suimoken

suimoken, originally uploaded by renfield.

Friday evening Gosoke sends me an email: "Cutting in the dojo 8pm Sat for tv crew." Huh? Seems the TV show Adomachikku Tengoku was shooting for an episode of the Nihonbashi Muromachi area where our Honbu Dojo is, and they wanted to get some shots of that gaijin doing that sword thing. I soaked a couple of targets and headed to the dojo. TV crew arrived and we explained the place so the director goes "OK start w/a zoom, and when he goes to cut, pull out and get the whole thing" and I tell him "Dude, that's impossible." He kind of looks at me funny and the cameraman goes "It's ok, I'm a pro." I look at him for a moment and realize he doesn't have the faintest clue what's about to happen, so I tell him "When I put my hand on my sword, the cut is over about three-tenths of a second later."
This doesn't seem to register so the director just says "Let's try it once" and so I sit down, he says "Go!" and I cut. The cameraman lowers his camera and stares at me. The lighting girl turns off the light and stares at me. The director stares at me. The dude with all the rolls of duct tape stares at me. Gosoke is off to the side and just laughs and laughs and finally says "A bit faster than you expected?" So the director says "OK...can we try it one more time?"
I end up cutting about five times, and then Hashimoto-san from Toyoda cuts a couple times (though not from the draw) and then the try to take digital photos. Again I remind him that unless he's got rapid-fire on his camera, there's no way he's going to get it. We spend the next ten minutes trying to take a photo of Hashimoto-san just as he's cut the target, and finally get a usable photo.
After the shoot I headed down to Toyoda where Hashimoto-san hooked us up with a fine bottle of Suimoken and some quality eats and we laughed about the shoot and wondered when and how much we'll be on tv.