#8 幻の申請動画と無敵の「知らない男」とガチPDF

YouTube Monetization: The Story Behind the "Quasi-Apology Video"

Gongourdo's YouTube channel has finally been monetized — but it was not a straightforward process. The channel had long averaged around 300,000 views per video and had already satisfied every required threshold for watch time and video count, yet the monetization application kept coming back rejected. Manager Ōnishi (大西) spiraled into such a panic that he began seriously entertaining the idea that a past comment by Sakamoto — involving a "shoplifting suspicion" — was the hidden cause of every failed review.

The solution they landed on was unconventional: film a dedicated "application video," an unlisted clip submitted privately to Google that explained what the channel was actually about. Reading from a script, they delivered lines like "This content is completely original material that we produce ourselves" — which, in tone and posture, felt indistinguishable from a formal apology video. Ōnishi, a man who had shown no sign of nerves across more than a decade of working together, visibly tensed up in front of the camera for the very first time. Sakamoto, watching him, had to fight to keep from laughing. The strategy worked: monetization was approved, and studio recording could continue. "If it hadn't gone through," Sakamoto admitted, "there was a real chance I'd have been stuck setting up mics in some conference room you hate."

This Week's Hamamatsu News: A 15-Year-Old at 57 kg Passes the Sumo New-Recruit Exam

The hosts brought up news from their shared hometown of Hamamatsu: Shindo-san (新道さん), 15 years old, 165 cm, 57 kg, passed the new-recruit athletic examination for the autumn basho. Getting through at 50-something kilograms is considered extremely rare.

Shindo had started Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts in his sixth year of elementary school, always self-conscious about his small frame. In June of this year, weighing just 48 kg, he joined a sumo stable and immediately began the eating regimen that comes with it — including the stable's signature okonomiyaki — consuming more than 2 kg of food per meal. In three months he added 9 kg to reach 57 kg. In his first competitive bout, he was defeated in three minutes by a 188 cm, 165 kg wrestler. The image of him hurling himself at someone nearly three times his own body weight left both hosts visibly moved. "That looks genuinely brutal," they said. "We want to root for him."

Going Invincible as the "I Don't Know Man" — A Tom Brown Solo Live Experience

Sakamoto had been working backstage on Tom Brown's regional solo tour when, on the day of the Shibuya, Tokyo show, a senior comedian pulled him aside and issued a sudden mission. He was to take two morning glories, roam the venue lobby, and answer "I don't know" to anyone who asked the name of the flowers. The orders were firm: "Don't break character. Do this seriously for a full hour." The bit doubled as a play on the live's title — "Boku wa Boku no Yokogao wo Shiranai" ("I Don't Know My Own Profile").

Sakamoto showed up dressed in a staff T-shirt with nipple covers — an outfit calibrated to look just slightly wrong — and began cautiously, worried that the bit might come across as rude. But repetition deepened his commitment. Somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the crowd picked up on the joke and laughed. He held the line even when a couple came to him in genuine need: "How do we get to the second-floor seats?" — "I don't know."

Then Tokyo Hoteison's Takeru (タケル) walked in wearing a hat, mask, and earphones. He spotted Sakamoto and leaned in: "Sakamoto-san! Long time no see!" By this point Sakamoto was fully inside the role. "I don't know," he replied. Takeru removed his hat, pulled down his mask, took out his earphones, and pointed at his own face. "It's Takeru — Takeru." Sakamoto held firm: "I don't know." Takeru turned and walked sadly into the venue.

Snapping Out of It with the Grandmother — The Horror of "Senno"

The streak finally broke when a colorfully dressed elderly woman using a cane arrived alone, cutting it close to showtime. "How do I get to the second-floor seats?" she asked. Sakamoto started to say "I don't know" — and caught himself. "I can't say that to someone who's actually in trouble," he realized, and answered properly: "Up these stairs — there's also an elevator."

The whole experience unsettled him. He reflected that a person acting under someone else's instructions will "go as far as they'll go" — that he had drifted into a state of complete immersion without ever noticing, to the point of brushing off a fellow comedian he'd known for years. He described it as senno (専能) — a kind of instruction-driven, almost hypnotic absorption — and said the moment he recognized how total it had been, "I genuinely scared myself."