If, like me, you were down in Pioneer Square this afternoon looking for a little lunch, you probably saw the cameras, the cables, the film trucks and the nattily dressed men in their porkpie hats.If, like me, it sometimes takes you a little while to catch on to what’s happening in the real world, you may have been somewhat confused. Or thought that, finally, someone in Seattle had invented a workable time machine and was bringing back bewildered immigrants from the 1940’s just to walk the streets and stand around on street corners in overcoats looking cool.Then you might’ve noticed the crudely hand-lettered and racist signs–like the BEWARE JAPS one hung up around Post and Yessler, or all the anti-immigrant handbills plastered on the walls–and wondered how the Tea Partiers had snuck in without anyone noticing and what their problem was with Japanese immigrants all of a sudden.But really, all this foofaraw is just part and parcel of the massive, 10-hour-long miniseries currently being shot in and around Seattle, depicting the stories of four generations of Japanese immigrants living in America. The scenes being shot right now in Pioneer Square are dealing (obviously) with the anti-immigrant and anti-Japanese fervor that gripped the area around WWII–hence the hats, the classy suits and the signs.Because I’m an idiot, I didn’t have a camera on me while I strolled straight through the middle of the shoot about an hour ago. But I do know that they’re going to be working through this afternoon, and may be returning at some later date for a bit more location shooting. Also, I discovered that, while Seattle might be one of the major settings of the film, we here in the Emerald City are probably never going to see the epic finished product as the thing is being made specifically for Japanese audiences and will likely only be shown only in Godzilla Country.You can get more information on the film itself courtesy of NWCN.com, or get some more scoop about the script (and the final product) thanks to Densho, the Japanese-American Legacy Project, which wrote about it on their blog, and explained that the name of the project appears to be simple “Japanese Americans.”