It’s a live performance and you’re talking to them. I feel a really strong connection with the audience. Do you like having those audience interactions? I love the way you structure your jokes in that they continuously subvert the audience’s expectations about your identity so the joke just gets funnier and more interesting in a way where you’re revealing something not just about yourself, but the audience as well. Sex is a really beautiful thing and we should be able to talk about it without feeling a sense of guilt or shame. Like to talk about sex in public is so no-no, especially for women it’s so not elegant to talk about sex in public. Yeah, I think what’s happening is, in Japan, it’s like so oppressed. Why is talking about this topic important for you? I love how you’re just so unapologetic about women advocating for their pleasure. You’re talking to this couple in the audience about the right way to go down on someone. A video of one of your sets recently went viral. I’ve noticed that sex is a big topic in your comedy. He’s like totally outside the box and it sort of changes my perspective on comedy or what comedy can do. Dave Chapelle, I love him because he is like so effortless and casual like he could totally be your friend. And that’s when I said oh maybe I should do comedy.ĭave Chapelle and Wanda Sykes, Bo Burnham. And then, I realized when you do comedy it’s really interactive and you get to create something special with the audience and it made me happy. And when I said the first line, the audience started laughing which, I wasn’t expecting that and I had to wait a little bit to say the next line. One of my actor friends, he wrote a comedy play called How Much Are Those Feelings In The Window? And then I got to play a Japanese wife who was like really not happy in her marriage. And in order to fit the Hollywood standard, I have to change how I talk and I felt so wrong. And then my agent asked me to go to see a dialect coach to get rid of my Japanese accent and I took a few classes and I felt so wrong because this is how I talk and this is what happens when Japanese people try to speak English. I started studying acting around 2015, or wait a little bit before that, and I was kind of struggling because I have a thick Japanese accent so, like whenever I go to auditions I will have to be like a “Japanese Waitress” or like “Japanese Nuclear Scientist” or like the roles that make sense with my Japanese accent and it was like really limited opportunity. What attracted you to comedy? Have you always been a funny person? We had the privilege of speaking with the rising star about her road to comedy, her creative process and how she’s challenging western stereotypes of Asian women. You can see her perform at this year’s Winnipeg Comedy Festival, or YouTube where she frequently uploads new bits. In her new debut album, My Name Is Yumi, Nagashima covers a range of topics, such as racism, international dating preferences and working in entertainment, from her unique viewpoint as a millennial woman from Japan to establishing a performance career in North America. In the video, titled “Japanese Sweet Bite Technique,” Nagashima casually addresses the lackluster sex life of a couple, seated in the front row, mulling over different methods of oral sex for them. A YouTube clip from one of her sets has recently gone viral with over 400,000 views. The Japanese-born Vancouver-based standup’s brand of observational humor and deadpan delivery is delighting audiences nationwide. Yumi Nagashima ( is the kind of comedian who continues to surprise.
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