Anyway, it’s slapstick! The program that made “Honjamaka” Hidehiko Ishizuka’s dream come true, “Genso! The Curious Incident Book of “Debuya

Hello, everyone. This is Hidehiko Ishizuka, who jumped over a puddle of water, slipped on landing, and ended up lying on his back in the puddle, pondering about life.

This time, I would like to write about “Genso! Debuya” broadcast on TV Tokyo.

Let’s turn Shibuya into “Debuya”!

The birth of the show was triggered by a TV Asahi program. It was a variety show hosted by Naoko Ken, and it featured myself, Papaya Suzuki, and Mayumi Kawai visiting the most popular restaurants and dancing in the streets.

One day, when Ms. Kawai appeared on stage as a “sassy actress,” she used industry terms such as “shi-taku” and “teruho,” and one of them was the phrase “maiwu. Mr. Papaya and I laughed hysterically at his huffy way of saying it. After that, we started saying “maiwoo” every time we had something to eat.

However, the good times do not last long. The ratings were good, but the show ended. When I was thinking, “I want to do that corner again,” I was offered a late-night slot on TV Tokyo, and I told them without hesitation, “I want to do an extension of that one corner with Mr. Papaya.

The concept of the show was to turn Shibuya, a town filled with young people, into a fat-friendly town, and to turn Shibuya into a “fat shop.

The three of us set out to make Shibuya a town that is friendly to fat people. We want to somehow solve the problems that fat people don’t seem to get. Ultimately, we want to make this program so that people who watch it will want to gain weight – and that’s what we want to do.

A Curious Incident at “Debuya

We did a lot of things on the show. One time I went to a restaurant and ordered a large portion of food and rice, and when the rice came out I complained, “What’s so large about it?

When three people got on an elevator with a capacity of four and the buzzer rang, I complained again, “Change the name of the elevator to ‘capacity of two’! I complained again. When Papaya and I sat side by side in a small restaurant, one of us could not eat because our elbows bumped into each other when one of us ate, so we took turns enjoying our meal.

There was also something unexpected. When Mr. Papaya and I rode on a two-person rickshaw and tried to get the wheelman to say, “It’s heavy,” the rickshaw’s kaji bar broke just as we got on.

The somen noodles were flowing too fast for us to catch them, so the plan was changed to one in which the somen noodles were placed by the pool in a flowing pool and we were swept away by the waves. It was even more difficult to get the somen.

That program also made my dream come true. I was allowed to make a fresh yatsuhashi the size of a cushion, something I had long wanted to do. It was a happy maiyasu.

For the project of making a giant yakisoba, we went to an ostrich farm and got an ostrich egg, because “the egg on top must be big too. I also have fond memories of having chef Toshiro Kandagawa cook us kabayaki with the giant eels we had acquired on a southern island. The program “Debuya” showed us many dreams.

By the way, we are still in the middle of our dream. If you are a TV station, we are looking forward to hearing from you.

From the August 8-15, 2025 issue of “FRIDAY