It is hot.  It’s rather obvious but it’s still hot out.

Here in Japan, most stores switch into autumn gear almost as soon as the clock hits 12 AM on September First despite the fact the weather often fails to make the same sudden transition to cool nights and fair days.  Really, the only difference here between the “late summer” (August) and the “early autumn” (September) is all the typhoons that conveniently decided to strike the Japanese mainland this month rather than the last.  What the hell’s up with that?  (That’s a rhetorical question, you humorless meteorologist.  I don’t need an actual explanation regarding high and low pressure systems.)

Yes, it’s still hot here and work waits for no one.  When I haven’t been sequestered in the mountains shouting half-rehearsed lines to a half-dozen unsuspecting families soaking in suspiciously green water, I’ve doing a lot of work on a project I’m still not at the liberty to disclose.  I’ll just say that you What’s Manzai?!!! fans out there (all three of you guys out there) will probably be happy.

Sound booths are only a step removed from solitary confinement.

I’ve learned a lot in the past couple of months.  Probably more than I did during my entire year of Japanese comedy school, which I was entirely expecting to be the case.  You learn a lot more actually doing things rather than simply being told how to do them.

I’ve (well, to be more accurate, my combi’s) also been getting a lot more warm-up gigs recently.  It’s not exactly glamorous work but it definitely helps you gain your footing on stage and, for brief ten minute spurts, makes you feel like a goddamn glorious superstar.

Brief stage gigs can give you a bit of a messiah complex.

My current owarai combi, Iruka Punch, has now been together for five whole months and while I want to say that coming up with material has been getting easier, things can still be rather bumpy at times.  But it’s a process and things’ll surely pay off eventually (I can only hope they will).  But it’s been five months of hard work and, thanks to this five months, we have something huge on the horizon, something that’s not exactly a secret but something that I’ve yet to really push in English (i.e. I’ve been pimping the hell out of it in exclusively Japanese).  But that’ll change soon.  Hang on the line just a little bit longer.