One thing I don’t get about Japan is it’s unceasing love for comedians. Perhaps it stems from a lifestyle that’s so work-oriented it’s driving people to suicide. In that environment, some humor must be a nice thing.

That part I get. What I don’t get is their love of unfunny comedians. For the most part Japanese humor is old vaudeville slapstick with two comedians, one the straightman and one the stooge. The stooge does something dumb and the straightman responds by slapping him on the head. In fact, it’s common for the host of a comedy show, if he’s a comedian to hit his comedian guests. They even do this to women which can be rather disturbing to someone from the west. (More on that in another post.)

There’s also a reliance on goofy gestures and pratfalls. Most comedy duos also have a signature gesture they use to announce the end of a joke as most of the audience isn’t laughing and need a cue to commence polite golf claps and polite, er, golf laughs.

Soon after I got to Japan, I saw a TV show where several comedians played a form of baseball. Nine members of a family were arranged in a tic-tac-toe grid. The members’ ages ranged from elementary school kids to retirees and included at least one teenager. Each comedian was given a set number of “pitches” (i.e. jokes) to make all nine members of the family laugh.

I wanted to practice my Japanese so I thought I’d watch and see if they could make me laugh.

Spoiler: they couldn’t.

Almost every comedian went up and started making stupid gestures or simply acting stupid. The elementary school kids laughed right away but everyone else kind of seemed sad for the comedians. Finally, Takashi Okumara of the Japanese comedy duo Ninety-nine got the chance to “pitch”. After a few failed gestures and stupid puns, he announced something called “Bruce Lee DJ”. He made a big show of balancing imaginary headphones and putting on a record. Then as he started to scratch the record he started making Bruce Lee kung fu chicken noises and kung fu gestures.

I’m not sure anyone else laughed, but I did. It was an actual joke requiring set up, timing and delivery. It also required a bit of knowledge about Bruce Lee.

It may not have been that funny, but by that point I was hoping for anything resembling a joke.

Oddly, after a season that includes the Forget Year Party and special food and lots of drinking, the Japanese ring in the new year with a fairly boring party. Alcohol is involved, of course.

Sometime after the new year, a lot of Japanese companies hold the Shinnenkai or New Year Party. This is a much quieter affair that is supposed to celebrate friendship and team and teamwork. Like all Japanese parties, it is timed to the minute and the theme is “I love you guys. Let’s have a great and productive new year and let’s never forget to forget what happened at the Forget Year Party and never talk about it again. Cheers.” (Something like that.)

In my experience, the Shinnenkai is the only time I’ve seen a break from traditional party food like sashimi, cooked fish, and some kind of meat (a technical term) but even those had issues.

At one party we had Chinese food, including shark fin soup (which is way overrated for the price and the amount of cruelty involved; give me fresh tuna and dolphin any day).

At my favorite party, thoguh, we went to an Italian restaurant in Nou-machi that is one of the best restaurants in Japan especially if you’re there during crab season. Our menu included different kinds of pasta, including the restaurant’s specialty of crab sauce pasta, and lobster thermidor. We also had wine instead of beer, although some beer was served and I kept having to explain that I’d much rather have the Samuel Adams and not the Budweiser because Bud isn’t worth six dollars a bottle. Actually, very few beers are worth that much.

My principal wasn’t a big fan of the food as he enjoyed the traditional Japanese party dishes. He also, somehow, managed to track down a bottle of sake, which I shared as well.

There were no silly games and no men dressed as ballerinas, just a couple extra speeches.

Actually, I think the men dressed as ballerinas would have been more interesting.

A very rare follow-up based on some new information and some I didn’t report:

After I posted my last post, I learned that a group of Fukubukuro fighters in Hokkaido had lined up a few days before the fighting started in order to get the best chance at the bag they wanted from their favorite store. Being Hokkaido, it started to snow heavily and, being Fukubukuro Fighting season, everyone refused to give up their place in line. It got cold enough that store employees took it upon themselves to make sure that everyone in line was still okay.

After all, the dead can’t spend money and they lose their place in line. (Or they’re actually concerned about their customers, or both. Something like that.)

One thing I didn’t write about was the reaction of foreigners to the concept of Fukubukuros. For the first time I can remember, TV news interviewed several groups of foreigners during the rampage. The first batch were Russian or Eastern European men. They were caught peaking in the bags. This is not encouraged, but isn’t against the rules, especially with partially open bags. The trick is that the contents are hidden in smaller bags. (Not that I ever looked once myself…)

Almost to a foreigner, they seemed unimpressed. Many of them pointed out that they didn’t want to get stuck with a bunch of items they didn’t want. The Chinese woman figured out that her best best was to target make-up stores and accessories shops because those things could easily be given away as gifts and/or sold upon her return to China.

One store had clear, duty free fukubukuros that could not be opened inside japan. (Knowing the Japanese, there’s probably some kind of proximity alarm that goes off if it’s opened in-country.)

The most interesting foreigners were three German women, each with a different hair color. (Pink, red, non-photo blue.) They stood in line in Harajuku and explained how they loved Japanese cuteness and wanted to be that cute. (Only the one with pink hair was that cute.)

After a fairly peaceful Fukubukuro experience, they went to a cafe and opened their bags. They immediately began a small scale Great Exchange with pink giving red a plaid trilby hat in exchange for a bow headband.

The Japanese TV announcers seemed disappointed by the underwhelming response from foreigners, which actually made me laugh.

For the most part, the Japanese are very civil. They stand quietly and patiently in neat lines and are excellent to each other. Until this time of year. This is when things get ugly.

Right now, in the right places, all rules are suspended and the older the lady is, the more violent she gets.

This season features New Year’s sales that, in Japan, come in the form of what I like to call Fukubukuro Fighting (That’s Foo Coo Boo Coo Row, not F@#k You Buckaroo, although that latter is more appropriate.) Fukubukuro translates to “Lucky Bag” or “Mystery Bag” and it actually represents a kind of gambling.

Basically, all the major chain stores, and few boutiques, divide all last year’s fashions and random things into sealed bags that are then sold for set prices. The contents are usually close in value (if not a little more) the price, which are typically 10,000 yen. Some stores, however, have special bags that might contain more expensive goods. For example, the Apple Store in Ginza sells it’s bags for 35,000 yen and one might contain a MacBook Air or an iPad.

The most popular stores bring the biggest crowds and the biggest rush. TV news shows groups of women and their pack mules (sons, boyfriends, husbands, etc) planning their shopping attack with military like precision: “First we rush to XYZ on the fifth floor for their bag. If anyone gets in your way, crush, just crush them. After that proceed directly to ZYX Cutie on the second floor for their bag. The pack mule will provide a blocker. SHOW NO MERCY! And, Pack Mule, don’t let those other b#@tches steal anything out of your hands. And don’t forget to give me your cash.”

It’s typical for someone to get knocked down and injured or trampled lightly and for at least one table to devolve into a tug-of-war between women, especially if there’s only a couple bags left. I’m a sixth level black belt in Karate, and I’m afraid to get involved in this level of shopping.

After the violence, there then begins what I call the Great Exchange. People open their bags and either celebrate or sigh. They sort out what they want and then try to trade what they don’t want with others who have unwanted things. (I should note that bags from fashion shops are usually sold by size so almost everything should fit, if the women are honest about their sizes…)

After this brief rest, the pack mules load up and carry the goods home.