Laughing Japan

Amagasaki Comedy Prize

Maybe I am the one who is most suprised about this, but my manzai-duo "Altbayern" won the first prize at the Amagasaki Comedy Competition. Although this competition is not very big it is quite well known within the comedy scene since it has been the stepping stone for many famous comedians for example female stand-up-comedian start Tomochika. We beat 255 competitors and got the prize, which allows us to have a weekly radio show on FM Amagasaki (which is not the BBC of course...).

My partner Daisuke and I acted a scene in which I read a letter written to my parents telling them about my life in Japan, how I put the broccoli into my bicycle when the saddle was stolen, how my (fictive!) girlfriend is only going out with me because of my (fictive!) money and how I destroy the beautiful Japanese paper walls in my room when doing penalty shoots with my German friend with whom I attended the football club before.

At the beginning I had to sing an altered version of the Doraemon-Song, which is well known to every Japanese. And... being not Japanese, I got stuck. We somehow managed to navigate out of this, but to be honest, I thought the prize is gone because of that. After that we enjoyed the shows of the other 15 single persons or duos who had been able to reach the finals. All people I talked to were very friendly and I would love to invite them all as guests to our radio show very soon.

The second prize went to "Onigiri", a boy and a girl from a local primary school doing manzai. The third prize went to "Wataru with Okan", a very unique duo of young man and his mum. I had known Wataru with Okan before, since they had appeared on the bonus-dvd of the famous M1-Grandprix Manzai competition.

A radio show? To be honest I am not sure yet what to do with a radio show, but I hope I can use it as a good chance to make new experiences, meet new people, widen my network etc.

A Punished Comedian

Show business is hard. There must be a lot of pressure on Japanese comedians. There are so many competitors and so many young people who are after your job. So sometimes even a veteran comedian does something he should not do and get into trouble. That has happened to the comedian Ken (47), member of the famous comedy-duo Tommys.

During a TV-show production in China Ken lowered his pants and showed his naked bottom into the camera. He repeated the same action at two other locations. Obviously the director and the stuff of the show did not mind at all during that time, but later when it became obvious that the people who saw it were not amused it was all said to be Ken's improvisation and only his fault.

The TV station decided to cancel the sheduled broadcast of the show. Ken was punished with an unlimited "arrest", meaning that he will not appear on stage or TV for some time, while his partner Masa will go on appearing on TV shows on his own. Ken also did a public apologize on a press conference where he declared that he will never expose his bottom again and that he was a big idiot doing so. As usual for Japanese apologise-press-conferences Ken bowed deeply and expressed his regrets for how much he has put everyone into trouble.

I like Ken. I like Tommys. Their humor is sometimes a bit insinuating, but intelligent, unique and funny. They can make people laugh with their funny ideas without exposing any part of their body. It is hard for me to imagine that it was only Ken's idea. At least nobody stopped him doing that during the shootings and maybe even encouraged him to do it a second and third time. That could be part of the problem I mentioned at the beginning, that the pressure on comedian to do something funny and something new all the time may be very hard, even for the veteran comedians.

Although Ken is now under arrest for some times before he can appear on stage again, I am sure his fans are not really angry with him and everybody will forgive him very soon. For me, I am looking forward to seeing Tommys Ken and Masa again very soon.