This article is my very first one! Thank you for coming this blog.
What I chose as the very first video was “Manzai”, which is a traditional and popular style of Japanese comedy. This is a video of a super popular Japanese comedian “Sandwichman”. It’s no exaggeration to say they’re the most popular comedy duo in Japan. The name of “man with gold hair” is Date(だて). The other is Tomizawa(とみざわ). In this video, they do “Manzai”. They act in the setting of a hamburger place. Date plays a customer. Tomizawa plays a staff of the place.
Let’s dive right in. Here is the video of today.
What’s Manzai
Before I dive into the explanation of the video, let’s touch on what “Manzai” is.
“Manzai” is a traditional and popular style of Japanese comedy. It’s really big with the young generation to the older generation and basically acted by more than two people, most of the time two people. In “Manzai”, there are two roles “Boke” and “Tsukkomi”. The “Boke” plays the fool. The “Tsukkomi” might be unique to Japanese comedy. The “Tsukkomi” reacts to the jokes the “Boke” tells by correcting them, giving additional information and something. That’s how the audience laughs. The role of the “Tsukkomi” might be hard for those who are not familiar with Japanese comedy to understand. But this is exactly the Japanese style.
I’m no experts, but I know there are a lot of forms of Manzai depending on the comedians. Setting the situation and the role and playing them in the situation is the standard. The “Manzai” by Sandwichman I’m going to present this time is like that. Aside from it, some are talking about current events in a funny way, some make the audience laugh by moving around stage. There are a lot of comedy duos. I want to write about them thorough my blog in the future.
Alright! I’m going to explain about some of the scenes of the video.
Irasshaimase konnichiwa (いらっしゃいませ。こんにちは)
Tomizawa says “Irasshaimase konnichiwa” three times and Date says like “Are you Book-off?” right away. And then the audience laughs. “Irasshaimase” is a phrase that every employee in any store in Japan says to “welcome” when customers get into it.
What makes it funny is, that’s exactly the way the employees of “Book-off”, a huge Japanese used book franchise, greet their customers. In my opinion, it’s not that everybody recognize the greeting but most of the younger generation less than people in their sixties know of it. Some people recognize it right away, some people don’t. That’s how well known the greeting is. But most people will recognize once Date says “Are you Book-off?” Basically, the “Tsukkomi” Date gave an additional information and the audience laughed.
Yoloshikatta-desuka(よろしかったですか?)
This is a scene where Tomizawa repeats the order. In this scene, he says “ビッグバーガーセットがおひとつ。おのみものバナナシェイクでよろしかったですか?”, which means “one big burger combo with one banana milkshake. Is that right?” in English. We often hear the phrase that ends with “よろしかったですか” like this at many restaurants, many fast food places and stuff. However, technically speaking, they say it’s an incorrect Japanese. So some people, especially elderly people, dislike the way of saying it as Date says just before this scene. “よろしいですか” is correct. Having said that, a lot of Japanese people say “よろしかったですか”. So you’ll hear the phrase if you travel to Japan. Also, if you are working a restaurant in Japan, you could use it. That way, customers might think you were good at Japanese.
As a side note, the funny thing in this scene is Tomizawa misunderstand what Date means. The customer(Date) says “Rephrase it again!” because he thinks “よろしかったですか?” is incorrect Japanese and then the staff(Tomizawa) doesn’t rephrase it and pronounces banana like a English native speaker with his silly face. Isn’t it funny?
Tsumalanaimonodesuga (つまらないものですが)
This is a scene where Tomizawa gives Date the hamburger that he ordered saying, “つまらないものですが.” This phrase is usually used when you give someone a gift or something. I think the direct English translation of “つまらないものですが” would be “This is a trivial thing, but …”. or “This is nothing special, but…” and along those line. Isn’t it kind of weird to say something like that when you give someone a gift? Because most of the time, a gift should be something good, right? But, this is also very Japanese. A lot of Japanese people actually say this. Even when we don’t really consider the gift to be trivial, we say it anyway to come across as humble. That’s the stereotypical image of Japanese people, right? I don’t know how often Japanese people actually say this, but I hear this phrase at my workplace when one of my coworkers gives me sweets and such. I think this is a representative phrase of Japan known for the typical image “humble”.
The funny thing about this scene is that the employee says “つまらないものですが”.
First of all, We don’t say or hear the phrase “つまらないものですが” in places like department stores, convenient stores, or fast food places, etc. In particular, employees would definitely never say this, because that would be like saying their products aren’t worth it. In this scene, the audience laughs because something that wouldn’t ordinary happen in real life happens.