Tsugaru-ben Shinzen Taishi Morita Go | Tomodachi Oyako Senshuken Tsugaru-ben Shinzen Taishi Morita Go The Friendship Ambassador of Tsugaru-ben, Morita Go It all started when Go-kun and Sakamoto-kun visited the little town of Morita, located in the north of Japan. They explored the town for a while before the town mayor took them to a house where the old people in the village regularly gathered to eat. Go-kun chugged some sake to impress the crowd before he and Sakamoto-kun sat down to lunch. Go-kun looked more than a bit tipsy, leaning heavily on Sakamoto-kun as they listened to the mayor speak. It turns out, the mayor was a bit concerned because the local children were starting to use a standard Tokyo dialect more and more than their native Tsugaru-ben dialect. He was afraid that Tsugaru-ben would be lost unless kids were taught to appreciate it, and asked if Go-kun could help them teach the dialect and make it seem "cool" again. Sakamoto-kun tried to hold him back, but Go-kun eagerly volunteered, and thus the "Tsugaru-ben Shinzen Taishi" segment was born. Although, I think that the true moral of this story is, "Don't drink too much." The first step was for Go-kun to learn the dialect himself. He was given guides to practice on his own, but to further his education, he was also introduced to the local old people, who used Tsugaru-ben more regularly. The group of elderly were whittled down to four regulars, including everyone's favorite "Hey Hey Harada". Harada was an old man who loved drinking constantly, telling incredibly raunchy stories that had even Go-kun running out of the room for help, and shouting "HEY HE~Y" at random intervals. The other favorite of the segment was "Kuishinbou Nara" (Glutton Nara). Nara was a really hysterical old man who always seemed far more interested in the food that was provided than in cultural exchange. After learning the dialect pretty well himself, they started a short series of language segments to teach basic Tsugaru-ben. Hosted by an announcer from TBS, the language segments taught in a similar format to many foreign language tapes. The mayor and a local teacher would pronounce the phrase-of-the-day, before reading a short dialogue set in a grocery store, train station, festival, wherever. Then, they would show the dialogue being acted out by locals, mainly using the old people from around town. Finally, the dialogue would be acted out by Go-kun and the V6 member who had accompanied him that day. Ken-kun acted out one dialogue and impressed everyone with his pronunciation and naturalness. Ken-kun apparently has mean language skills. Okada-kun acted out another dialogue, with mixed results. His dialogue came out very wooden and slow, as he worked hard to pronounce the Tsugaru-ben correctly. As hard as he tried, it always came out a little more like his native Kansai-ben than anything else. Sakamoto-kun did a little better with pronunciation, but came out sounding just as wooden and slow as Okada-kun. It probably didn't help that his dialogue was interrupted twice, once by Hey Hey Harada's drunken adlib, and once by the old woman working the festival scene with him. The script called for him to tell her how beautiful she was, but when Sakamoto-kun said his line, the old woman blushed and got so flustered that she couldn't continue. Go-kun was, of course, fabulous. He learned the Tsugaru-ben extremely well, so much so that he was able to adlib and converse quite naturally with the other people in the scene. The mayor always looked very impressed and pleased that he had gotten such a good ambassador for his dialect. The language segments would then end with a chorus of children singing a popular song, with lyrics rewritten into Tsugaru-ben. Who can forget V6's classic, "WA ni natte odoru-be"? In addition to the language segments, Go-kun continued his work as local ambassador. They had several lunches where he and the mayor served as mediator between a group of four local youths and the four old folks. The results were mixed, since the kids didn't seem to have any idea what to say and the elderly seemed more interested in eating than talking, but everyone seemed to have a good time at the end. In one of the most touching segments, Go-kun hosted a lunch which turned out to be a surprise birthday party for Hey Hey Harada. Halfway through, they turned out the lights and brought out a small cake. The kids cheered as Go-kun gave Harada a wrapped present. Even though Hey Hey Harada was usually very loud and boisterous, the surprise of having his birthday celebrated moved him to silent tears. Awww, Go-kun. Changing the world one old person at a time. Tomodachi Oyaku Senshuken "Friendly Mother-Daughter Championship" Tomodachi means "friend". Oyako means "parent and child", or in this case, "mother and daughter". This championship is based on the idea that in Japan, there's a new trend for mothers and daughters to be more like friends than family. They hang out together, dress alike, gossip together, and carry cute pictures of each other in their purses. When you look at them, you think that they're friends or sisters, not mother and daughter. Two V6 members break into two teams and are paired with a special guest. Each team is given an area to cover, whether it be an area of Tokyo or an area of a different city. They are then given five hours to wander this hip area in search of mother-daughter pairs. At the end of the five hours, each team chooses a mother-daughter pair to compete in the competition. The pairs are revealed on stage in front of TBS studios, and 50 people in the waiting crowd are asked to vote on which oyako are more amazing. While some of the oyako are amazing because the young girls look so amazingly grown up, most of the oyako are shocking because the mothers simply look so young. In all of the pictures, the mother is the one pictured to the left and to the top, while the daughter is to the right and bottom. The first picture features American oyako from Osaka, the first foreigners entered into the competition. The second picture features some funky oyako. The mother is 29, while the daughter is 12. I don't know which one is more shocking. But my personal favorite are the oyako pictured in the third picture. The adorable little mother is 35, believe it or not. Inocchi just stared in shock when he saw her for the first time. "You can't be human~! You're a monster!!" he shouted. I-inocchi... Back | TV Index