お笑い講 ---or for most of you: Laughing Festival

The real problem with me writing this post, is that I'm still pretty clueless on "what just happened?"

I'll just do my best. I'd say around late November, a man walks into my teachers room and starts talking with one of my coworkers (Japanese Teacher of English Co-worker). Mr. Akimoto, the JTE then approaches me and asks me "Would you like to participate in a laughing contest?"

Ok. Hold up. Yeah. No holding up. Thats all the information I got. You do not decline things in Japan, if you can help it at all. Its just not polite. Plus...the one thing he did tell me is that there would be cash prizes! So... more info please? The info never came. :)

I was told to assemble an American team. My original team was me, Brooke from Iwakuni and Cyndi from Hikari. Due to many circumstances, the team ended up being me and 2 completely different girls (Callie from Shimonoseki, and Whitney from Oshima did awesome!). But we won, so thats good. Oh crap. I just spoiled the whole surprise! hehe

So since Akimoto Sensei is always busy, and the guy that came in and recruited me...I had never seen before in my life.... yeah, since those things... I just sort of waited and waited and waited for information. I wouldn't be hung out to dry right?

I really didn't know if a "laughing competition" entailed laughing the longest, the loudest, or heck if it meant NOT laughing while people are doing funny things.

Then one day, Mr. I still don't know his name recruiter-came and told me to be ready for an interview the next week. An interview? A news interview. Or some kind of special program.

Here is a screen shot that a friend of mine took real fast when I was on the news. He didn't even know I would be on, he was just watching TV somewhere over yonder across the prefecture, and then all of a sudden "Wait, I know that crazy white woman!"

That whole interview was so strange. Above, is me practicing for the laughing competition that would at this point be 5 days later (oh, laughing competition was December 19th, 2009). So finally...with cameras rolling, I get my first taste of what I am suppose to be doing.

You laugh to please the gods. You get three laughs, each laugh lasting as long as you can hold out one breath. The first laugh for the god of the past, and the second for the present, and the third, for the future.

There is an actual laughing festival at a shrine that is taken very seriously on December 1st. This competition is more new, nodding at the religious festival, but really just for fun. Which country has the best laugh in the world kind of thing. Oh yeah, Which country. This was an "International Laughing Competition"...they were able to get away with claiming that because there was a team from Malaysia, China, Korea, Japan and the U. S. of A. There may have been others. 8 teams.

I'm getting a second ahead of myself, because I want to express my exasperation at the whole TV interview thing. The interview woman spoke English. She had been speaking English to me!! But as soon as the cameras were rolling she starting asking me all these things in Japanese. I don't get it! My supervisor happened to be walking by at the time, and jumped in and saved me acting as a translator. Uuuuummmm... what did they expect would happen if my supervisor didn't walk by? Weird. :)

So here's two other teams during the actual competition. You can see that there are three team members, and you go against the person sitting across from you on the other team. I'm not sure who the judges were, but they just decide who's laugh would be more pleasing to the gods.

Okay, so our team got 3 rounds. The first and third round, we were facing this window, which gave us an unfair advantage. Unfair advantage you ask?

There is a man dressed up as a reindeer pacing around outside, staring at us, making funny movements. I used him. I used him up. I pretended that somehow this whole night was an episode of Arrested Development, and I just belted out the most crowd-pleasing laugh that you can imagine! I mean, this whole experience. Actually better than Arrested Development. I can't tell you how weird/silly everything was. ;)

Here is us being interviewed by the news after, since we were the champions of the night. We won 200 bucks, a certificate... but best of all, whenever I meet someone new in town.. I get to tell them that I am a laughing champion. Heheh. Most people around here know about おわらいこう。So I'm just slowly getting more and more famous. Heehe anyone remember me being on TV during the shrimp catching festival?

Anyways, I can't upload videos that are too long on this blogspot site. It never works. So if you missed the video on facebook, you can just go to my page, and keep clicking "Older Posts" until you get to December 2oth, and you should be able to watch feed from this spectacularly spectacular event. :)

Here are a couple of websites that are in Japanese, but you can see a little bit of the kind of coverage we got... hehehe.

http://www.oidemase.or.jp/jiblog/index.php?itemid=1599

and

http://yamaguchi.keizai.biz/headline/753/

We got a blurb in the national newspaper too, but they took down the page. :(