5/5 Saturday

Why am I writing this thing?  Well, because I have to for a new live show we’re doing for one thing.  (Even though the show’s in Japanese, I’m writing this in English because I feel like it’s easier to express myself like this.)

Why else?  Well, why not?

Today, we performed at the Yoshimoto theater in Makuhari Aeon Mall.  I guess I should clarify what I meant by perform.  Today, Iruka Punch was the maesetsu (roughly translated as pre-explanation) for the afternoon shows at Yoshimoto Makuhari Aeon Mall theater.  It being Golden Week, the starring acts were all big names and all four of the shows for the day were completely sold out.

It was our first warmup gig in a while.  It’s not that we don’t like doing warmup gigs or that we’re particularly bad at being glorified hypemen.  Rather, the big problem where Iruka Punch is concerned is that, well, we (okay, I) have a tendency to distract people from the main event.  Makes sense right?  Japan is a homogeneous country and, when you have a random foreigner being the warmup act for an all-Japanese dude set list of comedy acts, the kuuki can get a little weird and, probably more importantly in the eyes of the company, the impact of the guys following us can get a little dilluted.

Now that we’ve been doing this for a while, my aikata and I have developed a good enough flow for our warmup routine.  We know what’ll work, what’ll bomb, and we know not to go for the throat.  As warmup comedians, the worst thing we could do is kill it on stage.

Today we performed in front of a total of over 1300 people.  With any luck, this’ll one day be a normal everyday thing.