Joe Rikiichi Brings Back His Pause-and-Punchline Corner After a Year in Radio Episode 110

NIJISANJI — Joe Rikiichi of Nijisanji brought back his “tamete iimashou” corner, a segment of listener-submitted one-line gags that only work with a long pause before the punchline, in the 110th episode of his Sunday noon radio show on Sunday. He said the corner had last run about a year earlier and that it returns at roughly that pace.

The show opened with a story from the week: a capsule-toy machine of pin badges printed with record jackets from a veteran singer’s hits, from which Rikiichi pulled a plain white jacket of a song he knew and liked, and had hoped for another. He then read listener mail for close to an hour. One writer asked him to pick an image color for a father whose family members each have one; Rikiichi suggested pitching navy or orange. Another asked which disliked food he could bring himself to eat if his hands turned into it, and he went through the options, from mini tomatoes to white asparagus. A third asked how to open a call to a clinic one has never visited.

“No extra decoration is needed. Add nothing, take nothing away.” — Joe Rikiichi, on how to open a call to a new clinic

On that call, Rikiichi relayed advice from viewers in chat: say plainly that you are a first-time patient, then state what you want, here a vaccination, and leave the rest to the clinic. A later letter, a follow-up to an earlier question about what a technical artist does in game development, got a longer answer from a reader in the industry, and Rikiichi summed it up as a multi-skilled role in 3D production. Ponzu poured over plain rice, another letter’s subject, ran through the show and turned up again in the last letter.

The corner began shortly before the one-hour mark and ran a little over 75 minutes. Rikiichi read gags such as an apology that dissolves into “I’m Anpanman. Still eating?” and an announcement that a rainy fireworks show would go ahead on willpower, commenting on each. He said the show had run on ponzu and a running “pig gorilla” gag this week. After it came the short-letter corner and more mail, including a kanji quiz whose answer, written with characters for “both”, “stick” and “rice cake”, turned out to be jumbo-mochi, a Kagoshima specialty; chat answered the reveal with a stream of “Jumbo!?” messages. The chat logged more than 15,000 messages over the stream.

Rikiichi said episode 111 would air on Sunday, Nov. 1, and that he had yet to choose the corner for it. He plans a Rikiichi Farm stream around Tuesday the 27th before taking more than ten days off in early November, after which the radio show will pause for two weeks.