Fill My Breast With Warm Water To Get A Real Warm Feeling

Wandered about the streets. Not much seemed to be going on. It was a grey, drizzly morning. Most of the shops were closed and the streets, deserted.

I saw a boisterous crowd, outside what looked like a theatre. I had no clue what was on. It has to be good, I told myself. Good enough for all those people to drag themselves out of bed on a miserable morning for. At the corner of the building there was a neon sign, pointing to the basement, that read

吉本笑店街

Taking them as Chinese characters, "笑店街" literally translate as "laughter shop street". I had not the slightest clue what was in that basement. The admission charge was a stiff 1000 Yen (~11 USD). I hesitated for a moment, but decided to check it out. I was free. I was curious.

I was a little spooked when I first entered the basement. The area, decked out like an old market, was dimly lit and shadowy. There were a lot of plastic figures, but not another soul in the narrow winding alleys or any of the "shops". I was the only visitor. Soon enough though, my initial unease turned into amusement as I realised what it was. 吉本笑店街 was a comedy museum, a really wacky one at that.

There was a screen showing snippets from stage and television shows featuring the comedy actors featured in the museum. I had a good laugh. You don't have to understand a word of Japanese to figure out what was going on. Comedy in its most primal form; simple, physical, slapstick, full of innuendos and rather lowbrow.

The "shops" were full of strange, wacky exhibits. There was a dog-headed spacesuit, a box full of plastic poop and fake boobs in (quite literally) all shapes and sizes, just to name a few. One of the shops was a "nursery" featuring a monkey, a gorilla and a green demon under the care of an ugly nurse. Another one featured an actress who made pornographic comedies. Her costumes, covering just about every stereotypical lewd male fantasy (air stewardess, nurse, school girl) was on display. Also on display, the packaging for an inflatable woman. The box read

Fill my breast with warm water to get a real warm feeling.

The place was a laugh, easily the wackiest thing I had seen in Japan, well worth the admission. I was inside for well over an hour, just the cheer-up I needed.

Yoshimoto Shotengai

The place was so dimly lit, this was the only shot I managed. That was probably my only regret about the place, that I could not capture any of the loopiness.

Only found out after I left Japan that the theatre was the Namba Grand Kagetsu (なんばグランド花月), operated by Yoshimoto Kogyo (吉本興業), the dominant player in Japanese comedy entertainment. The wacky basement was Yoshimoto Shotengai (吉本笑店街), a theme-park/museum homage to Yoshimoto Kogyo's popular comics.