The events in this story happened in
November/December 2005. I never got around to writing about them, but
I kept a diary at the time, which I used as the basis for this piece.
I was at home when the phone rang. On
the slightly crackly line was a delightful young lady who introduced
herself as Erika. She was calling, she explained, from Tokyo. She was
working on a Japanese TV show, and, after watching my stuff on
youtube, her producers wanted to know if I'd like to fly over to work
on it. I'd spent time in Japan before, and adore the place, so yes, I
would. I asked her to tell me more.
It was an annual show – a new years
day tradition that had been running for 25 years. Three hours long,
packed with some of Japan’s biggest celebrities. The format was
simple – each celeb would show off a talent that the general public
had no idea that they possessed. In reality, of course, these were
not so much “hidden talents”, as they were things that all the
participants worked desperately hard to learn in the weeks leading up
to the show. And that was to be my role. The biggest star on the show
wanted to recreate an old act – a tribute to one of his favourite
performers, and then use one of my tricks for the finale. I told
Erika that I was in, and then I asked – just out of curiosity –
who the celebrity that I'd be working with was. I'm a bit of a nerd
for Japanese culture, so I might know them. Sure, she said, it's a
gentleman called Masaaki Sakai. I giggled out loud. I did know who
that was, and if you're from the same part of the world as me, and
roughly my age, so do you.
It's this guy |
So, two days later I found myself
sitting on a very comfortable plane on my way to Tokyo. The last time
I flew to Japan, I'd paid for it myself, so the in-flight
entertainment consisted of – and I swear this is true - one episode
of “The Streets Of San Francisco” showing on a loop every two
hours. This time it was a little nicer. I arrived in Tokyo, was met
by Erika, who would be my handler and translator for the duration of
my stay, and we drove to my hotel. Rehearsals would start tomorrow,
but for now I was left in my room to de-pressurise. Thanks to the
jetlag and the whirlwindedness of this gig, I was a little
discombobulated. I laid on my bed, reflecting on what scary fun
adventure seemed to be in my immediate future, then I pulled myself
together, ordered a shedload of room service food, ate, and went to
sleep.
The next morning, after a typically
Japanese nearly-western style hotel breakfast buffet of scrambled
eggs on pancakes with sauté potatoes, hash browns, pasta and a fruit
salad with little cubes of peppermint jelly, it was time for my first
day at work.
I was taken to have a coffee with one
of the producers of the show, who explained the format to me, and
told me that almost everyone in Japan watches it on New Years Day. No
pressure, then. I got to know Erika a little better too, she was born
in Japan but raised in the USA, which, obviously, improves her cool
rating in either country. Then off we went across the road to the
mental-looking Fuji-TV building, and to the rehearsal room that would
be my workplace for the foreseeable future.
The first couple of hours was filled
with person after person arriving, being introduced to me, and then
finding a place to sit. Runners, prop boys, massage therapists,
producers, directors, stage managers, studio bosses – all of whom
got greeted with a cheerful group “Ohayo Gozaimas” and the
correct depth and duration of bow. And then Mr. Sakai arrived.
He was wearing a Nike track suit, a
kangol cap back to front, wraparound sunglasses, a scarf and a
trenchcoat. Not young, but he moved well, and once he took off the
shades you could see a face full of life. Eyes positively brimming
with glints.
He sat down right in front of me, and
immediately started asking me lots of questions about my life and my
work. Most of this stuff went through Erika's translation, but I
slowly realised that he could speak way more English that he was
letting on. Sneaky. I dropped in the occasional little bit of
Japanese where I could and before long we were getting on like a house on fire.
Things only got better when he started discussing the act that he
wanted to recreate. He fired up a video to show me it, and a very
familiar little old clown spluttered onto the screen. “GeorgeCarl!”, I almost yelled. Mr. Sakai was stunned that I knew him, and
said something in Japanese to Erika. “He is Mr.Sakai's hero”,
Erika told me. “Mine too!”, I said, and we grinned at each other.
We were similar.
We spent the rest of the night getting
to know each other, Mr.Sakai hypnotizing me with stories – oh I do
have a weakness for an old pro with stories. In the west, of course,
he's known just for being Monkey, but in Japan he was a star before
that and continues to be a star after. In the 60's he was in The
Spiders – Japan's answer to The Beatles, he then went on to have a
solo career as a pop star, hosted dozens of TV shows, he even played
the title role in the Japanese version of Columbo!
Halfway through the evening, one of his
best friends arrived. Mr.Tomei was, I think, a producer on the show –
although I was never completely clear on his official role. His
unofficial one seemed to be as foil to Mr.Sakai, and he played that
perfectly. A similar age to Mr.Sakai, but tall and skinny, in a nice
dark blue suit, with a shock of jet black hair in a 50's style, and
constantly smoking. Indeed, pretty much all the men were terrifyingly
enthusiastic smokers – almost all of them using little black
plastic cigarette holders. Mr.Tomei and Mr.Sakai reminisced for me –
they'd known each other for a very long time, and they told me
stories from their youth, when they were breaking into entertainment
by working in some of Tokyo's little music and comedy clubs. They
told me about a cheap Tokyo diner called Jonathon's. They always used
to go there after shows, as it was open 24 hours a day and you could
get endless soda refills for 150 Yen. Mr.Sakai told me how, if you
went there at two in the morning, the only people there would be
theatricals or tramps, and that sometimes it was hard to tell which
was which, and he and Mr.Tomei broke down into giggles, which then
broke down into fits of coughing, more giggles and playful punching
at each other. They told me that they work together on this show
every year, and every year they sit here and have the same
conversations they always do, so these days neither of them bothered
to listen to what the other was saying, they just recite their half
of the conversation like a script, and there they went again,
coughing and laughing at each other. I immediately, of course, fell
in love with these two wheezing, guffawing geezers, and as we
finished our first day of rehearsals, I knew that this would be
exactly as much fun as I hoped it would be.
Over the next few weeks, my nights were
spent in that rehearsal room slowly helping Mr.Sakai learn my trick,
and George Carl's act, but my days were my own, and so into Tokyo I
plunged.
I went predictably nutso in Akihabara,
the “Electric town” part of Tokyo where all manner of gadgetry
can be found. I rode the big wheel in Palette town, a big, odd,
shopping centre where I bought nintendo controller business card
cases, novelty strawberry flavoured blood bags, and chocolates with
photos of cats in uniforms on the box. Japan really is the country of
choice if this is your kind of thing, and it is mine.
On a Sunday I went to Harajuku, where,
on the bridge next to the station, the freaks and geeks come to
peacock it up. It's magnificent. I saw women in full bridal gowns
sitting on the floor taking pictures of each other, hard-core goth
gangs, super-heroes, retro-punks, gothic-lolitas, people gleefully
mixing gender and cultural references to create whatever they felt
like they wanted to be, and one solitary Alice in wonderland,
wandering around as if she had truly just fallen through a looking
glass. I understood how she felt. I even went for lunch at the famed
Jonathon's diner and sat, looking around, trying to imagine all the
Mr.Sakai's and Mr.Tomei's that had been here over the years.
One night me and Erika went to see some
puroresu. That's Japanese for pro-wrestling. Say it quick and it
makes sense. As regular readers will know I'm a big fan of wrestling,
and the Japanese do it very well indeed. I'd been to the legendary
Korakuen Hall before, so I was excited to be going again. Erika
didn't, at first, quite know what to make of it, but by the interval
had bought a t-shirt, was carefully translating what the wrestlers
were saying (“That man really, really doesn't like that man”),
and was “oooh”ing to herself whenever someone caught a beating.
Afterwards we went to get some food, and I had what I was reliably
informed was the speciality of the house. Half a loaf of bread, stood
on it's end, with a dollop of cream and caramel sauce dumped on top.
I realise that this does not sound like food in any conventional
sense, but it was, truly, delicious. Although the next day, Erika
confessed that she had dreamt of it. Food that enters your dreams
can't be good.
The rehearsals were going well.
Mr.Sakai was struggling with some of the hat manipulation, but was
slowly getting there. He is, he told me, a quick learner but takes
lots of breaks, so is not so quick sometimes. We usually worked from
about 5.30pm to past midnight, and at about 10pm every night, food
would arrive on a wagon train of trolleys. They heard that I was
vegetarian and had furnished me with pumpkin croquettes, sticky rice,
tempura, miso soup and all manner of deliciousness. A couple of days
into the job, in passing, someone had asked me what a vegetarian like
me ate and drank in Japan, so I mentioned how much I adore Japanese
style sweetcorn soup, and how much Coke I drink. From the next day
forward, there was permanently a huge cooler of Coke and a table full
of instant sweetcorn soup packets at rehearsals. Every so often the
costume lady would pop up and slide a fresh cup of sweetcorn soup in
front of me with a grin. I think they were trying to see how many I
could eat, which was many.
I was still doing the tourist thing in
my daytimes. I visited the Tokyo Tower, which struck me as a very
Japanese concept. Take the Eiffel tower, make our version 35 meters
taller, and paint it in bright red and white stripes, because, why
not? In the basement of the tower is, of course, a massive gift shop.
I bought some Hello Kitty items from a very informative emporium (Did
you know, for instance, that Hello Kitty was born and lives in
London, England, or that her height is five apples and her weight is
three apples?). I'm more of a Doraemon man myself. What's not to love
about a blue robot cat who had his ears bitten off by mice, sent back
in time from the far future? Anyway, I also bought a t-shirt that
reads “Tokyo Tower. Builded in 1958”, which is a beautiful thing.
I spent some time hanging out at Yoyogi
Park, which is where I stumbled across, watched, and immediately
became a fan of the band “Chocolate Chip Cookies”, who were
rocking it hard with battery amps on a street pitch in the park. I
bought a CD, songs of which are still on my ipod, and after a little
googling, I'm happy to report that they're still going.
At one point, during rehearsals,
Mr.Sakai shows me a prop that George Carl used in his act, that
Fuji-TV had made a reproduction of. George would stand on stage ready
with his harmonica waiting for the band to start. He'd signal them to
start, and they wouldn't. Again he'd signal, but they'd ignore him
again. Finally, in an effort to communicate with the band, he'd hold
his harmonica like a walkie-talkie, pull out an extendable aerial,
and blow one note on it like morse code. Trust me – comedy
platinum. So Mr.Sakai had a harmonica modified to do the same gag,
and when I arrived at rehearsals one night, he took great pleasure in
performing the gag for me. I hooted with laughter, and my big western
yuk-yuks made everyone else laugh as well. Later that night he showed
the gag to someone else, and then spent the next half hour jokingly
berating them for not reacting as well as I had. It became this big,
beautiful running gag – whenever someone new would come into the
room, he would give us a sly look and slowly reach for the special
harmonica while myself, Erika and Mr.Tomei would stifle giggles. Then
he'd do the gag for them, and then tell them how bad their reaction
was compared to mine.
Pretty soon I was approaching the end
of my time there. In Japan it's traditional to present gifts at the
conclusion of business, and I like to think I did pretty well here.
Mr.Sakai is a huge golf fan, so I went to a shopping centre and
bought one of those covers for the top of your golf clubs. Then I
went to an electronic shop in Akihabara and bought an extending
aerial. A little time spent dicking around with a penknife and glue
in my hotel room, and presto – a golf club cover with a pull out
aerial so Mr.Sakai can do his favourite gag on the golf course.
We did one final long rehearsal, and I
got to watch Mr.Sakai do his tribute act one last time. It's was
terrific. He nailed all the tricks most of the time and added things,
improvising good stuff. By about 11pm, Mr.Sakai announced, through
Erika, that the rest of the night would be a little party to say
thank you and goodbye to me. Champagne came out, and a really good
red wine that Mr.Sakai particularly likes, and sweetcorn soup, of
course, and we exchanged gifts. My pull-out aerial golf cover got big
laughs from all the right people, and the room of 20 or so people,
who I met for the first time less than a month ago, were all joking
with me, teasing me, clapping me and shaking my hand. Mr.Tomei, ever
the gentleman, sidled up to me toward the end of the night and
apologised that he had been a little quiet this evening, but that it
was because he was sad that I was going. It was one of the most
touching things, I think, I have ever heard.
By about 2am it was just me and Erika
in the hotel lobby. We sat outside eating ice creams and looking at
the hotel's Christmas lights and resolved to stay in touch, which we
have. We got one of the hotel staff to take a picture of us, and then
I went back to my room to fail to pack a months worth of impulse
purchases into one small suitcase for my early morning flight.
A couple of months later, Erika sent me
a DVD of the show. It was such an odd, fizzy feeling to watch
Mr.Sakai close the show with the act that we spent those long nights
rehearsing. He did it perfectly, of course, and the crowd went nuts.
I watched the credits roll, and in amongst all the crazy
neon-coloured Japanese text scrolling over a studio full of
celebrities waving and grinning there was my name, in English.
Hilarious. Proof that it wasn't all some insane dream.
My job is weird. Full of ups and downs.
Hard and sometimes heartbreaking work, but at the same time
wonderful, joyous work. I've had some great gigs since my time in
Tokyo, and I'm sure I'll have some more before I end up in the
twilight home for the terminally vaudevillian, but I'm not sure
anything would be able to top my time with Mr.Sakai.
Sometimes I get down, and when I do I
sit at my desk, pick up the glass of Coke that will invariably be to
my left and look underneath it, at the “Monkey” coaster that my
wife bought me for Christmas the year I did the gig. “For a few
weeks, once, in Tokyo”, I'll think to myself, “He was my friend”.
I'll be performing my latest one man show "Showman"
as part of the London International Mime Festival,
from 21st - 25th of Jan 2014, at the Leicester Square Theatre.
You can find out more about the show, and book tickets, here.
I'd love you to come.
3 comments:
That was delightful and surprising, Mr Ricardo, I'm glad you finally set the story down. It makes me want to dig out my 'Irrepressible!" Monkey Magic t-shirt, but I fear it won't fit any more.
It also reminded me of how Lost in Translation irritated me – how can you sympathise with a character so bored by an opportunity to spend a few weeks exploring Tokyo?
Thanks - and yes - I totally agree about "Lost In Translation" found that a slightly problematic film on a few levels..
Wonderful post, I found it very transporting.
long live ABAYO!
Bristol childrens entertainer
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