Tokyo Comedy Store

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The Tokyo Comedy store is an English-language comedy show held in central Tokyo, which features stand-up comedians and improvised comedy.

The Tokyo Comedy Store was founded in 1994 when an advertisement was placed in "Tokyo Classifieds" by ex-patriot comedian Kevin Burns, calling for performers. The first show was held at the Tokyo American Club and over the years, grew to become a regular show in central Tokyo, performing in Roppongi, Harajuku and Shibuya.^[1] It is currently run by Chris Wells and performances are held at the Crocodile live-house in Shibuya on the forth Friday of every month, attracting audiences of around 100 people, the vast majority being non-Japanese.

The first half of the show is dominated by stand-up comedians and the occasional magician/alternative performer while the second half consists of entirely improvised comedy by "Spontaneous Confusion", the resident improv-troupe. The show usually ends with musical-based improvisation.

At about the same time the Tokyo Comedy Store was first founded, Jun Imai started to instruct improvisation classes to Japanese performers. In 2004, he produced the first Japanese Tokyo Comedy Store shows, which were based entirely on improvised comedy. Known as TCSj (Tokyo Comedy Store Japanese), the show now performs weekly in the same venue as the English version.^[2] Although it features the same type of improvised games as the English show does, it relies more on generating a sense of competition between performers, as "judges" and the audience are invited to vote for the best performer.