KagenamiQ (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jttr) wrote,@ 2007-05-14 15:55:00 |
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TV Champion, Day One: Part 1 of 2
Broadcast at last! Now that the TV Champion episode has aired, I can a) sleep soundly again, relieved that my worst screw-up was edited out, and b) share some experiences from the contest!
(If it might be of interest, a journal entry from April 10, about the week before filming started, is up now too. For some reason I made it Private instead of Public at the time. Very sorry, was pretty scrambled in the rush to get ready!)
With the competition starting on Monday, April 16, I spent most of that weekend in Akihabara continuing to cram, trying to nail down a mental map of its blocks and shops by day, and poring over books and print-outs on maid cafes and Akiba otaku lore once holed up in hotels at night (Taito-ku's Juyoh Hotel on Saturday and Capsule Inn Akihabara on Sunday).
Come Monday morning, we were to meet in the morning outside the Electric Town gate of the JR Akihabara Station. I seemed to be there first; T-san of the production company, carrying a "TV Champion" sign, led me a couple blocks away to a waiting unmarked bus, and then brought the other four contestants and company in a few trips.
Sebastien Jarry, who explained that he's known as "the number-one otaku in France," was accompanied by his Japanese wife. Jenya of Russia, an Akihabara celeb who has her own radio show (with Sebastien sometimes guesting) and has released three CDs to date, was there with her manager. Chang Gafai of Hong Kong, a voice-acting student at Yoyogi Animation Gakuin in Shibuya, and American Jonathan Underwood, a Sophia University exchange student from Arizona, were there by themselves.
We were introduced to field director H-san and host Masaya "Yama-chan" Yamazaki, and then it was back off the bus for the short walk down to bustling Manseibashi corner to film an introduction segment. The already-gray skies began to drizzle before we arrived, and T-san scrambled to get umbrellas in place over the cameras and over us as Yama-chan interviewed us one by one, asking about our interests, favorite anime, and what we usually do in Akihabara. Then we lined up for a final shot, rain coming down seriously now, and got the heck back on the bus, which had come to meet us...and away we went, away from Akihabara!
Stage 1 of the contest would be held at historic Shiba Daijingu in Hamamatsu-cho. The bus had an overhead TV screen, and during the half-hour-or-so drive we were shown part of an episode of "Shouten" ("Laughing Point"), a long-running classic in which a half-dozen clever storytellers at a time compete to tell the funniest tale or add the funniest remark. Each point awarded by the chairman nets a storyteller another zabuton cushion to sit on, with the zabuton delivered by a fellow called Yamada-san. Stage 1 would be a parody of "Shouten."
The bus trundled into the Shiba Daijingu parking lot, T-san armed us with umbrellas, and we hurried to a structure to the left of the main temple. There we were brought upstairs to a gorgeous tatami room, decorated with fabulously valuable ancient vases and art, and sat down at long tables to a superb bento lunch. As we ate and chatted in Japanese--the four other contestants in excellent Japanese, me not so great--Sebastien brought out a stack of French releases of various popular anime DVDs and games and told us about them. I was impressed that he came so well-prepared to share and promote anime's impact in his country.
Also coming up in conversation was the fact that in addition to her CDs, Jenya professionally translated the "Black Lagoon" manga into Russian. All four contestants could speak fluently, and not only were they articulate, they had interesting things to say, too.
But then there was me. My pro publications on anime and manga are more than 20 years ago now; they and website Anison Central were ultimately deemed unworthy of mention on the show. And my Japanese-speaking ability was painfully far below that of the other four contestants; hell, what I do is read Japanese, all day long, and rewrite the info in English, in a company where the mostly Japanese staff wants to practice speaking English. (I'd probably still be too self-conscious to try to speak beyond bare-bones basics if not for the group of anime song fans who've adopted me as a kindred soul; together we've sung, eaten, drunk, and travelled, and I've tried to improve between each get-together.)
Everyone was nice about it; no one seemed to look down on me for it. And I liked everyone; it just plain was not possible to think "Jeez, I wanna beat that jerk!" about any of the four. We were all fans, and we were all in this together. We'd all do our damndest, and in the end someone would be first, and someone would be last, and whoever was last would go home; only the top four would advance to Stage 2.
During our lunch hour, a huge nearby tatami room had been decorated as a mock-up of the "Shouten" set, with lighting rigged around the room and stocking-footed crew stationed at choreographed intervals on the tatami floor, testing microphones and handheld cameras. The floor director came to get us, and we followed him into the wood-and-tatami world of the anime song battlefield.
Broadcast at last! Now that the TV Champion episode has aired, I can a) sleep soundly again, relieved that my worst screw-up was edited out, and b) share some experiences from the contest!
(If it might be of interest, a journal entry from April 10, about the week before filming started, is up now too. For some reason I made it Private instead of Public at the time. Very sorry, was pretty scrambled in the rush to get ready!)
With the competition starting on Monday, April 16, I spent most of that weekend in Akihabara continuing to cram, trying to nail down a mental map of its blocks and shops by day, and poring over books and print-outs on maid cafes and Akiba otaku lore once holed up in hotels at night (Taito-ku's Juyoh Hotel on Saturday and Capsule Inn Akihabara on Sunday).
Come Monday morning, we were to meet in the morning outside the Electric Town gate of the JR Akihabara Station. I seemed to be there first; T-san of the production company, carrying a "TV Champion" sign, led me a couple blocks away to a waiting unmarked bus, and then brought the other four contestants and company in a few trips.
Sebastien Jarry, who explained that he's known as "the number-one otaku in France," was accompanied by his Japanese wife. Jenya of Russia, an Akihabara celeb who has her own radio show (with Sebastien sometimes guesting) and has released three CDs to date, was there with her manager. Chang Gafai of Hong Kong, a voice-acting student at Yoyogi Animation Gakuin in Shibuya, and American Jonathan Underwood, a Sophia University exchange student from Arizona, were there by themselves.
We were introduced to field director H-san and host Masaya "Yama-chan" Yamazaki, and then it was back off the bus for the short walk down to bustling Manseibashi corner to film an introduction segment. The already-gray skies began to drizzle before we arrived, and T-san scrambled to get umbrellas in place over the cameras and over us as Yama-chan interviewed us one by one, asking about our interests, favorite anime, and what we usually do in Akihabara. Then we lined up for a final shot, rain coming down seriously now, and got the heck back on the bus, which had come to meet us...and away we went, away from Akihabara!
Stage 1 of the contest would be held at historic Shiba Daijingu in Hamamatsu-cho. The bus had an overhead TV screen, and during the half-hour-or-so drive we were shown part of an episode of "Shouten" ("Laughing Point"), a long-running classic in which a half-dozen clever storytellers at a time compete to tell the funniest tale or add the funniest remark. Each point awarded by the chairman nets a storyteller another zabuton cushion to sit on, with the zabuton delivered by a fellow called Yamada-san. Stage 1 would be a parody of "Shouten."
The bus trundled into the Shiba Daijingu parking lot, T-san armed us with umbrellas, and we hurried to a structure to the left of the main temple. There we were brought upstairs to a gorgeous tatami room, decorated with fabulously valuable ancient vases and art, and sat down at long tables to a superb bento lunch. As we ate and chatted in Japanese--the four other contestants in excellent Japanese, me not so great--Sebastien brought out a stack of French releases of various popular anime DVDs and games and told us about them. I was impressed that he came so well-prepared to share and promote anime's impact in his country.
Also coming up in conversation was the fact that in addition to her CDs, Jenya professionally translated the "Black Lagoon" manga into Russian. All four contestants could speak fluently, and not only were they articulate, they had interesting things to say, too.
But then there was me. My pro publications on anime and manga are more than 20 years ago now; they and website Anison Central were ultimately deemed unworthy of mention on the show. And my Japanese-speaking ability was painfully far below that of the other four contestants; hell, what I do is read Japanese, all day long, and rewrite the info in English, in a company where the mostly Japanese staff wants to practice speaking English. (I'd probably still be too self-conscious to try to speak beyond bare-bones basics if not for the group of anime song fans who've adopted me as a kindred soul; together we've sung, eaten, drunk, and travelled, and I've tried to improve between each get-together.)
Everyone was nice about it; no one seemed to look down on me for it. And I liked everyone; it just plain was not possible to think "Jeez, I wanna beat that jerk!" about any of the four. We were all fans, and we were all in this together. We'd all do our damndest, and in the end someone would be first, and someone would be last, and whoever was last would go home; only the top four would advance to Stage 2.
During our lunch hour, a huge nearby tatami room had been decorated as a mock-up of the "Shouten" set, with lighting rigged around the room and stocking-footed crew stationed at choreographed intervals on the tatami floor, testing microphones and handheld cameras. The floor director came to get us, and we followed him into the wood-and-tatami world of the anime song battlefield.
