BJ Fox, a British who worked for a major videogame publisher before starting Tokyo’s only stand-up comedy club "Tokyo Comedy Bar" in Shibuya, talks about why he started his business, the uniqueness of the Japanese market, tips for startups and more.
Okay. My name is BJ Fox. I am 41 years old. I am from London. I have been in Japan since 2015, although I spent some time here teaching English, when I was a younger man. I'm currently one of the founders and the representative employee of Tokyo Comedy Bar.
The business is called Stand-Up Tokyo, but our main operation is Tokyo Comedy Bar, which is Tokyo's only stand-up comedy club.
I was working in the video game industry in Singapore at the time and I was transferred.
I was at Rockstar Games running Grand Theft Auto in Asia. I was the head of sales and marketing in Asia. So that was the original motivation. But previously, when I came here as an English teacher, I spoke some Japanese, because I studied when I was in Japan back in 2003 for a few years teaching.
So I guess I always had an interest in Japan. And then, when I went back to London after that, I worked for the Pokémon company. I was into video games and then moved to Rockstar Games for about 10 years, and that's what brought me back here.
I was in Singapore, I started doing stand-up as a hobby. And then, when I got transferred over here in 2015, I wanted to continue that hobby. But there wasn't much opportunity. In Singapore, there are lots of English speakers, lots of places for stand-up comedy as well as in London. You go to a pub, there's a stand-up night once a month. So it's a bit of a culture there.
That didn't exist in Japan, but there were a few nights here and there. So, I set up a website called standuptokyo.com where I collated all the different shows. And I started running a couple other shows myself back in 2015. We're talking about maybe three shows a month.
It just really grew. More people started performing, more audiences were coming. I guess this was tracking alongside Prime Minister Abe's goal to get 40 million foreigners a year in Tokyo. And in 2019 with the Rugby World Cup, lots of people were here. Our shows were going really well. So it really picked up. And within that I had other opportunities as well. I did a sitcom on Japanese TV on NHK for four years, which all kind of grew out from standuptokyo.com. And then, Covid hit, and it all stopped.
So we had this great community, a hobby that was more than a hobby. It was a side hustle, and we were really enjoying it. So, my friends and I thought, okay, that's done. So for two years, nothing. And then Covid was finishing, and there was actually a decision. What do we do next? Before Covid, we were running different shows. We had a weekly show in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo. We had a weekly show in Roppongi, once a month in Yokohama, one up in Osaka. There were all these different shows you were organizing. It was actually a lot of work. And the idea of going back to that was quite daunting because you spent all your time arranging and running around Tokyo. And in fact, we, four of us just thought why don't we give it a go?
We knew there's an audience. If we could own that ecosystem a little bit more, instead of just giving all that money to the bar owners, we would grow the marketing opportunities because we've got a place that we could market.
So four of us got together and thought let's put our money together and put a place and hope that Covid finishes. So we opened in May. But Covid didn't finish, and six months have passed. But yeah, that's how we started.
I think in terms of direct competition, no. We're the only people with a stand-up comedy club in Tokyo, but I guess our competition lies with other bars. Just generally, like what do you spend your money on when you go out? If you're a local person, are you going to watch football somewhere? Are you going to karaoke, or are you going to dinner? Are you going to a quiz night? There are different bars in Tokyo.
I guess for tourists, which is a target market for us. How can we attract them to come over? How do you get a tourist to choose your bar over the 100,000 other different attractions in Tokyo on any given night? It is difficult in that sense too.
That's true. But I think they're not stand-up comedy. We do do one show in Japanese a month, and we do English shows every other single night. Our main target is either foreigners living in Tokyo or tourists coming over to Tokyo. I'm sure Japanese comedy clubs would love a foreign audience. In fact, we work together with those Japanese comedy agencies in some ways.
I've taught some comedy courses for their comedians. We've done shows with Yuriyan Retriever in the past, we've done shows with Jaru Jaru here. Some of their comedians like Daisuke Muramoto perform here at least once a month as well. A lot of their comedians have set themselves the challenge. I think the Yoshimoto or Japanese entertainers want to get the inbound money.
Also from a comedian point of view, Yuriyan Retriever or Naomi Watanabe, those top names, they seem to want to try comedy on a global stage as well. So hopefully we can help them. Jaru Jaru were performing in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, but they had never performed in front of foreigners. So they did a practice show here so they could know how to tweak their style for a foreign audience.
We’re positive, and we're very happy that tourist came back as of October 2022. So far so good, I would say. But I think as we grow, we see how many foreigners are in Tokyo. And every now and again, we get an amazing night. Like last night we had 70 people here on a Thursday night. That was awesome. But the challenge is how do we get those people more often and reach different communities? So even though it's going very well, we still think there's more opportunity. Our location's amazing. We've got no direct competition. Foreigners coming to Japan tend to look for things to do, because Tokyo can be a bit scary in the evening.
You don’t know where to go, what to eat, so I feel like there’s a lot to do from our side. And our goals in 2023 are just to keep growing and getting into these different little pockets of consumers.
In terms of performing here for audiences, it's really easy because there's no real competition. So when people come to stand up, they're happy. They're like this is great. When I did it in Singapore where there's lots of opportunity and maybe people go once a month. They become more selective! “I don't like this” or “I don't like that one”.
But here, they're happy to be here. I think one thing we had to learn is that when you think of a foreigner, maybe you think it's going to be American English. It's not. We might get 50 people in a good night, and amongst 50 people there might be only 10 native speakers. Our audience are Japanese people who want to study a bit of English. They might be Taiwanese people who are here on holidays. You know, the front row could be people from Bolivia, Moldova. And the challenge there is then what is your Neta [jokes]? You know, because I can't talk about Manchester United. I can't talk about Star Wars, because they might not have common knowledge or the same awareness. And another thing that we've noticed since tourists are coming back, there's a big difference between the living-in-Japan-as-a-foreigner experience and the tourist experience. I could make a joke about the word Irasshaimase, that's great for people here, but maybe not for a tourist. I remember one person made a joke about how hard it is to go to Immigration Services Agency of Japan in Shinagawa - that’s what foreigners have to do. And it’s a really funny joke, but if you're only here for like one week, you've got no idea what he’s talking about. So how do you find jokes that are universal enough for everyone? That is one challenge, I would say.
One other challenge is that I didn't understand how hard it would be to reach Japanese people. I would like to have Japanese shows more than once a month, but it's very hard to find performers as well as an audience. We currently haven't cracked that issue. How do you reach regular Japanese people?
Tokyo Cheapo is a website that all foreigners who visit Tokyo read. If you post something to Time Out Tokyo, you get foreigners in. But how do you get Japanese people who are just looking for something to do? Unless they're Googling Stand-Up Tokyo or stand-up comedy, then how would they ever find us?
And we've tried Instagram and Twitter, but cannot get them to work. So that's one thing that we need to work on. I did a bit of market research. I went to Lumine and watched comedy shows to see what's the demographic of people watching comedy shows in Japan. Most of them are young people, young girls, university students. And there's a lot of older men as well. It's a very different atmosphere. This idea that you go to a night out where you have a drink and listen to comedy, doesn't seem to exist. But there must be older people who want a good night out as well.
Yeah. In fact Netflix is helping a lot. Netflix would bring over content, having people like Daisuke Muramoto and pushing out stand-up comedy a lot. He attracts a certain type of people who want to hear about politics. But the reality of stand-up comedy is not that. We talk about convenience stores and daily life, Natural Lawson and stuff. So it's a tricky balance.
So next year, I want Tokyo Comedy Bar to be the birthplace of stand-up comedy in Japan. My ideal schedule is to have a Japanese show and an English show every single night, a Japanese show from seven o'clock and an English show from 8:30!
You know what? I don't know actually. I don't know because often it's described as a one mic show but the reality is not. When I introduced stand-up comedy to Yoshimoto coemdians, I had a slide with six top comedians in the world. Dave Chappelle, Jerry Seinfeld, and Bo Burnham and a few others. They're all different, though. One guy's playing the piano, and one of our best comedians plays the guitar. So it's kind of hard to define what it is.
But I think one of the main differences I see between Manzai and the stand-up comedy is it's all conversation with the audience. Manzai tends to be like two people on stage, but the stand-up comedy is about the conversation that goes on between the comedian and the audience.
We do workshops to get people started. It turns out there's a lot of people in Tokyo who want to have something to state. I think in terms of creative art forms, let's say this is an art form. It's actually probably the easiest one to do. If you're in a play, you need rehearsals in a theater. If you're in a band, you need to go to a studio or live house with other musicians and rehearsals.
We've got one mic, literally. We do something called “Open Mic” five times a week where anyone can perform. I use that opportunity to practice new jokes and often I just think of the jokes on the way here, what do I want to say this week? And then see in front of an audience what works.
I have done TV shows for four years. That was great fun. But you write the script, give it to the director and then to a production company, they change it, then you film it, then you've got the director doing something and six months later you see it for the first time.
Whereas I feel like the stand-up comedy is quite easy. Also it's a great community as well. You hear a lot of different voices and if you have any frustration living in Japan, it is a good place to get it all out.
One challenge I would say is that Tokyo Comedy Bar is the only club here, which means we are at the top of this little ecosystem but we're still low at the same time. So if you're really good at stand-up comedy and you want to build up a career in stand-up comedy, this needs to be a stepping stone. This can't be the end point because, you know, there isn't the potential for career growth in Japan.
I think we've got three different audiences. One is Japanese people, one is foreign people living in Japan, one is foreign tourists. So we are looking at how to differentiate our products for those different groups. They want different things and how do we market it effectively to target with a goal of having two shows per night. People who live in Tokyo can't come on a Tuesday. They've got work the next day. For the tourists that doesn't matter. So, how do we make this not just a weekend business? How do we turn it into a weekday business as well? Last Thursday was fine for us, actually, but then Monday will be quiet. So how do we have the best located bar in Tokyo and not have it quiet on a Monday?
But the other challenge is to try to explore other avenues for entertainment as well. I produced two TV shows in Japan, a sitcom and a comedy show for NHK. I just recorded a podcast at Amazon Originals, so we're doing all these different things, but how do we get this content to leverage more effectively for Tokyo Comedy Bar? I can plot out how big this business can be if we fill it up. We've got this many seats and this many people, we need to do plus alpha stuff to really turn into a growth of business.
I would say apply for a bank account as early as possible. It takes so long to get a bank account in Tokyo. Go for Pay Pay bank! Everything took twice as long as I thought it was going to take. So build that into your plan so you don't end up being frustrated at the systems.
I would also say learn Japanese as much as possible. That helps you not rely on other people to do things. And also talk to other people as much as possible. For one thing I found in this small community, people want to help you. Other people have got good advice.
When you go on a government website for how to start a business, it does not help you, but other people will help you. Everyone's got the same frustration, so that's why I would say build a network ASAP.
I recently joked about my favorite Japanese food. Often Japanese people ask me what your favorite food is, and I always say “Hangaku Bento,” because you never know what you're going to get. Because when I was here 20 years ago, I lived in Shizuoka next to the supermarket. And every day at half past eight, there were half priced Bento boxes!
But nowadays in Tokyo, they don't exist anymore. It seems like it's been too long.
Actually, this is not my favorite food, but I love Izakayas underneath like train underpasses. Recently I've had like a few friends visit, or like a few business partners visit. So many Japanese people take business partners out to nice restaurants. But they don't want that. What they want is to go to a casual Izakaya. I like that vibe.
I like Ho-dai. When I discover and like a new Ho-dai, every now and then you find a new one. Nomi-Ho-dai, Utai Ho-dai, I saw a Giga Ho-dai recently. When I first saw it, I thought it was like the king of all the Ho-dais!
My other favorite word is Sasete Itadakimasu. It's like a shortcut to politeness, like Keigo for us, it's very difficult to understand. But if you put that at the end of sentences, it sounds nice. That's my polite Japanese.
Stand-Up Tokyo：https://www.tokyocomedybar.com/
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