Celebrity Spotlight!

Its been awhile since last updating, but the past week has been really busy and a lot of fun. Some highlights include:

1. my reintegration of exercise now that I'm set up as a member of the Tokyo American Club - I've been heading over at least 3x a week to build some muscle!
2. I found a closer Jiu Jitsu academy and started training there last week.
   
3. Spent a day over at Dream.6 MMA event (soon to receive its own blog post in my fight sport review featurette).
4. Sampled Tokyo's nightlife with 2 back to back late nights in Roppongi & Shibuya.

Along the way, I've run into 4 Japanese celebrities all well-known to Tokyoites and a large portion of the Japanese population. Here's a quick bio for each and how I met them.

• Nobuhiko Takada:
• Met him at the Tokyo American Club while working out of the weekend in the weight room.

• Takada was an extremely popular Pro-Wrestler in Japan during the early 90's and drew a crowd of 65,000 during of his fights in a main event in 1996.
• After pro-wrestling, Takada decided to try his hand at Mixed Martial Arts and headlined the inaugural Pride Fighting Championships event. Due to the success and popularity of the show, Pride was developed into a major promotion in the years to follow.
• Retiring in 2002 from fighting, Takada became the chairman for Pride and oversaw the rise of the promotion during the golden years of 2003 - 2005. He remained until Pride disintegrated in 2007 on the heels of a Yakuza (Japanese mafia) scandal.
  
• Currently, Takada is back to his roots running a smaller pro-wrestling event called 'Hustle'.

• Being a big fan of Pride I spoke to him for 10 minutes about the company and the current status of MMA in Japan. He was very friendly and offered to work-out with me in the future.

• Fedor Emelianenko
• Met him at a special fan greeting session an hour before the Dream.6 event on Tuesday.

• Fedor is the undisputed #1 heavyweight MMA fighter in the world, with a record of 29-1 (with his only loss coming from an illegal strike).
• Pride's Heavyweight Champion, 4x World Combat Sambo Gold Medalist (a Russian derivation of Judo), as well as a medalist in Russia's national Judo championships.
• Currently fighting with AfflictionMMA - a new American MMA promotion rivaling the UFC.

• The first 300 fans at the Saitama Super Arena were able to speak to and shake hands with Fedor. I was sure to be one of them.

Here are a few pictures I snapped of him

• Bob Sapp
• Ran into him this past Friday at night on the streets of Roppongi

• Former NFL Offensive Lineman (drafted 3rd round but only appeared in one pro game) and brother of Warren Sapp

• After NFL, the 6'4 375 lbs Bob Sapp moved onto American Pro Wrestling and later... Japanese pro wrestling.
• Sapp transitioned to K-1 (Japan's premier kickboxing organization) and also Pride (MMA).
  

Due to his popular personality and gigantic size, he became a huge celebrity in Japan, appearing on TV variety shows as well as a number of commercials in Japan. He parlayed this success into a short-lived music career and released a CD entitled "It's Sapp Time."

CD cover art

• Currently Sapp is expected to return to K-1 after a 3 year hiatus.
  

• Spoke to him for only about a minute where he told me he'll be making his return to fighting this New Year's Eve in Japan.

• Atsushi Sato
• Spent Saturday night with him & his friends

• Lead singer in hugely popular Japanese band 'Exile' (J-Pop/RnB)
• Exile has 3 of the top 10 songs on iTunes Japan, with one of them "ti Amo" sitting at #1.
  
• Exile's latest album, Exile Love, has sold exceptionally well, selling nearly 1.5 million copies in less than four months.

• I met him with my friends in Shibuya when I went up to a small group of Japanese twenty-somethings and asked them which club to go.
• They told us to come with them and they eventually led us to the fairly popular "Club Asia" in the outskirts of Shibuya.
• Along the way his friends told me that he was the singer for Exile, but I didn't really know anything about them at the time, so I just talked to him like everyone else.
• I think he liked not being asked all the same things his fans say to him all the time and he was really nice to me the whole time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3-SszWA8Ak

(Link to their #1 song ti Amo)



*Well that's all for now. Expect the full Dream.6 review soon. I hope to keep the stars coming!