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To The Updated News Page |
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  Yoshi joined it for the first time as an emcee for Brave Season Basara, a Samurai Troupe,who are Yoshi's friends and came from Japan for this performance. The entire event was very successful. What will happen next year? We will keep our eye on this event  |
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  Cast: Yoshi Amao, Takemi Kitamura, Raymond Fight Scene Choreographed by Yoshi Amao, Directed by Aaron Mcfarlane |
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  MC was Koyuki, a former Yoshimoto Kogyo Talent and Gaijin Charley Hama. Yoshi and Samurai Sword Soul performed, and then a surprise birthday cake was served. It was memorable!! |
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shot in thePocono Mountains   Yoshi plays Yoshizo, who was a master of sword fighting when he was young and was hired by the emperor. However, he was betrayed by somebody and sent to the mountains. He has been living in the mountains for 15 years with a young woman, alsoa master of sword fighting. Cast: Yoshi Amao, Ai Ikeda, Bob Kuwayama, Kojiro Shinohara, Takahiro Ueno, Sam Aoyama, Tomas Trinidad, Choreographed by Bob Kuwayama, Directed by Raffi Asdourian |
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"Hotdog Champ, Kobayashi" Takeru Kobayashi is now very well known to New Yorkers as the champion of the Hot Dog Fast Eating Contest. Saturday Night Live made an Animation featuring Mr. Kobayashi for the Funhouse segment of the show. It's silly and funny. Please check it out at the youtube. Can you recognize which is Yoshi’s voice? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hkq6Qn0nQY |
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 This video shows what American Football and Samurai fighting have in common.Yoshi Amao's opponent was Ken Kensei, a master of Iaido and Kendo. The exciting samurai fighting scenes overlap with football game scenes, and focuses on Donovan McNabb, the superstar quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles. This footage was aired before the game on October 2nd, and overwhelmed not only samurai fans but also football fans! |
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  Yoshi Amao performed "Samurai One Man Show!!" at the July 4th Fireworks Party which was held by Safeco Risk Control, Inc. in Brooklyn. In Part 1, Yoshi picked 4 people from the audience, and gave them an instant choreography. The patience is one of the important philosophy of Bushido, but Yoshi was screwed up by the eccentric movement of instant samurais. The part 2 was the love story. If they could fit with the music, it was supposed to be so romantic samurai love story, though... and part 3 was the serious fight between American samurai versus Japanese samurai. Yoshi pulled up his good friend, Airon Armstrong, who had a great fight with Yoshi in the show "Deadly she-wolf~" in Philadelphia, and had a exciting fight with the toy swords, and got a big applaud from large young crowd. After the show, there was a greeting from Mr. Tiger Aki who is the organizer of the party, and an interview of a martial artist, Ken Ito. The office of Safeco Risk Control, Inc. is located near the East River in Brooklyn, so people could enjoy the fireworks from the window, but those who were not satisfied with it, rushed to the river and had a great time with fireworks. It's fun!! |
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"Deadly She-wolf, Assassin at Armageddon!", which was performed as "work in progress" short version at Japan Society in April in 2005, was completed and performed as a full-length version on June 24th & 25th this year. The location was at Mandell Theater of Drexel University, where is downtown in Philadelphia. Yoshi Amao, Assassin, started from the top scene with fighting, and through the scene with his son (Takemi Kitamura), the scene with his wife, and finished act 1 with another fighting scene with a short sword. After the 10 minutes intermission, Yoshi Assassin kept fighting with big fighters from the Armageddon Inc. which was hired by Shogun such as Bok Mei Lotus(Satoshi Okabe) who is the betrayer of the Shaolin Temple, strong but boneheaded, Colonel USA(Airon Armstrong) who is very intelligent and proud, an expert of a gun and fencing, Qaseem(Vaughn Nelson) is a killing machine, an ace of Armageddon Inc, a specialist of sticks. Then the drama reaches its climax, the scene with Assassin and She-wolf(Ai Ikeda)... Other cast are Takumi Bando(Iyagu), Mika Saburi(Sister of she-wolf/Ninja), Kerry Huang(Shogun) and Marina Celander(Narrator). Directed by Sonoko Kawahara, choreographed by Tsuyoshi Kaseda, written by Fred Ho and Ruth Margraff, produced by Fred Ho. They may possibly perform in New York, and have a national tour in the near future. Keep your eye on this project!! |
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   Samurai Sword Soul performed for New York International Cultural Festival at Queens Botanical Garden on June 17th. Various type of performance group including a Japanese Korean hard rock band, Korean girls dancing group, Mr.magic man and Korean singer showed their performance. SSS performed the comedy "Samurai Love Story" (created by Bob Kuwayama), and showed one of the Japanese traditional culture, "Tate". Cast:Bob Kuwayama, Ginger Burden, Max Piltenko, Kirk Gutierrez, Finn Kilgore & Yoshi Amao |
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@Brooklyn Botanic Garden  
We had special gifts from GOD this year, which were beautiful Saturday and Sunday for Sakura Matsuri! So we had another record-breaking visitors of over 70,000 for two days! Yoshi's MC was the best ever, he picked up some audience on the stage, and enjoyed with them so much. Samurai Sword Soul performance's title was "Sakura, the Enblem". The story was based on the legendary fight between Musashi Miyamoto and Kojiro Sasaki at the Ganryu Island. This play was written, directed and choreographed by Bob Kuwayama, and it was so dramatic conbined hard fighting scenes and comedy. They finished with the BIG applause. |
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Brooklyn Botanic Garden had a media preview day on 4/25, which many TV stations and newspaper companies such as NY-1, Fox TV, New York Times, Metro New York, etc, gathered to shoot and take photos the demonstrations of selected performance group like Soh-Daiko, Minbu(Japanese Folk Dance), Kimono Fashion Show and Samurai Sword Soul. NY-1 News (Click below the title, and you can see the video) http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=58909 |
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@14th Street Y  Samurai Sword Soul performed for Japanese New Year's Fair at 14th Street Y. They performed at the theater this year. It was so happy to have a long line and full of audience in the theater, but it was so unhappy to leave so many audience out of the theater... Shall we perform twice or three times a day next year? Cast: Bob Kuwayama, Brian Coffey, Max Piltenko, Yuka Ogata, Ginger Burdon, Tomas Trinidad, Yoshi Amao Shamisen guitar?Yumi Shindo, Sound effect?Tenpei Iwakiri |
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The casting director was looking for a ˛Skinny Asian Martial ArtistÓ. I was surprised when I got to the audition because I had to wear a hat with feelers. Also, I noticed they were looking for 18-22 year old kid. "What?!" But I moved and danced so hard anyway. Then...I got it! I went to the shooting and was surprised yet again. I had to wear the whole bee costume and I was hung from the ceiling, had to bounce on a trampoline thousands of times to get into a kicking pose, and finally, I had to lick a honey bottle and get it all over my face! OH, it was real honey! I could taste honey for a week after the shooting. It will be aired on MTV2 in October. I hope youll enjoy it! |
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Yoshi Amao was the emcee for the quiz show at "Japan Fest" in Atlanta, which aired as a special TV program for TV Japan's 15th Anniversary on October 15th. The Japan Fest was held on September 24th and 25th. It is one of the biggest events in Atlanta, with almost 20,000 people who came to enjoy a variety of booths including Japanese foods, a Kimono workshop, origami performance, calligraphy lesson, and also a lot of martial arts demonstrations including Karate, Kendo, Aikido, Judo and Shinkendo. Yoshi appeared on the main stage after performances including song, Taiko drumming and Japanese traditional dance. He brought some audience members onto the stage and let them join the sword fighting choreography. This got a big applause! Then he moved on to the "Atlanta Quiz Show". It was not easy to find the balance between a live show and a TV shoot while being a bilingual emcee both in Japanese and English, but Yoshi did it successfully thanks to the big cheers of the local Atlanta audience and the superb combination of staff. Director: Noriko Komura Emcee: Yoshi Amao Reporter: Miyuki Nomura |
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