I enjoyed that.

Made my way to the NHK studios, where I soon met Emma, a professional British actress who did a superb job of lying down in a pretend MRI scanner, although her socks did give the director a little cause for concern. We were then joined by Melissa, a freelance writer of things such as this and this and this and this), and then Randy, an American who was to play our professor for the day. Finally, when one of the other actors didn’t show up, a Russian chap who’s currently studying at Sofia University turned up to stand in for him. I forget his name, nice chap.

Randy was funny, he really got into it. There was this one scene whereby we, the students, were supposed to be listening to him lecture us about tongue-twisters (we were recreating this piece of research). The camera was just on us as he spoke, although they weren’t using the sound. All we had to do was nod in understanding, so the swine starts out by quoting Beatles’ lyrics, “I am the walrus…”, in a very serious professor-like tone. It was virtually impossible for me to keep a straight face, and of course the director had no idea what Randy was saying…

Another somewhat memorable moment was when the producer handed over a script for Randy to learn in the space of 5 minutes. He was not a happy bunny, and I don’t blame him! It was written in Japanese, which Randy doesn’t read or speak all that much of, and thus needed translating. The result of this is that I can now add script-writing for NHK to my list of achievements on my year abroad (although, to be honest, it wasn’t exactly very hard, and will be dubbed over or subtitled in Japanese).

So, the back of my head will probably become quite famous on Saturday 30th June 2007 at 10pm (NHK 1), and if they don’t cut it, my big nose too. You may even hear me say the tongue twister “Peter Piper…” but of course you never know until the actual broadcast.

The thing that struck me most today was just how nice my fellow actors were. Really lovely people. I do love to meet new people, especially when they’re on my wavelength (boom boom!)

I’ll be kept on the books, and maybe do some more work in the future should it arise.

Few. My two days of fame is over. Exhausting stuff. I guess I’d better do a bit of study now.

tatta.