Wednesday 7 January 2009

This took hours. It wasn't worth it. I should've been working.

Not too long ago, a bunch of upper-class, landowning toffs went on a visit to Japan. They didn't go to clinch a business deal or anything, they just fancied a bit of larking about, but they had a lot of money to spend and not a lot of wit to know how to spend it, so they were assigned a tour guide- the inscrutable and dignified Mr. Yakamoto. Unfortunately, despite his great dignity, Mr. Yakamoto was possessed of a stereotypical comedy Japanese accent. "Wercome to Rand of the Lising Sun!", he said upon their first meeting. "This one of the most rovery aleas in legion", he would remark, and so on and so forth. Naturally, the toffs found all of this terrifically amusing. "Oh, Yakamoto-san, you are a cracking wheeze!", they'd say, patronisingly. And then, affecting his comedy accent, "we rove you, Mr. Rakamoko! More rager, prease!".

Of course, Mr. Yakamoto was a proud man. All of this mockery from these inbred brutish foreigners shamed him deeply and he longed for a way to wipe the smiles off their hideously distorted, toothy faces. But how..?

Eventually, he hit upon a plan. It wasn't all that subtle; it basically involved falling out of a plane. Still, subtlety didn't bother Mr. Yakamoto and, one morning, after many weeks of taunting, he put his scheme into practice.

Firstly, Mr. Yakamoto had to get his charges absolutely stinking drunk. This didn't take too much persuading, since they drank like fish anyway, albeit outrageously expensive koi carp with ludicrous tastes. Still, they gulped down the fermented, liquidised swans' wings he offered them with great enthusiasm, and the party were soon headed off to a small airfield outside Kyoto for a spot of skydiving. Next, he explained to them that they wouldn't be needing any parachutes. "In Nippon, gleat shame come to man who use palachute," he said, with a certain amount of dishonesty. "You gleat men flom far away. You not use palachutes. You not want to rook rike sissy-boys!". The crapulous nobs nodded in agreement; they certainly did not want to look like sissy-boys. All except Nigel, Earl of Rutland, who was a little smarter than the others and dimly sensed that something was amiss. "Actually, think I might have to sit this one out, chaps. Feeling a spot of indigestion after those bally swans' wings, by crikey." Naturally, this led to a great deal of amusement for the rest of the gang. "Why, I rather fancy that Nigel's a capon!" they guffawed. At this, Nigel kept his mouth shut, and accepted his humiliation. It was better than joining them in a horrifying death-plunge. Of course, he could've warned them, but he didn't like them much anyway.

Anyway, they arrived at the airfield presently and were bundled out of their posh limo. "Won't we need some sort of orientation session or something?" asked Cyril, eighth Duke of Cheddar. "No orlientation for you! You expert. You show rocars how it's done" replied Mr. Yakamoto as he rushed the group past the training shed and on toward the runway. "Now, you get on prane!" and, with that, they were off.

As the plane disappeared off into the distance, Mr. Yakamoto cackled to himself, relishing the misery to come. "Dashed overreaction to a spot of good-natured bullying if you ask me" said Nigel, as he stood beside him. "You shut Engrish face!" snapped Mr. Yakamoto, "You velly rucky you not on that prane, Niger-san. Your fliends are in for flight of their rives!"

"Sorry, did you say fright or flight? I couldn't tell..."
"Flight! Flight!"
"Eh?" And so on...

Meanwhile, many thousands of feet up, the toffs were preparing for their jump. One by one they hurled themselves from the rattling husk of the aeroplane. St. John St. John, Baronet of Worcester felt a pang or reticence as he stood at the gaping door, staring down at the tiny patchwork below, but, emboldened by his swans' wings and with a rousing "tally-ho!" he soon joined his plummeting friends in their great triumph of bravery over common sense.

On the ground, Mr. Yakamoto was dancing a jig as he watched the pompous twits drop from the plane like Pez from a giant flying Pez dispenser. "Terrible waste of English life, " suggested Nigel. "What you talking about, Engrish scum?" asked Mr. Yakamoto. His hostility was pretty apparent by now. "They not dead, they'rr be fine, just a rittle flightened." "Are you out of your bally mind?" asked Nigel, incredulous. "They'll be pulverised more thoroughly than the last ten foxes I ate. You don't walk away from a botched parachute jump, man. Thousands of Tommy servicemen could tell you that! If they weren't dead."

"Ah, Niger-San, you look but you do not see. I cannot kirr my charges, it would mean death of my caleer, but I can teach them resson! That is arr I do. They'rr be fine, I give my word."

"Well, I'll believe that when I see it," Nigel muttered to himself. Just then, he heard a soft thud in an adjacent field. "That must be the chaps!" he shouted. Ambling at top speed, he steeled himself for a grisly and heartbreaking spectacle. He wondered what he could possibly say to the families. They had so little in this life already...

However, rounding a corner at half-speed, Nigel's reverie was broken by the sight of the tenth Lord of Smethwick hunched over in a cornfield, puking up swans' wings. "Nigel!" he exclaimed. "How the devil are you? Spot of bother with a skydive, don'tcha know. Still, all's well that ends well. Where's that dashed Yakamoto chap? Fear has induced me to issue an apology to him for my rather brusque manner and for mocking his culture. I have shamed my ancestors. And he should hear my Japanese! Complete shambles, I'm sorry to say."

Mr. Yakamoto stepped from behind Nigel and accepted this unusually gracious apology in the circumstances. Beside him, Nigel was stammering incredulously. "But- but-" he stammered, incredulous, "How the deuce did you-? I mean- Mr. Yakamoto, why on Earth weren't they killed?!"

Mr. Yakamoto replied with an enigmatic smile, "because, Niger-San... they landed gentry."

2 comments:

hirekatsu said...

ENCORE ENCORE ENCORE ENCORE

A work of art, a work of art.

An original joke, perfectly crafted.

Cosmic Horse said...

Wow, thanks! Good thing you said something, I've been lurking around waiting for praise on this one for ages! :) You'd think I'd have something better to do...