Japanese Websites: Comedy Talk Radio with Bakushou Mondai
So, to my pleasant surprise one of the best/my favorite comedy duos in Japan, 爆笑問題/Bakushou Mondai/The Laughter Question/BSMD, do a radio show called 爆笑問題カーボーイ/Bakushou Mondai Cowboy (carboy?). Unfortunately, radio seems hard to get in Japan, at least in my experience — the signal strength for all stations is set to “super weak sauce”, so…you basically don’t get reception anywhere. Anyway, enough griping — fear not! There is hope! They have a podcast and a website right here.
The format is simple, OOTA Hikaru/太田光 does the dryly delivered silliness or “boke (呆け)”, 田中裕二/TANAKA Yuuji does the straight-man-slash-wisecracks-on-the-side or “tsukkomi (突っ込み). The quality of subject material, the timeliness of Tanaka’s tsukkomi, and how blase Oota can be while making ridiculous statements, make both BSMD as a group and this show, worth your attention. Oota manages to weave politics into a lot of his discussions without ever sacrificing humor. Tanaka’s rebuttal timing is perfect, down to the millisecond. And the fact that Tanaka can go from saying something very profound to something completely stoopid in the same tone of voice is always fun; that’s quality boke. The other thing that’s cool is that Oota sometimes literally falls in love with certain words or phrases. And he’ll get excited and keep saying them over and over again even when it doesn’t make sense “それからドーした？！！？”. I laugh just thinking about it. Funnily enough, I do the same thing a lot: a few weeks ago, my friend H-star had to listen to me say “豪華にね、ゴーカに” every few minutes for like 6 hours. I thought it was just something I did because Japanese was new to me — ‘guess not. Oh yeah, Oota is also a voracious reader, going through over 100 books a year. So you input fiends take note — if you want to talk like the man, consider reading like the man, too. And just when you thought he couldn’t get any cooler, according to the ‘Pedia, Oota was effectively banned for a time from Nippon Broadcasting System (NBS) in the early 1990s; the deal is that he was sitting in one night for Beat Takeshi, who had a severe cold, and as a joke he very gravely announced that Beat Takeshi had, in fact, died due to complications from the cold. If you know Oota, you can picture him doing something like that; reading about it, I thought it was hilarious. NBS appear to have had a cow…
Anyway, even if you don’t understand all the talk on Bakushou Mondai Cowboy, I encourage you, exhort you, call upon you, to listen to it. The dialogue is really natural, and it’s a good chance to hear someone explain themselves on the fly, as Oota does. You’ll definitely pick up a thing or two, and you’ll start laughing soon enough.
BSMD also do tons of work on TV, so…keep an eye out.
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Saru said,
December 5, 2007 @ 1:04 pm
I’ll have to check it out when I get home. I have reached a difficult point in my sentences at around 330. I’m having trouble concentrating on them. This’ll keep me entertained, I hope. Keep up the good work.
quendidil said,
December 6, 2007 @ 2:15 am
Khatz, do you know anything about the 1 yen used books available on Amazon? Is there a catch to it?
khatzumoto said,
December 6, 2007 @ 2:19 am
No catch…except:
1) Most ship within Japan only
2) Shipping costs ~340 yen
You might need to use Danke Danke: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/shopping-japanese-online-stores-from-abroad
Nivaldo said,
December 6, 2007 @ 2:53 am
Oops, I think I posted two comments in the wrong place, so I’m posting again:
“Wow, thanks Khatz! I didn’t know I had such a great chance(some 60% based on their student-master culture) of success. Well, the people I found here are near my house so I hope they accept the suggestion. However, they look busy but yep, my brother said that once, one of them got out for a lunch while reading the “Domingo(sunday)” newspaper. It could mean that at least one of them is trying to learn portuguese. To be honest, I was thinking about talking to them today, but I was waiting for your reply to see if it was correct. My father doesn’t even want to know about Japan but kept reading some magazines about Japan I had brought from the ambassade for 3 HOURS. I don’t really understand him but I don’t care, I’m going and that’s all. My brothers aren’t going to collaborate either as the computer is near the TV, **Conflict**. So, I began thinking about all possibilities(almost scientifically), and this one came up. I’ll let you know about the result.”
Nivaldo said,
December 6, 2007 @ 2:55 am
Just wanted to say some more things like:
When I’m listening to japanese music, sometimes I begin not to understand it but to follow the sounds almost fluently and sometimes even without a single break. Did it ever happen to you?
Everytime it happens, it inspires me to go further and then comes my brother to watch TV **CONFLICT**. Also, about my english, I think you may not remember but I said it was due to many subbed movies, songs and will to speak english. As that kind of material here is almost if not free(on TVs and Radios), I just had to get my ears working and my eyes pointing to the right textual input. But with japanese, it’s been a little more difficult, though not impossible, for example, I managed to get 333 MB of japanese music and some GB of anime. That’s why I’m going for it. It’s my dream since I was 8, damn it. It’s not too late although I’m 19 by now, right? Well, see you.
Nivaldo said,
December 6, 2007 @ 4:07 am
Oh, it’s embassy not ambassade, right? I confused with the swedish/other version which I saw in its corresponding embassy. Now I’m learning both English and Japanese. Great! Just kidding. The one is japanese.
Jen said,
December 6, 2007 @ 4:24 am
This doesn’t really have anything to do with your post, but just a quick question.. when you’re putting definitions for words that you don’t understand in your srs, do you think that you should put all definitions for a word, if say, there are four or so, or just the ones which are relevant to the sentence that you’re trying to understand? So far I have just been putting the ones relevant to the sentence, but I’m not sure whether this is the best way to do it or not…
khatzumoto said,
December 6, 2007 @ 8:28 am
Only relevant ones
Sutebun said,
December 8, 2007 @ 1:03 am
@Quendil
They have the same thing in American Amazon….$0.01 books.
When you sell something over amazon, amazon credits you $3.99 for regular shipping. So these people have some way to ship very cheaply, and make money off of the shipping credit Amazon gives them.
I don’t know if there’s a way to bundle used things from the same user for saving shipping costs, but typically since you will buy each item individualized you will pay shipping cost times how many items you buy.
So the 1 yen used mangas would be great if you could buy a ton of them and pay 500 yen shipping for them all, but I think you have to pay the shipping for each of them so it’s just cheaper to buy it used at the bookstore (or get it new for the same price…)
(Selling back college books is a great way to learn about Amazon’s auction system!)
shiisa said,
December 11, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
Love Bakusho Mondai, had no idea they were doing a podcast. Thanks for the heads up! I’ve managed to get weird looks both on the train and just now at lunch thanks to listening to these on my iPod and cracking up…
khatzumoto said,
December 12, 2007 @ 8:38 am
>get weird looks both on the train and just now at lunch thanks to listening to these on my iPod and cracking up…
, everyone’s like “what the fwhaaaat?”. Imagine if people knew it were BSMD that you’re listening to; they might, in fact, die of shock.
I know THAT feeling…
Rin said,
December 13, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
Ooh, sounds like fun.
I just hope I don’t end up talking like a guy…
khatzumoto said,
December 14, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
@Rin
]. Anyway, enough theory! Let’s all quit worrying and listen to the show! No need to bracket or limit your Japanese…just focus on enjoying yourself.
I wouldn’t worry about it. As in English, there are speech forms/styles that are primarily masculine and primarily feminine, but, there is also a healthy middle ground. Masculine speech in Japanese is mostly grunts (ああ,おう, 別に）; feminine speech is mostly squealing (わー！すーーーーーごーーーーーい！, 日本語上ーーーーーーーー手ううう！, ありがとうございますううううう！）. Both are stoopid, IMHO. As a girl, just stick to 私 and limit the number of ぞs and ぜs in your 語尾s and you’re golden. [Having said that, in certain dialects, both men and women use 俺
I mean, even if one were to have the wrong gender speech style, which you won’t, but even if you were to pick it up, on a scale of 1 to 10, Japanese that has native-like accent and word usage but the wrong gender still earns a 9. There are tomboys and 僕少女 in Japan, too.
Rin said,
December 23, 2007 @ 6:37 am
Ah, ok.
I know the difference between girl’s speech and guy’s but I tend to copy what I hear in Japanese for practice regardless if I understand it all, so I was just a little worried that I might pick it up.
Thanks for calming my fears and thank you for your great website!
It’s my favorite Japanese learning blog.
(I don’t usually comment on blogs much but since I’m a big fan of your site,
I figured I’d give it a try. )
khatzumoto said,
December 23, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Yeah…this whole, “but is it masculine/feminine?” thing that has so many Japanese learners worried is nothing but premature optimization. Yes, there is that guy who learned from his girlfriend, but first we need to worry about whether it’s Japanese or not. You need to build the house of Japanese first. The color of the tablecloth in the dining room (i.e. the gender style of speech) can wait till last.
Interestingly, in the TV drama ケイゾク, the head of the investigative section, a middle-aged man, has a young (20-something?) girlfriend. And, because of all the time he spends with her, his speech at work sometimes has inappropriately youthful or feminine slang and 語尾…but…why am I telling you this?
Anyway, build the house first. When it’s time to pick tablecloths, because you know Japanese, you’ll know what color to pick.
shiisa said,
February 9, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
“Interestingly, in the TV drama ケイゾク…”
Ooh, so you watched some of them? I love that show. Perhaps by now you’ve seen enough to know that Miyabi (the girlfriend) is still in high school…
vgambit said,
August 31, 2008 @ 9:20 am
The podcast is on iTunes (and can be downloaded from there much faster than their website, in my experience), so I downloaded *every* episode and put them on my iPod.
It must be Tanaka who keeps saying ”アナルセックス！！！” or just ”セックス！” That alone is funny, even when I understand maybe one word per hour.