Some of you may have seen this film (The Cove) -- it won an Oscar for best feature documentary in 2010, as well as an award at Sundance (among others). The star of the film, Ric O'Barry is known as being one who captured and trained Flipper in the 1960s TV series.

Since then he's been working with the Earth Island Institute Dolphin Project to try and stop the annual dolphin hunt in Japan.

Anyway, I had the great honour of attending "An Evening with Ric O'Barry" last night in Tokyo, where he answered questions, gave out free copies of The Cove, and signed autographs. I managed to snag a photo with him as well. :-D There was also live music, and an all-you-can-eat vegan buffet prepared by a world-class chef! We also got to see some raw footage of a new film they are working on, which was based in some old, archive footage from a really neat musical collaboration by some major names in American music back in the 1960s, with Japanese artists of the day, in a "whale and dolphin celebration" love-in... Cool stuff, and some original footage of some amazing, original arrangements of wicked tunes!

Mr. O'Barry came across as a very intelligent man and had some fantastic ideas for how to help Japan and Japanese people in the future. He said that his goal was to try and focus on what Japan is doing RIGHT rather than wrong, and rather than telling people to "boycott Japan," do the exact opposite -- SUPPORT Japan, specifically local eco-tourism areas where Japanese locals make their money from whale and dolphin watching, taking out visitors to swim with the dolphins, and promote preservation, in an effort to show the people of Taiji that they CAN build a viable industry without dolphin hunting, and maybe even have it be more lucrative than what they do now.

Anyway, having said that, I just wanted to share with the rabble the really cool evening I had. (I'm not looking for a debate on the ethics or whether his cause and the actions of the organization he represents are right or wrong).

Pics or it never happened.....