30 Hours July 9, 2010 10:15

We spent twelve days traveling back and forth across Japan, from Hokkaido in the North to Kyushu in the South.  We took two inner-island flights and the rest of time we moved around by train.  The unusual features of this junket were the morning visits to the elementary schools, and the presentations in the theaters in the evening.  This trip was well organized, and even gave us two days off in the middle to recharge.

That said, the days can seem like weeks with all the different people and places we can go.  We would usually meet in the lobby of our hotel by eight or nine, and drive to the first stop which was usually a school.  We'd always be briefed on what was going to be happening, and then we'd get mics and makeup and go to it.  Those stops were our longest, but always seemed like the quickest.  After the visit we'd head to either a TV station or back to a hotel to start interviews.  We'd always have two rooms working at once, so the interview crews could set-up in one room while we were working in the other.  We never knew what we'd find when we walked into those rooms.  It could be a one-on-one print interview, a taped TV show, a radio show or a round table.  The trick was to adjust to the personality of the interviewer and the angle of the outlet as quickly as possible to give them what they needed.  Some reporters worked for media publications, but some worked for children's or teen magazines.  The duration of each session was between twenty to forty minutes long.  When we finished the interview we'd switch rooms and start our next interview while they changed crews in the room we just left.  That would last till noon-ish when Dean and I would either get lunch with everybody in the restaurant or eat alone in our rooms if we happened to still be in the same hotel we woke up in.

The afternoon was always the toughest, with interviews stretching another four or five hours straight.  By the end its always a challenge to stay focused, but it was important to make the last interview of the day to be as good as the first.  After we wrapped in the hotel we'd make our way to a theater to introduce the film and answer questions from the audience.  When we arrived we'd be briefed on what was going to be happening, we'd get makeup and mics and we'd head in.  The pictures of us with the Football players was from one of those theater appearances.  Usually we'd be finished around six-thirty to seven or so, and we'd either ride or fly to another town, or return to our hotel.

Just for the heck of it I decided to take a picture of most of the people we met in the span of thirty hours, just to give you an idea of what it looks like from our point of view.  The pictures cover the afternoon of Monday June 28th through the evening of June 29th.

We start in Osaka then travel to Shizuoka.  The last pictures are from the theater we appeared at and the ride to the train station where we departed for Tokyo.