japanese comedian superstars

Japanese comedy is often a physical comedy that can sometimes seem a bit childish. When I first came to Japan the HG or Hard Gay era was coming to an end. Hard Gay was a comedian who dressed in a leather gay fetish outfit and went around performing acts of charity (yonaoshi, “social improvement”) for unsuspecting bystanders while performing trademark pelvic thrusts and vocalisations, often accompanied by “Livin’ la Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin. Evan was quite the pro at HG imitations, I have been told. Every single Japanese person knows who he is and almost everyone thought he was hilarious. I have posted an example below.

Now is the era of Kojima Yoshio and OPAPI. OPAPI stands for Ocean Pacific Peace... ask any Japanese person what this is and they have no idea I have got answers from a baseball team to a NPO. Anyhow, Kojima does this trademark move that resembles starting up a chainsaw and dances around in a little speedo while saying "sonna no kankei nee" (What does that matter?) and OPAPI is said to a ballet type move. I realize now that my students were constantly doing the action and saying the phrase but I simply thought they were being idiots like normal. The light clicked on that it was more than simply a stupid kid thing when I went to a Japanese Reggae party (which is really just badly mixed hip hop songs) and the so called rappers were yelling out OPAPI and then everyone in the audience would do the action. Now, I see it everywhere. It is kind of scary how oblivious you can be when you don't understand the language. I really don't find this type of comedy amusing but the Japanese seem to eat it up.
I have added the video below but I can't find one with subtitles, sorry.