落語を見に行ってきた! We Went to See Rakugo at the Brighton Fringe And It Was All Kinds of Awesome

落語を見に行ってきた! We Went to See Rakugo at the Brighton Fringe And It Was All Kinds of Awesome

落語を知っていますか。聞いたことありますか。
Rakugo o shitte imasu ka. Kiita koto ga arimasu ka.
Do you know rakugo? Have you ever heard of it?

The first time I heard of rakugo (落語), I was at a weekly Japanese conversation club in Nagoya in 2011, and the teacher was telling me about an event they were holding the following week.

"This man Sunshine-san is very famous," she told me. "He does traditional Japanese comic storytelling in English."

"Hmm," I thought to myself. "I don't want to see a show in English. I didn't come to Japan to watch stuff in English!"

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