Back in time!

Without the help of a Delorean, we're reliving Thursday, July 24th.

I can almost remember Stanley waking me up when the tower was shaking this morning... or was it all a dream?

We look forward to seeing everyone soon, sharing more stories and reliving our Japanese adventure.

And prepare for our next adventure, when 2 Idiots go to Australia!

Coming home

So after a long day in Akihabra, digging through bookstores, video stores and toy stores, we were dead tired yesterday. John found some Godzilla goodies to bring back to the states.

We paid 1000¥ to get access to the video on demand service, and were able to watch I Am Legend last night (English with Japanese subtitles), and some cartoons this morning (Donald Duck speaking in Japanese is pretty wild).

Last night's big earthquake woke Stan and had him ready to head out to the airport at 1am. John would have probably slept through it had Stan not waken him for the tail end of the tremor. We sat up for the next half hour looking on the internet and watching the news reports about it. We had joked that it would be interesting to see what an earthquake felt like on the 30th floor of our hotel. Now we know - well, Stan does anyway...

We're at the airport now. Unfortunately, no inexpensive upgrades to Business Class this time around. We upgraded to economy plus for the few extra millimeters of legroom - who knows, maybe it will be more comfortable than those clunky recliners.


To be honest, it really can be annoying if someone keeps interrupting you to fill your wine glass every 15 minutes on a 10+ hour flight. We'll be free of such disruptions this time.

We've had an airport snack and picked up some more goodies in the airport stores in case we get hungry on the flight (no sushi, no dried fish, and no seaweed chips).

We're on the internet for the next few hours, so if you need us to pick up anything (again, we're not bringing back ANY dried seaweed), now's the time to let us know.

Sayonara!

Konichiwa, Gojira-san

Our work here is finished...

We have more photos to go through, including John's official greeting of the G-man, but with our locating the statue of Godzilla in downtown Tokyo yesterday, we checked the last item off his Tokyo to-do list.

It was a long day trekking through Tokyo - led by the Sanda clan and joined by the Nobles, we hit Akihabra (where we'll be heading back today to do more shopping)


the Ginza shopping district (how much is that Dino in the window?)


Asakusa temple (this time everyone got their fortune by shaking a stick out of a tin cylinder, and then finding a fortune that matched the number on the stick - Stan was the recipient of the 'very best fortune')


the Imperial Palace


and Shibuya.


We crawled back into the hotel just after midnight, which is why this post is only going up this morning.

It's interesting to note that in our travels, we ran into Troy Alders from Lucasfilm and his son on the train to Akihabra the morning, Star Wars model-maker Lorne Peterson (and separately our artist neighbors from the show) at Asakusa temple, and while Stan and Larry were taking a break in Shibuya, they were spotted by the Chinese garrison of the 501st squadron who were also in town for the show. Talk about a small world...

One more day in the land of the rising sun, and then it's Sayonara Japan.

It'll take a few moments to get the coordinates in the navicomputer...

We have officially survived another Star Wars Celebration.

I got to meet Mark Hamill when I delivered a copy of our Japanese Ralph McQuarrie book to him, and visit with Anthony Daniels again while doing the same. The day at the show was otherwise subdued.

Stan wheeled-and-dealed to coordinate the return shipping of our items, and then we were off to Tony Roma's (successfully, this time) with Lawrence, Libby, Casey and John Noble and Bonnie from Lucasfilm (separated from Pete since he's on a plane back to California for Comic-Con).

It seems like everyone but Stan and I are hopping from Japan to Comic-Con. Not to worry - we'll be there next year with several new book projects...

More photos and stories to come - our Japanese adventure is not yet over...

P.S. Chris tried to post this picture in the comments...

In Search Of...

So the rumors of a Tony Roma's in Chiba remain unfounded... we'll try to find it again tomorrow. We ended up having dinner with Bonnie and Pete at an Italian restaurant. It wasn't the best Italian food, but pasta was a nice change of pace from the native Japanese cuisine.

On our way back, we bumped into Jimmy Mac, Dan and Dave on the street, looking for the fabled Tony Roma's we'd been bragging about going to for dinner. Jimmy mentioned that the day-one wrap up of the Forcecast had been posted, including the interview with John. You can click the link to check it out if you want PROOF that we had sushi.

Raiders of the Lost Art

Today's panel went well, and got a nice write-up on the Official Star Wars Blog.

Check out their Celebration Japan flicker pages to find a few pictures of Stan and I.

We're heading out to dinner (that's right - Tony Roma's) and will post some photos when we return.