Thursday, December 15, 2005

Power Rangers, Ho!

posted by Jason Tiller

Japan is always fun - you never know what you'll see.

Well, being sick isn't so fun; I've been under the weather since we arrived. I'm finally starting to come out of it now. (whew) Unfortunately, I was feeling poorly enough to miss our only free day in Tokyo. :/ Still, if you gotta spend a day of doing nothing, there are worse places to do it than the Tokyo Dome Hotel! (toh-kee-yo dome-oo ho-teh-ru) I was thrilled when our taxi pulled in to the TDH because it felt like I had come home; we've stayed there for probably 12 days over the last two tours.

The Tokyo Dome is a large baseball stadium that also serves as a concert venue and whatever else you can do with a 50,000-seat, enclosed venue. However, there's oh so much more around the area. In fact, the Dome is the center of "Tokyo Dome City," an amusement park/shopping mall/hotel/restaurant/health spa cavalcade. The amusement park is complete with a rollercoaster, ferris wheel, parachute fall, "drop zone"-style cart, kiddie coaster, blah blah blah.

And the really cool thing is that they have live Power Ranger shows! (Yes, we're finally at a place where this post relates to the title...) We were on the 19th floor and I was sick and alone, since my roommate Bruce had abandoned me in favor of an "Old Edo walking tour" (mostly around a highly-tourist-trap oriented temple). We had an "odd" (1907) room, and on our side we could look out over the amusement park and especially over the Power Ranger stage. (Note our first year room was "odd", but last tour's was "even", overlooking little more than MacDonalds ("mahk-oo-dohn-ah-roo-do") and our train station, Suidobashi ("soo-ee-doh-bash-ee").)

Oh, and life was good: it was a rehearsal day for the Power Rangers guys! Coolness! I knew I would be entertained all day watching the antlike (we were on the 19th floor) Japanese athletes in their little black jogging suits as they rehearsed their Power Ranger moves. The stage is a multi-level structure with two large inner cutouts for the Rangers (and their evil nemeses) to jump and flop onto after tragically being wounded and throwing their bodies into the air and falling to their doom.

So cute!

They all line up and work on the same jumps and landing. They also all seem to pray to the mattress (or the jump or the air or whatever) because they put their hands together (as the famous "praying hands") and make a small bow to the overlook before they contort their bodies, launching into the air, spinning, and finally slamming into the mattress with (seemingly) little damage. Then it's the next guy turn for praying, bowing, launching, spinning, and slamming. It's hilarious! The bottom guy runs out of small doors in the structure, up the steps, and back into position at the end of the queue waiting to jump.

Well, that's the normal course. Unfortunately, one guy appeared to really hurt himself. He was part of the crew jumping off the low landing, spinning around in midair, landing on the mattress with their hands and knees, and quickly jumping up to circle kick and punch one of their mates at the bottom. (Don't ask me why - none of the audience can see into the landing area, but whatever.)

Well, the poor guy does the praying, executes the jump and the spin, hits the mattress, jumps up... and then sits down again. Oops. He tries to get up, and then sits down again. He finally rolls over on his side, falling off the mattress. His companion (the guy who gets "hit" by the circle kick and punch) realizes he's not faking it and comes over to help. All the other guys run down off of their perches, surround the cutout where the guy's been hurt, and seem to just watch. Some more guys come over and cart the hurt dude off. Yikes.

After that, rehearsal went on as before. They probably did the various jumps, martial-arts combat scenes, and individual calasthenics for over two hours. I found myself thinking about what it's like to play in Sonos: yeah, we can hurt our wrists or our backs over time, but, sheesh! Would you want that guy's job??

---Jason

P.S. The first year, Diane and I actually got to see the Power Rangers show from the 25th floor. What a great blast!! That was super fun...

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