His father, who came from Japan, came to Italy thanks to a pipe. “After finishing school, he could go work in Germany, Spain or Italy. He knew nothing about these countries: he chose Italy because he smoked an Italian brand of pipe. Thanks to this pipe, today we have one of the most popular stand-up comedians, who fills the cinemas with her tour “Mary Poppins and the Deathly Hallows” (she will be seen at Elfo Puccini in Milan on April 29th) and with her Videos cause a stir with millions of views.
Yoko Yamada, the Japanese comedian from Brescia, is a small phenomenon who has developed jokes and monologues around her origins. After all, the journey from Japan to the province of Brescia is quite long. “My father was a sexer: he distinguished female chicks from male chicks when they were a day old. With today's techniques you can understand it straight away, but back then you had to go through a very hard school… For me, when I started writing my lyrics, it was essential to talk about my family. Like the shock my father felt when he heard everyone talking loudly: he thought they were all angry.
However, comedy did not come into her life so early: “I wanted to be a theater actress, I thought I had a certain disposition, so I tried to do auditions: Filodrammatici, Piccolo, Paolo Grassi.” They all went badly… But today I say thank you to those who didn't take me with them, because I wouldn't have discovered stand-up comedy. An art that he has been practicing for some time, even without being in the spotlight: “When I went out to eat with friends or just met new people, I realized that I was starting to tell my life.” a funny way and Way. And I liked making people laugh: each time I created a small audience that listened very attentively.
There was no shortage of funny ideas in Yamada's life: “It still happens that people say to me: Well, you definitely speak Italian very well.” Except that I'm Italian. Neither I nor my brothers are bilingual because Japanese was never spoken at home, so much so that I felt guilty about it. In fact, I studied it at university and today I have the vocabulary of a three-year-old.” After graduating, the idea was to move there for a while. “But in the end I took a sabbatical in Venice and started working in a luxury boutique to make a living. I stayed for six years. She spent the day in the store (which offered her more comic ideas) and went to the gig in the evening. “After I saw Luca Ravenna in the theater, I thought: I want to do that too. So I started signing up for improv evenings. And I wrote my first five-minute piece. My mother was worried, but my father only said one word to me: Try.”
From then on, despite a few setbacks, she didn't stop: “They called me to Zelig, I should have gone on TV.” I did my piece, it was a great opportunity, but they cut me off: I'm never up Shipment gone. Luckily the train passed again shortly afterwards with Italia's Got Talent: “From then on everything changed.” I reached the final and a lot of people started looking for me. Even kids, which always makes me weird because my comedy isn't for them. Once two 12 year old girls saw me and started crying. If the theater is a dream come true, she would like to see television in the future: “A sitcom in the style of The Office or Big Bang Theory.” It would be wonderful.”