Thanks to a Japanese Beer Company, my Buddy got to fight with Jackie Chan.

Recently, Kirin (A Japanese beer company) has been running a "dream campaign" where people can write in to the company explaining what their dream is, and if selected, the company sets out to make it come true.

Of all the people selected to have their "dream come true", the most expensive and elaborate one was a normal guy who worked for a normal company who always dreamed of being in a Jackie Chan movie. When asked what kind of movie he wanted to do, his description was extremely thorough. He knew everything that he wanted to happen in the movie, all of the actors he wanted to use, and had every detail so perfectly worked out, that Kirin decided to go for it, and make a commercial out of it, despite how expensive it would be. (As you watch the actual commercial, you can see numbers rambled off, and each of numbers represents something that he requested to be in the commercial. (Ex. # 13 Fighting with a stool or chair, # 31 - have some massive Chinese pot broken, )

You can see what I mean here:
Apparently, this fantasy was something that the guy had been building since he was in college. He was so serious about it back then that he started a "Kung fu club" at his university where people would get together to practice Kung fu stunt fighting. As he got older however, eventually he folded the dream and went on to get a regular job, but in the back of his head, he never really gave up on it, and at the end of the day, it paid off, and he was selected.

My buddy Yuki comes in because he was a part of this guy's Kung Fu club, and while the guy went on to get a regular job, Yuki stuck with it and went on to become one of Japan's top stunt guys. As a function of this, when the guy was selected, he also insisted that his friend Yuki do the stunts for it. (Yuki is playing the main bad guy in white). I've had the pleasure of working with Yuki on numerous numerous occasions, and he's just about the nicest guy you could ever meet.

Here's an example of his work: In the Ninjya-size video he is the ninja who was hiding in the tree, who is jumping and throwing the ninja stars, and also the one on the left side of the sword battle.


Anyway, here is the full actual vid, if you'd like to check it out. The guy's name is "Ishida" and you can hear them singing "Go Go Ishida!!" it in the theme song throughout the commercial.


After seeing it, I ran into Yuki at fight action training, and asked him if the whole thing was real, and he said that indeed it was- except for the fact that it wasn't actually his first time working with Jackie- it was his second. In the documentary about the video, he actually greets Jackie by saying "Hajime mashite" in Japanese (Nice to meet you). But after speaking with Yuki, I found out that he had spent the previous few weeks practicing "It's nice to see you again" in Cantonese so he could greet Jackie in this way, but when he actually met eyes with him, he got so nervous that he just said the first thing to come out of his mouth, the Japanese phrase for "Nice to meet you".

In one respect, I was jealous that Yuki got to do this. Ive met Jackie before because I was a part of his and Kim Hee Sun's security team for the Japan premiere of his movie, "The Myth", but I never actually got to talk to him one on one, or even tell him that I do action myself. Thus far, the closest Ive come has been fighting a Japanese Jackie Chan impersonating comedian named U-chan. But in another respect, as aforementioned, it couldn't have happened to a better person than Yuki, so in that respect, I was nothing but happy for him.