
(Click picture for streaming WMV file via AHG.)
Did everyone see this 5-year-old guitar slinger and Osaka-ben virtuoso Yamagishi Ryunosuke jammin' with Char on Sanma's Karakuri last month? Pictures. I can't find video on the hilarious guitar store scene and his performance at Chicken George's in Kobe that followed this clip.
I honestly think that's one of the weirdest things I've ever download. What on earth is going on in that clip? Why does he have so many hats? What is he saying that's so funny? And how does it turn into a game show?!
God I wish I knew Japanese.
Posted by: mcf on April 19, 2005 09:39 PMIt's not very weird, it's just funny and cool, funny because he speaks with the swagger and Osaka slang of a twentysomething, and cool because they just happened upon this kid who rocks. In a previous episode, they were asking kids "What's your dream?" and he said his dream was to meet Char, a long-enduring Japanese roots rocker totally outside the J-pop radio mainstream. In this show they made his dream come true.
"Man, there's no one in kindergarten that can play the guitar. They can't play any instruments. Triangle, castanets, tambourine? I'm not interested in that stuff. Guitar is where it's at, man, guitar and nothing else."
The first two hats are kindergarten-issue, all the kids in the same class wear the same thing. The others are certainly for his rock star persona.
The fake celebrity game show format is popular in Japan, and this is one of the prime examples. The wiseacres do their schtick, the airheads do their schtick, and no one cares who won or lost in the end, it's just a vehicle for the celebrity interaction that spices up the show. Here the question was "What did the reporter find moving about the boy?" An open-ended question like that, it would take forever to guess, but here it takes just one minute, obviously because she's been given the answer, which is that the kid's room is filled to overflowing with life-sized paper cut-out guitars copied from all his favorites in the magazines.
The best parts are what come after this, I wanna see that again.
Posted by: nils on April 19, 2005 11:45 PMThat was way cool! Do you remember the 5 year old blues harp player Taro, he was UNREAL...must be 10 or 11 now. Get these two together for a Howl'n Blues Jam!!!
Posted by: Randy Channell on April 20, 2005 12:13 AMRock on, Ryunosuke! Fun video, though I would have rather seen less of Sanma and the celebs and more or Ryunosuke and his guitar.
Posted by: papa on April 20, 2005 02:29 AMAhhh. Thank you so much, Nils-- it was going to be years before I learned enough Japanese to sort out 1/5 of that.
Posted by: mcf on April 20, 2005 10:24 AMHello.
Thank you for visiting and commenting to my blog.
I consented to the matter of the link.
However, if I feel that the load of my server is serious, I think it is deleted. If you understand it, I will be glad.
I live in Shiga. It is the next in Kyoto. I often visit Kyoto.
Your blog has a lot of beautiful photographs, and I like it very much.
I want to visit your blog again.
Please forgive me if these sentences are strange. Because my English is unskilled.
Amazing and funny kid!! ^_^
Posted by: aoi on April 24, 2005 05:45 AM