Atsuko Okatsuka

Have you ever seen a Japanese reality show called Old Enough? Smash hit for decades that became a popular late-pandemic binge on Netflix here in the US. The gist is parents send their adorable toddlers out into the grown-up world to run a series of simple errands—pick up vegetables from the store, deliver a letter to a friend—and a camera crew tracks them from an extremely safe distance so we can watch what happens. It’s the best show ever made. Better than The Sopranos. The kids get distracted so easily, they make wrong turns, they stop to tell strangers about their friend who’s a frog. On average they complete two out of three errands.

She manages to complete the first two tasks but the last one is too hard. She winds up snapping a photo with a tourist who looks like Timothée Chalamet.

Atsuko Okatsuka, the stand-up comic, identifies with those kids so much that she made a spoof of it last year for the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival in Los Angeles. In her version, Arsenio Hall sends her out onto the streets to return a friend’s notebook—“Oh, she needs that!”—and pick up her festival swag bag, and take a selfie with a famous celebrity. “It should be easy for a grown comedian,” says the Japanese narrator. It’s not. She manages to complete the first two tasks but the last one is too hard. She winds up snapping a photo with a tourist who looks like Timothée Chalamet.

“I’m not a one-dimensional person. I get really excited and speak really high and fast – and loud,” she says. “Even since my special, I feel like I keep becoming more of my actual real self on stage.

“I think I still perform with some Asian roots that I didn’t even notice before,” she says, referring to her cartoonish-like energy that took inspiration from watching Robin Williams’ spirited routines. “I’m a very physical performer, I communicate a lot with my eyes or I make funny noises with my mouth to show frustration or fear or something … I don’t need to use words necessarily to communicate and I think that’s why there’s an instant connection globally that’s happening.”

Videos

Here's a full playlist of some of Atsuko Okatsuka's best standup comedy videos.

“I think I still perform with some Asian roots that I didn’t even notice before,” she says, referring to her cartoonish-like energy that took inspiration from watching Robin Williams’ spirited routines. “I’m a very physical performer, I communicate a lot with my eyes or I make funny noises with my mouth to show frustration or fear or something … I don’t need to use words necessarily to communicate and I think that’s why there’s an instant connection globally that’s happening.”