Cine-Manga Magic!

As promised, here's the first half of the Fumetti (captioned-photo book) for Star Wars with Japanese titles! (Yippee, I went and bought a 20-meter cable so that I can hook up my modem to my pc. Why is the phone jack at the front door away from where you might possible need it? But at least I'm back on the Net!)

Be sure to click on each photo to see all its Forceful goodness!

スターウォーズ、エピソード IV = Star Wars, Episode IV:

















My Japanese is sketchy at best, so I'll have to leave most of these pages comment-free.



















R2-D2 says, "BLOOP, BLEEP, BLURP!" The Japanese sounds like this: "Bee-Beee-Booo!"


































HRRYAA!!=Gaaay!; WAAAHH=Bee-bee-bee-bee!; OOOOOOH!!=Gyurrr!; UTTNI!!=kikii!

















URGH!=Oooh!; GLACH=Gwaa!; AWKK=Whoa!










URGH! URGH! URGH!=Waa Waa Waa!























































































































































































It certainly looks to me like Han shot first...


























By the way, I re-watched the DVD on Friday and I misquoted myself. It's amazing how a 30-year-old memory can be incorrect. Han Solo said, "...the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs". My friend said, "parsecs are a measure of length, not time." Aren't you glad I cleared that up?

I'll finish the story one of these days for you. I'm sure you'll all want to know how it ends!

In A Galaxy Far Away...

May 25th is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars (Episode 4!?!) A New Hoax.

I was a wee lad in high school when it first came out and I remember watching it with a friend at Shopper's World in Brampton. (Back when Shopper's was the only mall in town and back when it had a theatre!) Hard to believe that Star Wars wasn't the phenomenon then that it is now, but there were so few people watching it, that we sat through it twice without being jack-booted out by the ushers.
Being a die-hard Trekker, I was ripe for the picking to have a new obsession thrust upon me, and thrust in I was! (On the other hand, my friend's only comment was concerning Han Solo's statement that "I can do the run in 2 light years!" (Or words to that effect). Good old Martin Buchholz (the smartest guy in our high school, Canadian Chess Champ and Reach For the Top winner two years running, '75-76) complained, "Light years are a measurement of distance not time!" ...Has George corrected that error in one of his innumerable revisions? I hope not. I wrote it off as Han's bravado (when we all know he was full of it.)

Anyway, I loved them all (Empire is my personal favourite), collected all the loot, but I don't have too many goodies left. I made a tidy profit on my comic books, but I made the foolish move of playing with my figures and not keeping them pristine in the original packaging.

But in doing my part for the anniversary, here are several photos of my personal Japanese collection. Some has been transported from my locker in Brampton, but most has been acquired while here. Alas, most of the recent crap has been from the crap recent movies. The movies may bite, but the merchandising rocks!

Some Potato Chip bag Clips.
Dagnabit! There are 8 in the set and I only have 7!


























Some holographic Fridge Magnets.













More Fridge magnets, the Emperor is really creepy!

A couple of Mini-Eminem dispensers.

A couple of Lego sets.













Some of these Figurine sets are really keen!
I gotta get around to assembling these one day...












(As an added bonus, I have scanned 1/2 of the Japanese version of Tokyo Pop's Star Wars fumetti for your enjoyment. But you'll have to wait until my net works at home for me to post it!)

If you really want to enhance your geekery about all things Star Warsian, check out Wookiepedia.

Since it promises to be a rainy weekend, I think I'll sit back and watch the trilogy. It'll give me a chance to take pics of the ton of stuff I have sitting in boxes!

Live Long and Prosper!
(Oh, I'll burn in heck for that one!)

Stupid internet!

Thank God I got a new modem, it worked for about one day before shutting down again! Now, it does let me on the net, but I have to jump through several hoops beforehand and then after making the required oblations, I only get about 2 minutes of Net-ness. I'm running out of willing virgins to sacrifice to the great god of the blogosphere!

Needless to say, posting will be sporadic at best, and Dagnabit, now I have something to say!!

(I wish I weren't such a Luddite!

Jack Sparrow Would Be Proud!

Last weekend was the 青葉まつり, which I wrote about last year, here: aoba matsuri.

I've been meaning to make a more thorough write-up about this all week, but with my net down, I've been remiss. So unfortunately, I'm going to skip most of the colour commentary and links. (Here is the history if you're really interested.) I will mention that the weather was rainy on the Saturday (I didn't go) and lovely on the Sunday (I did go.) Since the funky dance they do is called the
雀/スズメ踊り (suzume odori which translates as "Sparrow Dance", ergo my post's title. It gave me a chance to teach all my students about sparrows, since they ALL know who Jack Sparrow is!

So what follows are numerous photos of the dancers and 神輿 (mikoshi or portable shrines.)

Colourful dancers.













Bad photo, but cool portable shrine.













Woo-woo-woo!













Some fledging sparrows, 小スズメ (ko-suzume) who get their own dance.












Keep on flocking!

























































Another cool mikoshi.













Hauling the shrine (some are trying harder than others.)












More baby sparrows.










































Protecting onlookers from Stephen King's The Dark Half (obscure reference to the sparrows in that novel.)












One of my favourites of the day.















They're flying!












Competitors on the main stage.
















Other cool stuff took place at (Nishiki-cho Park) but I missed most of it.


































































I did get to see the lamest magician ever!














A plethora of keychains!












A plethora of character-masks for the kiddie-cosplayers.












A couple of tweenies flogging their new CD!


It was nice of Sendai to host this event again this year (by the way, the collective noun for a group of sparrows is: a host of sparrows!)

I'll be there again next year, I'm sure or I'll be sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!