Ice Age Generation AD, in the Corner of the TV Screen. #6 'The Black Bento Thief and the First VTR That Was Basically Ignored'
I had come to Tokyo,
and half a year had passed.
I think I only had
one proper day off.
The day of my university graduation ceremony.
I made a round trip to Tohoku that day,
wore a suit,
and received my diploma.
And then, I went straight back to Tokyo the same day.
I couldn't even go to the after-party following the graduation ceremony.
Even on days I was told I had off,
I would get calls from the company.
"Where are you now?"
I couldn't really tell
if I was off or at work anymore.
Location shoots, editing, recordings.
I was doing something all day, every day.
I'd stay at the editing studio,
return to the company,
and go back out on location.
I'd sleep in a chair,
and once I got used to it, I brought in a sleeping bag.
There were times I couldn't go home for about a week.
That was my daily life.
My salary was 150,000 yen.
Taxes and insurance were deducted from that.
Rent was 60,000 yen.
It was pretty tight.
But when I went to editing, location shoots, or recordings,
they provided bento boxes.
For an AD,
that was a huge help.
I would take home the leftover location bentos
and put them in the freezer.
I would eat those at home.
That was the kind of life it was.
For an AD, that was,
practically a 'life-support system'.
Leftover bentos were taken home.
In the freezer,
location bentos kept piling up.
Then, one day.
A producer from another station came
to a recording of a show featuring a big-name comedian.
It was a meeting with the big-name comedian.
That person, too,
was abnormally dark.
It wasn't just a tanning salon level of tan.
It was a darkness like an adult film actor.
It was like a bottle of India ink was walking around.
That dark producer,
for some reason, every time,
would eat our show's bentos.
And two of them, at that.
With different side dishes.
He was probably comparing them.
We ADs,
since our frozen bento supply was decreasing,
called him
'The Bento Thief' behind his back.
At the editing studio back then,
there was a strange rule.
ADs must not sit down.
Once,
I sat on a folding chair in the corner of the editing studio.
Then, a senior AD who looked like a toad,
yelled at me with incredible intensity.
"Who do you think you are, sitting down!"
Apparently, at this company, new ADs aren't allowed to sit down in the editing suite.
I didn't understand the meaning of it at all.
But back then, I just thought, "I guess that's how the TV industry is."
About three months after becoming an AD, around the time one TV season had passed,
Mr. Sakurai called me and the other senior AD over.
"You guys, try making a VTR segment."
I think it was a project introducing unusual dishes.
It was a standard project we had done many times before. This time, the content was about "a bag made from tonkatsu." Normally, the flow would be, "What are they making?" followed by, "Actually, it was a bag made of tonkatsu!" But I tried starting everything in reverse. "Right now, a mysterious bag is a huge trend among gals!"
"And it's a bag made of tonkatsu!" ...Of course, it wasn't a trend. "To uncover the truth, our reporting team headed to a certain tonkatsu shop." What we saw there was, believe it or not, a craftsman making a bag by stitching tonkatsu together. I tried that kind of structure. A VTR has a beginning, development, twist, and conclusion.
But I made it into a structure like conclusion, twist, development, beginning.
Seeing that, the senior ADs said,
"It's completely different."
"I don't get it."
It was quite a harsh review.
To be honest, I thought it was a bit strange myself.
But Mr. Sakurai was the only one who said, while laughing,
"It doesn't fit this project, but this is also a way of making things."
I was a little happy.
Mr. Sakurai was the kind of person who found my strange side interesting.
His face was a lethal weapon, but
his mind was flexible.
TV work was busy.
But,
we also played a lot.
When editing finished in the middle of the night,
my colleague Matsuda (a guy who looked like Tadanobu Asano plus Makita Sports divided by two) and I
would head straight to Shibuya.
There were also days we went to Kabukicho.
The streets of Tokyo
were all fresh to me.
Picking up girls in Shibuya Center-gai.
Picking up girls in Kabukicho.
The success rate was quite low.
In baseball terms,
it was at a level where I could aim for a title in ERA.
We also went to clubs.
Back then,
going to clubs felt a bit like being an adult and was cool.
But,
it didn't suit me at all.
The music was too loud.
I couldn't really tell what anyone was saying.
In the end,
I was just drinking at the edge.
But, there were times when a pickup was miraculously successful.
The day I went out to Kabukicho with a fellow AD.
"Let's try picking someone up today!"I said as I approached them.
I called out to them.
The people I was with weren't Japanese, but a pair of women who said they came from South America.
I think they said they were from Venezuela or somewhere like that.
But we could barely understand each other.
They couldn't speak Japanese. I could barely speak any English.
A conversation in the true sense of the word never really happened.
Even so, for some reason, we drank together at an izakaya,
laughed out loud, toasted, took photos,
and before I knew it, we had spent hours together.
Thinking back on it now, I don't remember what we were talking about at all.
But I remember clearly that it was fun.
I learned something that night.
The most important thing for getting along with people isn't language skills.
It's smiles, a sense of rhythm, and the feeling of wanting to enjoy things together.
Surprisingly, you can manage just fine without words.
Back then,
I would hang out until the middle of the night, and sometimes go straight to work in the morning.
Thinking about it now, I don't really know when I was sleeping.
But my 23-year-old body was surprisingly sturdy.
I feel like the me from back then was desperately enjoying the city of Tokyo while getting scolded every day.
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#7 "The Host-in-Training AD Who Commutes to Kabukicho and Gets Caught by Anti-Social Forces"
TV AD by day, Kabukicho by night.
Host clubs, cabaret clubs, and encounters with anti-social forces.
Days that you wouldn't normally experience had somehow become my "daily life."
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