Information about Gaki No Tsukai

Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!! (ダウンタウンのガキの使いやあらへんで!!, Downtown's "Not An Errand Boy!") is a Japanese variety show hosted by the popular Japanese owarai duo, Downtown. This TV program began broadcasting on October 3, 1989, and is a popular comedy show in Japan.

Cast

Regular Cast

• Downtown (Hitoshi Matsumoto (松本人志) and Masatoshi Hamada (浜田雅功))
• Hōsei Yamasaki (山崎邦正, Yamasaki Hōsei) - He has been part of the regular cast since 1995.
• Coq au Rico (Naoki Tanaka (田中直樹) and Shōzo Endō (遠藤章造, Endō Shōzo)) - They have been part of the regular cast since 1997.

Former Regular Cast

• Jimmy Ohnishi (ジミー大西) - He left the regular cast in 1996 to pursue a painting career. He has subsequently made several appearance in parody instructional videos that are used in the "No Laughing" batsu games since 2005. In the videos, he either says or does things that are dumb, usually repeatedly, to make the cast laugh. His most famous appearance is in the English Lesson episode of the "No laughing in High School" game where he mispronounced words.

Semi-regular Cast

• Kenji Suga (菅 賢治) - Executive producer. He often appears in fake posters in the batsu games (see below).
• Toshihide Saitou (斉藤 巡査) He calls himself Heipō (ヘイポー) - Set director. Several sketches and games are based on his being high-strung and easy to scare.
• Hiroshi Fujiwara (藤原 寛) - Downtown's manager. He is often seen cosplaying as female characters.
• Ameagari Kesshitai (Hiroyuki Miyasako (宮迫 博之) and Tōru Hotohara(蛍原 徹)) - A comedy duo that has occasionally joined the regular cast.
• Itsuji Itao (板尾 創路) - A member of the comedy duo 130R.
• Shohei Shofukutei (笑福亭 笑瓶) -　A rakugo artist. He is also known for the ショウヘイヘイ！(Shōhei! Hey!) phrase said in the police batsu game

Other Cast

• Hosshan (ほっしゃん) - Another comedian that makes appearances during the batsu games. His signature trick is sticking things up his nose and coughing it out through his mouth. This gag consistently makes the cast laugh.
• Itao's Wife - She is not actually Itao's wife. She makes appearances horribly dancing along to Madonna or other dance songs.
• Ayako Nishikawa (西川史子) A former Miss Japan who later became a physician. She makes a guest appearance as Heipō's "date" and as the medical examiner in the police batsu game. Her roles tend to be sadistic, often used to great humorous effect.
• Obachan No. 1 and Obachan No. 2 - Two elderly women who often appear in the batsu games, dressed in strange outfits (on one occasion they dressed as t.A.T.u.) or getting the cast into compromising positions.
• Konyaga Yamada (今夜が山田 - Tonight Is Yamada!; Real name: David Hossein) - He is the former manager of Thane Camus. He played a role as a ringside doctor in Dynamite Shikoku's wrestling matches (Dynamite being a character played by Endou). During the "No Laughing" batsu games, he says his name over and over in different variations (to music as well) while the cast try to sleep.

Segments

Batsu Games

Probably the best known Gaki episodes are those dealing with batsu games, or punishment games, in which one or more of the cast members participate in after losing bets, major games, or physical challenges.

No Laughing Games

The objective of each "No Laughing" game is that the cast must refrain from laughing. Each time that they do laugh, the crew comes in and punishes them by hitting them in the butt with darts, shinai, or by some other means. The current record for times punished within a 24-hour period was set by Endo at the police station. He was hit with a nightstick 189 times.

• No Laughing in the Hot Springs

An earlier spa-themed batsu game as a punishment for Matsumoto, Yamasaki, Endo, and Tanaka, who lost to Hamada in a 4 vs. 1 bowling match.

• No Laughing in Yugawara

Another spa-themed batsu game setting at Yugawara, Kanagawa, where Yamasaki, Tanaka, and Hamada were the victims and punished by Matsumoto and Endo. This batsu game features Endo's luchador character Dynamite Shikoku.

• No Laughing in High School

The best-known batsu game in which the entire cast, except Hamada, are sent to 'high-school' for one day. During this time, various absurd things happen to the cast and they are punished by being hit on the butt with a shinai. Comedian Masaki Sumitani aka Razor Ramon Hard Gay made an appearance during this game.

The English-lesson segment of this batsu game is perhaps the single best known Gaki no Tsukai segment outside of Japan. During this segment, the cast sits in a classroom watching an educational video. What they get is Jimmy Oonishi reading an English article about Marco Polo, counting from 1 to 100 in English, and saying all the days of the week in English. He was utterly bewildered by the English language and makes a number of ridiculous mistakes. His mispronunciations in this segment include "asked", "questions", "Venice" (which he pronounced as Victor). When he counted from 1 to 100, he assumed 20 was called "ten-ten", 21 being "ten-ten-one" and so on. He ended the count by calling 100 "ten-ten-ten-ten-ten-ten-ten-ten-ten-ten"

• No Laughing at the Police Station

This batsu game premiered in Japan as a three-hour New Year's Eve special on the 31st of December in 2006. The participants were Yamasaki, Hamada, and Endo while the punishers were Matsumoto and Tanaka.

Other Batsu Games

Haunted Hotel After Matsumoto loses a swimming match against the other four cast members, a batsu game is set at a "haunted hotel" or ryokan. Matsumoto must spend the night and endure ghost apparitions, a samurai, and random knocks on walls among other things.

Onigokko (鬼ごっこ) An infamous 24-hour batsu game in which the cast, excluding Matsumoto, are locked in a sports arena and subject to being chased by mobs of Oni (demons) at random moments, each with their own variety of punishments.

No Reaction Pie Hell (ノーリアクションパイ地獄) In this game, Matsumoto is punished for losing a bet with Hamada over the 2002 Japan Series. In their bet, Hamada picked the Yomiuri Giants while Matsumoto picked the Seibu Lions, and the Giants won the series four games to none. Matsumoto's punishment is that he has spend a day at home while Hamada, Endo, Tanaka and Yamasaki throw a barrage of pies at him and everything he touches, including a television set and a toaster. Matsumoto has to ignore the other comedians while he follows prompts from a narrator.

Gakitanic Hamada loses a golf challenge against the rest of the cast and must go to Los Angeles with Matsumoto's mother to shoot the love scene from Titanic.

Hama-chan France Evian Trip In July 1993, Hamada lost to Matsumoto in a running high jump competition and has to go to Évian-les-Bains, France with the crew to get Matsumoto a bottle of Evian mineral water straight from the source.

Hama-chan New York City Mechanical Pencil Trip Hamada loses a bet on which team, red or white, will win the 1994-95 New Year's Singing Competition and has to go to New York City with Suga Kenji to fetch a mechanical pencil that Matsumoto lent to Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Matsumoto Family Rangers Matsumoto loses to Hamada in a long jump segment and has to perform with his father, mother, older sister and brother as a Sentai/Power Ranger team.

Silent Library

In this segment, the cast and a sixth member are in a staged library in which one of them has to undergo a punishment upon choosing the card with the skull and crossbones on it (similar to Russian roulette). Although the game requires that they remain silent during the entire segment, the members repeatedly let out bursts of muffled laughter that is loud enough for the occupants of the library to hear. Former K-1 champion Ernesto Hoost once made a special appearance.

Chinko Machine

In a segment from the episode "Ōgiri Daigassen", the participants must recite a long, tongue twister-like promotion for the show without stopping or stuttering. If a participant fails, they are to run on the “chinko machine”, literally the “penis machine”, which releases a switch that hits the participant in the groin. This batsu game was featured on the August 1, 2006 Oddball segment of Countdown with Keith Olbermann as "Reason Number 261 (of 527) why Japanese television is better than ours."

7 Henge

Shichi-henge (The Seven Apparitions) is a segment of the show where the cast and crew sit at a table while a comedian attempts to make them laugh. For each round that a person laughs, they must put 1,000 yen into a box and that collected money is donated to a charity of the comedian's choice. A variation on this "Horror Shichi-henge" involved several members of the cast and crew ambushing Heipo with the intent of causing him to lose his composure and thus be forced to surrender money. Bob Sapp once made a special appearance on this segment in which he collected 53,000 yen.

Absolutely Tasty Series

This is a series of cooking segments in which the comedians prepare foods, either traditional Japanese dishes like taiyaki and chawanmushi or foods like pizza, with unusual ingredients to use as fillings or flavors, which is eaten later and given a score ranging from two "skull marks" to ten stars. Endo is notorious for using Frisk, a brand of very strong breath mint, in his food. Matsumoto usually introduces very unusual ingredients such as a bear's paw for takikomi gohan, tuna's head for pizza, a dried cobra for nabe, and toothpaste for pasta.

Kiki Series

This is a series of competitions where each member tastes a randomly selected product, mostly food and drink but once cigarettes, from many different brands blindfolded. After the tasting period, they must find the product they tasted. Anyone who selects correctly will receive a prize money, usually 100,000 yen, otherwise they take a variety of punishments, such as being hit in the groin by a Chinko Machine or getting slapped by a foreigner.

High Tension Series

Genkai series

Yamasaki vs. Moriman

This is a series of comedic fighting bouts between Yamasaki and the female comedian Moriman which parody the popularity of mixed martial arts competitions.

Five Rangers Game

In this challenge, all five cast members enter separate dressing rooms and each randomly dress as one of the five colors of Go-Renjai, sentai characters from Downtown's other show, and they attempt to complete all five different colors in 6 hours. The chance that the five cast members choose all different colors is 120/3125 (3.84%).

Cosplay Bus Tour series

The bus series usually includes the main cast plus some of the producers or guests cosplaying or dressing up in female costumes and playing mini games in a bus going around popular Tokyo locations. When one loses in a mini game he is dropped off in the popular location, alone and looking quite absurd. Past cosplays include anime characters, high school girls, SM queens, and Pink Lady (famous Japanese idols) costumes. During Anime Bus Tour, Yamasaki, who dressed as Arale from Dr. Slump, was dropped off and didn't fulfilled his task to buy a spaghetti. He was then penalized by forcing him to fly to Italy in his cosplay dress, buy the spaghetti there, and bring it back to Japan.

Broadcasting TV stations

• Nippon TV, Sapporo TV, Aomori Broadcasting Corp., Miyagi TV, Yamagata Broadcasting Co., Fukushima Central TV, Yamanashi Broadcasting System, TV Niigata, Kitanihon Broadcasting Co., TV Kanazawa, TV Shinshu, Shizuoka Daiichi TV, Nihonkai TV, Yamaguchi Broadcasting Co., Nishinippon Broadcasting Co., Nankai Broadcasting Co., Kochi Broadcasting Co., Nagasaki International TV, Kumamoto Kemmin TV, Kagoshima Yomiuri TV - from 10:56 p.m. until 11:26 p.m. every Sunday (JST)
• Fukuoka Broadcasting Corp. - from 0:50 a.m. until 1:20 a.m. every Saturday (JST)
• Yomiuri TV (Kansai), TV Iwate, Hiroshima TV - from 0:26 a.m. until 0:56 a.m. every Wednesday (JST)
• Akita Broadcasting System, Inc. - from 0:31 a.m. until 1:01 a.m. every Thursday (JST)
• Chukyo TV - from 1:20 a.m. until 1:50 a.m. every Friday (JST)
• Ryukyu Broadcasting Corp. (affiliated with JNN and TBS Network) - from 1:25 a.m. until 1:55 a.m. every Tuesday (JST)

Related Links

Gaki No Tsukai Official Home Page (NTV)