Friday, August 3, 2012

Yo Duh Lay He Who?

About 50 years ago a young loner in Tokyo discovered yodeling on the radio. The story doesn't end there, though, no matter how badly you may want it to.

He taught himself how to yodel and... Hold on. How do you know when you've got it right? ... Oh well, never mind. Now he could yodel and he started to appear on Japanese television. My mind balks at the thought that those two things are connected.

But our story moves on to Switzerland, where Takeo Ishii performs at a beer hall in Zurich for money. For money! And it wasn't him paying the beer hall for the privilege, either. One thing (yodeling) leads to another (more yodeling) and he gets to be on TV in Europe, culminating in the greatest nickname ever conceived: the "Japanese yodeler."

And now, the sentence that inspired me to write this blog post. I'm just going to quote it directly because there's no way to improve on perfection.

Ishii met his wife Henriette in 1981 and proposed to her three years later at an onsen (hot spring) in Japan, where he yodeled his proposal to her.

That's good stuff.

1 comment:

  1. The guy raising his glass to the camera made me smile with pure joy. Excellent.

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