original novel was translated into Chinese and is published there, and were SO excited.

I asked the Taiwanese team what they were doing since they got to Tokyo.  They did relatively typical sight-seeing, such as Asakusa at first - and then on the second day, to my surprise, they went to Ashikaga city.  OMG, they are SO DEEP.....  Ashikaga is the location for another NHK TV drama series "Taiheiki" (1991), about the first Shogun of Muromachi Bakufu, called Takauji Ashikaga, circa 14th century.  It was a year-long HUGE scale historical drama, but also has been relatively unknown because only the digest version was available on DVD until recently.  (I understand the full-version is now available.)  Even in Japan, the ones who recently became his fan recently usually don't have much access to this piece, so I was SO SURPRISED that the team knew about it, and even chose to go to Ashikaga!!  And even more surprisingly, it was the second time that Yuko had been there!  Yuko told me she has been Hiro fan for 25 years!!  WOW!!

So many different Hiro topic filled the air, but I was mainly talking to Taiwan members so I did not have much chance to talk to ladies on the other table - unfortunately.  Then our 18th member of the lunch meeting appeared - the Brother Chikuwabu, hero of the day, arrived late.

He is the collector of movie memorabilia, and was a popular figure at AEGIS blog, so many people knew him already.  He has brought his TREASURES.  First off, he showed us the poster from "SUNSHINE" - the picture of "IKARUS II" crew, all wearing Santa Clause hats - which was used in the movie.  We all could not help but SCREAM and all gathered around the photo - then the restaurant waiter guy came appologetically to tell us to quiet down - they got complaint from the next room!  ^^;

Then he took out actual costumes that Hiro used in SUNSHINE - Capt. Kaneda's jacket, shirt, pants, boots etc...that he got from eBay.  Some things were missing, tho - he got out-bid by reiko for sunglasses! Everyone took turns to put it on (or some people sniffed it...) and again took pictures.  Some even bursted into tears!

Then other people started to pass around their other treasures as well - old magazines, photos, other memorabilias about Hiro - and again, everyone got so excited.

Time passed so quickly, and we again took some time to decide how to take photo in the restaurant - but at the end, we took the group photo, all holding up the SHIN fan made by RinRin.

I took so many pictures, but some people don't like to have their photos made public, so I had to limit my photo showing only to the ones without people's faces.  I am sorry about it, and I hope you understand.

At around 3pm, we got out of the restaurant and started to walking towards Tokyo Dome.  A bit nervous time was approaching.

(to be continued)

Speed Racer Premiere Report (2) The rainy day

After some dark days, 5 days before the premiere, and just two days before the Taiwan team landed on Tokyo, the things got a huge dramatic turn.  RinRin's blog announced that it was CONFIRMED that Sanada-san would be at the premiere.  One of the Japan team member actually called Warner Bros. Japan, and they said Sanada-san was SCHEDULED to be there.  Media announcements on newspaper also showed his name, along with Emile Hirsch.  The team's spirit started to rise again.

In addition, RinRin informed me that she has somehow - magically - secured extra tickets for all of us - Taiwan team and I, and even some more extras.  I was so surprised.  She never told me, and still has not told me, how she obtained the tickets.  Anyway, it sounded like everything was arranged perfectly by RinRin. It was TOTALLY amazing.

So Taiwan team arrived on June 26 in Tokyo.  I got here on June 28, the day before the premiere.  Emily called on my cell phone that night, and confirmed that they were here already.  The weather forcast said that it will be pouring rain on June 29.

I thought, OMG, it is just PERFECT!  As I mentioned before, RAIN means that Sanada-san is here.  Since his young idol days, his rain jinx has been famous among his fans.  Wherever he goes, it rains.  I saw a TV interview recording that he was talking about this jinx himself several years ago.  It was a thundering rain in L.A. at "The White Countess" premiere, it rained at "AEGIS" premiere.  The jinx still holds recently.  (And Thanks to our Egyptian friend from SHIN forum, to let us know that rain also means good things in Egypt!!)

It was Sunday, and I had to run lots of errands before hopping on the Tokyo-bound train.  Yes, it was pouring rain.  Great, great, great!!

There was a major delay on my train, due to an accident earlier in the day, so I was about 20 minutes late for the luncheon.  Getting off at Suidobashi station, I quickly found the restaurant in front of the station.

And the rainy day miracle began.

(to be continued)

Speed Racer Premiere Report (1) The beginning

So sorry that I have not written the detailed report about what happened at Tokyo Premiere. I am currently on vacation, so my kids are around and the net connection at my mom's house is not too great - OK, so much for excuses.

I will start the story from way back, circa April 2008. There was Speed Racer Los Angeles premiere in April, and I wrote about the premiere on my blog, including the news that there will be a Tokyo Premiere, as the only event in Asia, on June 29. In L.A. interview, Sanada-san was clearly saying that he was planning to appear at Tokyo event.

http://hogacentral.blogs.com/hiroyuki_sanada_news/2008/04/hiro-in-speed-r.html

Then, Emily from Taiwan sent me an e-mail that she was planning to come to Tokyo for the premiere, and she would talk to some other Taiwanese fans to join up. I myself usually go to Japan around that time for summer vacation, and this year my schedule allowed me to be there on 6/29. So I got really excited and wrote back to Emily that I was happy to meet them in Tokyo, and maybe other Japanese fans would be delighted to meet them, too. I wrote a comment on RinRin's blog about the idea of holding a gathering with Taiwanese/Japanese fans together on the day of the premiere. RinRin quickly agreed, and we all started to plan things for the day.

The biggest obstacle was how to obtain the tickets for the premiere event. They were not officially "sold" anywhere - tickets were all distributed to sponsor companies and media. These companies, in turn, held various sweepstakes and gave away the tickets to their own customers. So RinRin's blog was filled with different sweekstakes info every day - from event magazine to "Hotwheel" Mach5 version. Japanese fans entered them frantically, but I could not do anything from the U.S., so I had given up on the idea of actually attending the premiere from the beginning. I was hoping someone could get 3 extra tickets for Emily and friends, but was not too optimistic about it. Rumor was going around that a huge chunk of tickets had been assigned to Rain fans, maybe through fan clubs etc. Remember, "Hanryu (Korean)" boom in Japan is still going on, for the past several years, and this young Korean singer has a large fan base there. But for some time, no Sanada-fan got lucky on sweepstakes. Everyone was so frustrated.

A few weeks before the event, a rumor that Hiro would not be at the premiere started to sneak around. I was not too surprised, given the box office status in the US and other territories, but I was worried about our Taiwanese friends. So I wrote to Emily about the possibility, but at that time, she and two other friends already had reserved the plane tickets. So they informed RinRin and me that they would come anyway - they are so dedicated!!! And RinRin did not have the tickets for the event at that time, so we were thinking maybe we will just meet up for the fan gathering, and write a letter together to Sanada-san. This rumor also said that no major actor would come from overseas for the premiere, and even the big attraction Rain cancelled out.

OMG... what a disaster! We were all pretty somber around that time. But anyway, for the totally dedicated Taiwanese fans, RinRin chose the time and location for the gathering, and announced it on her blog, without mentioning the rumor. After all, it was just a rumor and nothing was confirmed. Bunch of Japanese fans signed up for the gathering - RinRin decided to do Luncheon, instead of dinner, because the premiere event will start from 6pm and will last till around 9pm. I was prepared for the worst scenario at that time, and still was happy to think that Taiwanese fans and Japanese fans could get together and talk about Sanada-san for hours!!

(to be continued)