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Just back home this evening after a very long day down at the NHK studios. They sent a truck to come and get me, and he arrived as scheduled at six this morning, so I've been up since about five ...

I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but because this is one of the first programs in what is to be a new series, they haven't got things worked out smoothly yet, and the day involved a fair amount of trial and error, getting the large studio set up the way they wanted it.

Here's an overview of the setup while they were still working on the lighting:

When I first walked in, I thought there had been an electrical fire or something, as the room seemed full of smoke, but I learned that this was all part of the lighting effects. They have some kind of 'mist' generator running, to make the spotlight beams visible. I think it's a bit overdone, but I guess they want even a simple interview program like this to look 'exciting'. (Now I'm curious to see/hear what kind of music they will be applying to all this footage!)

Peter and I met backstage before we started, and we 'agreed' not to talk about the printmaking until we were 'live' on the set, to avoid having to repeat ourselves, and lose the natural feeling of the conversation.

Once the tech guys were ready, Peter and I took our places on those two stools, and we got started. As you will see in the finished product, the program alternates between segments taped at my place and our conversation/reaction. Things went along fairly well, although there was a bit of stiffness between us due to the fact that it was so tightly scripted; it was difficult to get our conversation to run along as smoothly as we would have liked.

At one point, we moved to one side of the studio where they had built a little room for me:

When I first saw this I semi-chided the producer for 'spending so much money' on preparing a set that would just be used for a few minutes, but he laughed me off. It turns out that they 'borrowed' it from a neighbouring studio where a samurai drama is filmed. (And that was a hoot too, sharing the hallways with all the people in those old costumes. It's kind of bizarre, walking past a fully dressed samurai warrior on the way to the bathroom; do you catch his eye, or look away ...)

I'm sorry that I don't have any more photos to show you, as we did keep pretty busy, and anyway I really couldn't act too much like a 'tourist', snapping away at everything around me ...

So the rest is up to the editors; just how interesting they can make it we'll discover in a week or so.

Here's a reprise of the broadcast information, and how to view it:

[The scheduled time of first broadcast is: 2010:10:10:10:10 (ten past ten on the tenth of October, 2010) But that's Tokyo time, so for people in most places around the world, it will be happening on the 9th. The program will be repeated later that same day, at four hour intervals, three or four more times, so no matter where on the globe you are, you'll be able to see it at a hopefully convenient time.

How to access NHK World (cable or satellite) information is here.

Schedule (including local times) is here. (Japanophiles is a new program, and appears on the schedules there for the first time on October 2~3rd. My episode will be one week later, on the 9~10th)

View NHK World live on the net here (click the 512K button in the viewer to pop up a larger viewing window).]

And as today is the end of the month, we have another 'countdown' image!