Tobi (host)

speaker

686 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 31 Jul

Tobi (host)’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

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Unpacking Japan · What Japanese comedy school is REALLY like · 31 Jul 2026 podcast

I'm going to give this a fair try.

Yeah.

You said that one of the things that motivated you to walk in there at first was, the name is in English, so they sound like it's supportive of English.

But what was your Japanese at the time?

Garbage.

So what made you think at the time, without speaking Japanese and going to those shows, I can do this?

I'm glad you're losing it because every time someone on the show asks me, do you know this?

And I'm like, hmm, I'm not so sure.

The Watanabe Comedy School.

When I watch stand-up, mostly English stand-up or French, most people don't come from a comedy background.

Maybe some people have done like theater and a little bit of stage work, but nobody studies comedy.

Because in Japan, as opposed to...

Most places in the US where maybe people are like independently coming on stage and they go from small to bigger stage, depending on how popular they get.

Here, it's like a network that is companies have their TV rights and they produce comedy shows.

And if you want to be a comedian, you go there because there's nowhere else, right?

yeah yeah but like so you gotta say who you're signed to how long you've been in the game like wow yeah and um that's part of what you learn in comedy school so basically you learn more about the industry and who does what and where your place is in that industry as opposed to like actual comedy or is that also part of the curriculum so to say like how to perform what is funny what is not yeah yeah it's definitely part of uh

So what's the one-on-one of being funny?

Because humor varies a lot based on the culture.

So when you study how to be funny in Japan, what would be like the key points that they're like, okay, this is the golden rule.

If you want to be funny and you go on stage, you have to do this.

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