Today: "Lightsabers," or "Nagoya's Gaijin Jedi Order"


I think I've probably told a lot of people about this already, but I think it's time to post some pictures. A select few (the few, the proud, the awesome) have purchased Master Replicas FX lightsabers. With several hard-core Star Wars fans in one place, it was bound to happen, I suppose. The lightsabers don't extend, but it's made up for by the fact that the handles are slightly-larger than scale beautiful metal replicas, and the blades light up gradually, just like in the movies (thanks to a string of LED lights inside the blade). They also make sound effects when idling, moving, turning on/off, and clashing with objects. Pretty sweet. There was lots of anticipation for these to arrive. We were hoping to do a fan film, but we've never gotten around to it. Hopefully we can get some nice fight footage, at least, before we leave (who will we fight if no one else around us has lightsabers?).

(British) Alex and I both have green lightsabers -- this model belonged to Luke in Return of the Jedi (he constructed it himself). It's very industrial-looking, and has a brushed-metal finish. Don't know what else to say about it, except that it's the greatest lightsaber model ever. Green is obviously the best, but I suppose not everyone can have it...


Kate, from Northern England, has Mace Windu's purple lightsaber, from the new movies. It's very shine-y, and a has textured effect on the black bits, quite the fancy saber. And certainly, the only purple model that could possibly be released.


Dave, also from England, went big and got lightsabers representing both sides of the force. He has the blue lightsaber that once belonged to Anakin Skywalker, and is later wielded by Luke in the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. He then also has Darth Vader's red lightsaber (which has a really sweet handle). Both those lightsabers have a nice, a-symmetrical design that I'm a little jealous of.


Then Sarven has a really striking piece, Darth Maul's double-ended lightsaber. It can be used as one big saber or unscrewed and used as two separately. A beautiful weapon used by an awesome character, but the unfortunate part is that it's caused us to watch the Jar Jar-heavy Episode I twice since we bought the sabers... maybe it's time to just skip to the fight scenes.


And to make sure this post is sufficiently nerdy, here are two phony Star Wars posters, with us in the leading roles. There's nothing better than pulling out your model lightsabers and spending an hour taking pictures of yourselves, right?

posted by No_Fluff_Reviewer @ 5:13 AM

Tokyo Trip: Day Three

On our third day in Tokyo we started feeling pressed for things to do. If you like to shop a lot, you probably wouldn't have that problem!

We started off the day by going to Odaiba. Odaiba is a man-made island a short distance off the coast from Tokyo. We got on a monorail that took us on a loop around a few stations then actually goes onto Rainbow Bridge (a well-known site in Tokyo). It was definitely a nice view.

First thing we did at Odaiba was have a look at the Fuji Television building. I had seen its picture in my travel book, and wanted to have a look at it in real life. Quite the interesting piece of architecture. I think it kind of looks like something that was meant to look futuristic in the past, if you see my meaning.


Also at Odaiba, we went to the Tokyo National Museum of Science and Innovation. It was pretty neat, with robotics displays and other science-y things, although it seemed a little child-oriented in some places.


After that, we sat on the rocks by the ocean and tried to decide what to do next. We decided on going to Shinjuku, because I wanted to have a look at some of Tokyo's highest skyscrapers. We went there, had a walk around, and also had some food.


We decided to go back to Ueno park and have a more thorough look around in the evening.



Finally, we took a walk around town at night, before we had to get back on the nightbus and head back to Nagoya (I didn't get a good picture of it, but we did get to see Tokyo Tower lit up in the distance). All in all, quite an excellent trip.

posted by No_Fluff_Reviewer @ 10:06 PM