The King of Foreign Otaku in Japan
As reported earlier, TV Tokyo aired a compeition between foreign otaku last night. The program went out of its way to assemble an international group of contestants: a Frenchman, a Russian girl, two Americans, and a guy from Hong Kong. They were subjected to a variety of questions on the anime/manga world, few of which any normal person could answer. In the end, Chang from Hong Kong was crowned champion, but the real entertainment on the show were the social awkward otaku from other countries (the Americans, to be precise).
The strangest contestant was Jonathan Underwood, a 20-year-old student from the United States. Like many otaku out there, Jonathan doesn’t show the slightest shame at his flamboyantly strange otaku behavior. As this this video shows, he loves singing and dancing:
Unfortunately, Jonathan was unable to locate the source of a mystery drink the contestants were given, so he was eliminated at the end of round 2. He said he would practice hard and come back next time for “revenge.”
The other American contestant was Ardith Carlton of Hobbylink Japan, who was referred to as “Carlton” on the show, in contrast to their calling the other American by his first name. Anyway, Ardith wrote the following on her blog back in March, when she was pondering the decision to participate in the show:
If I said yes, I might be mortified for the rest of my life about being the doofy-ass geeky gaijin who panicked and couldn’t think straight and spoke crappinese on national TV.
But if I said yes, maybe, maybe the planets will be in alignment and it might all go okay.
Here’s a short clip of her on the show, starting with a spirited redition of the Hokuto no Ken theme song:
Unlike Jonathan, Ardith had a guess about where the mystery drink came from. Unfortunately, she was wrong, and the time she wasted heading to the incorrect maid cafe sealed her elimination in round 2. Before leaving the show, she tells them she had fun.
In the final round, the Russian girl faced off with the eventual champion in a battle of triva knowledge. One challenge involved putting on a Char costume and filling in a missing line from Gundam:
The show itself was entertaining, but it wasn’t without a few irritating parts. One of them was this scene of the foreigners taking a tour of Akihbara, which involved eating a dish called otaku-don:
Those of you who can understand Japanese may have noticed the narrator indulging in one of the biggest pet peves for foreigners in Japan: he comments on their skillful use of chopsticks. Foreigners can eat with chopsticks too? Wow!
As this was a show about foreign otaku, I was totally not expecting an African clown talento to show up, but somehow they managed to fit one in:
You might have been distracted my Jonathan Underwood’s weird dancing in that clip, but while the otaku are singing and dancing, a random African guy in a pink kimono can be seen dancing and playing maracas in the background. Later, when there is a question about Gundam, the host summons the African guy and asks him if there is Gundam in Nigeria. African clown responds with a confused stare: LOL, of course you wouldn’t know about Gundams, you wacky Nigerian talento! Did the show really have to result to humor at the expense of Nigerian talento when there was plenty of funny stuff going on already with the contestants?
Those of you missed the show will be happy to find out that somebody has posted the entire program on YouTube [Parts: one, two, three, four, five, six]. Props to DrWorm for discovering the presence of the full show on YouTube, and for pointing out that the French contestand has been on Japanese TV before! If anyone has more information on the contestants, or links to their websites, please let us know. It’ll be really cool to see if they wrote about their TV experience online!
In closing, I offer a warning to all foreigners who are considering an appearance on Japanese TV: If you’re making beeping sounds, they will air the footage.
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My god, I knew every song they sang except the Dunbine opening. .__.
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I am quite happy to say that I could not have got a single question right….
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Being 4th gen JA the comment about the complement on chopstick skill reminded me of a visit to japan I took when I was younger. A friends mother complemented me on my chopstick skills and with the left-hand too. Then she pointed out her son and husbands skills it was amazing that they could even feed themselves, we had a real good laugh, just me and her that is. lol
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Considering how all the contestants apparently speak Japanese pretty well and have intricate knowledge of Japanese pop culture, it’s all the more surprising that the narration would point out their chopstick usage.
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Are you kidding my feitclub? There’s more to speaking Japanese than knowing what words to say. Take Miss Carlton for example. She seems to know how to speak the words of Japanese but her accent and tone in her voice while she’s saying things is totally stilted and unnatural. It also sounded often like she was thinking about everything she needed to say while she was still saying it, instead of well practiced Japanese simply flowing from her brain to her mouth.
I think that’s one thing, at least from my experience, that English speakers learning Japanese need to focus more upon. Making yourself sound natural and flowing in your pronounciation.. not just paying attention to the words themselves… but also the proper rise and fall of tone in voice when speaking those words.
Then again… on the issue of “chopstick usage”… just seems like Japanese always like to point things like that out. It’s just a simple given that they’ll compliment forigners on chopsticks. Same way they often compliment people with utterly abysmal Japanese skills for being “so good at speaking Japanese”.
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it’s not just english speakers learning japanese. it’s any language learning any language. if you think out your thoughts in your native tongue and then translate before speaking, it will sound sort of weird. and i think her pronunciation is just poor from reading(manga) more than having actual conversations with people, but that’s probably just a prejudiced guess against otaku, so her mouth might not be used to forming the sounds the way japanese is correctly pronounced.
has anyone ever complemented or expressed shocked amazement at a japanese person for being able to use a knife and fork or spoon in response to their amazement at your chopstick use? or would that be too harshly sarcastic?
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I have. But like much sarcasm in Japan, it doesn’t really work. Sarcasm is not a big element of Japanese humour.
Many people can read Japanese a lot better than they can speak it. I once heard the head of a major Japan-related academic organisation give a speech, and while his academic credentials were impeccable, his pronunciation was atrocious.
I think fietclub is right though – they do all speak fairly well. Not ideally or perhaps totally fluently, but well enough to suggest that using chopsticks was mastered a long time ago.
I have a theory – or a bare hypothesis really – that the things Japanese are amazed gaijin can do are the things that Japanese tend to worry about their own skills in or they feel are dying out. Chopstick skills are deteriorating in the young, according to one report I saw (too much western food/fast food), so the Japanese are extra-amazed at how well gaijin can use it. When that Canadian dude used some slightly uncommon keigo (滅相もない) and everyone went Oooh! that too might be a comment about the decline of correct language. Or even sitting in seiza – I have beaten Japanese at seiza gaman contests, but only younger ones (apparently PM Hara used to sit in seiza at all times – not many could do that now)…. Conversely, has anyone been told “gosh, you bow well!”?
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Jonathan has been posting videos of himself on nicovideo.jp like this one: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm254229
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Baldy is 20? Yikes! He looks more like 39.
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I’m so glad that I didnt go on!
http://www.dannychoo.com/blog_entry/eng/802/TV+Champion/
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1. I applied to this show as a joke, got accepted, went on it as a joke, and had a fun time, I don’t find anything I did embarrassing at all.
2. I went to the same store as carlton, which they figured if two of the same contestants went to the SAME wrong store first, people might connect the dots. What dots, I’ll let you connect… but I am not allowed to say, but I did go to like 5 different stores… I dunno why they didn’t show any of them, strapped for time I guess…
3. I am balding, I shave my head so that it doesn’t show. It’s not embarrassing it’s who I am. and I am 20
if you can understand Japanese, hopefully you understood my message, which was that if you don’t do what you want in life when you want to, there’s no meaning.
I also said some things about how otaku in Japan are living true to themselves, like I am, which is why I am honored to consider myself an ｦﾀｸ.
I love you all, peace, and enjoy your lives. You only get one.
I’ll see you on ニコニコ動画.
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the otaku comment though, didn’t get aired.
90% of what we filmed didn’t get aired, that’s TV for you… lol
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“I went to the same store as carlton, which they figured if two of the same contestants went to the SAME wrong store first, people might connect the dots. What dots, I’ll let you connect…”
They gave you two different drinks than the others, or both shops had a drink that was pretty much the same? It seems it was pretty unfair of them to edit it and make it look like you absolutely had no guesses about the location.
I know both the French guy and the Russian girl from a seiyuuML. I think the guy has guested on? Hosted? an anime/j-pop culture centric show on French TV once. He is also a staple at seiyuu events and knows some seiyuu well enough (like Inoue Kikuko and Hisakawa Aya) to talk to them in person and receive new year cards and such. He married a Japanese woman and moved to Japan last year. He was on another TV game show once, I think that one was about mixed marriages. Or something like that.
The Russian girl is an idol wannabe who moved to Japan for voice acting and such. She has a Japanese name, an official website, and a CD single released maybe last year or the year before that. She and the French guy have a podcast going, and had a cafe talk event last Christmas.
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Is there anyway to get a hold of this show now?? it has been removed from Youtube and no one is seeding the torrents – please let me know!
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