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If you study at Genki Japanese school in either Fukuoka or Tokyo long enough, you may start taking a liking to the TV programming here (this is obviously up in the air). One of the wonderful shows that is amusing to a foreigner is the one mentioned in the title of the blog entry. Oh, the wonderful Japan life!
The show is run by a famous comedy duo known as ‘Bananaman’ made up of Osamu Shitara and Yuki Himura. It runs regularly in Japan on Monday evenings (Mondays are generally awful in any part of the world, but this show makes it all worth it – in our opinion anyway)!
The show loosely places the camera crew at an international airport terminal (usually Narita International or Haneda International in Tokyo) and follows random interviewees around their journey in Japan!
This girl came from Canada from a province in Quebec, her dream wanting to become a maid at a maid café in Akihabara! Big shoes to fill, but the show followed her month long journey from interview to interview. Eventually, she got the job and started working as an associate maid. Not quite the full time position she wanted, but everyone has got to start somewhere right?
Another example is a couple of Swedish friends that got massive popularity by buying new guidebooks about Japan every year, and randomly pointing to spots in Japan. The random page would be their destination for the year. So random, so adventurous, so awesome. Obviously, the Japanese love this kind of behavior and the pair have become micro-celebrities of sort!
Finally, celebrity exposure? Of course! Mega rising star Benedict Cumberbatch has been seen on the show and had a memorable episode. He was probably more amused than the audience, though!
The best part of the show is the randomness! Just about any person can appear on the show and expose their adventure to Japan (except Japanese people, we guess).
So if you run into the YOUは何しに日本へ? camera crew, please bring them down to Genki Japanese and Culture school!
