the 'master higgins' thing for the us version was just the us side's creation for the localization as 'meijin' (literaly : famous person) wouldn't make any sense. no one in the states knew of takahashi at the time. of course, naming the character 'master higgins' doesn't do much for us either. i personally thought it was kind of funny because the name higgins reminded me of a character on magnum p.i. (whom my friend looked like [we called him higgins also]) and that was funny enough for me. as for why 'master'...maybe because he's a good skateboarder?
al i do for hudson is get some information and write features for them. i'm not a full time employee or anything like that. i've gotten to meet several people from both the japan and us side things. usually, it's pretty fun.