Kappa hunting on the set of “Instant Swamp”

Recently the staff of Satoshi Miki’s upcoming film Instant Swamp (Instant Numa), a comedy about an unemployed office worker who takes over her biological father’s shady-looking antique store, have been posting a series of very brief behind the scenes clips on all the major video hosting services on the web with descriptions both in Japanese and English. It all seems to be part of a playful viral advertising campaign featuring Miki himself, Ryo Kase, Kumiko Aso, and the entire crew searching for a kappa.

Incidentally, if you were wondering what “Instant Swamp” means, it’s an obscure reference to an old sketch from a show Miki was involved in back in 2001 called “The Dumbest Show in the Northern Hemisphere”, the follow-up to Fuji TV’s 1990 one-off, “The Dumbest Show in the World”. In a recurring sketch on the program called “Nikko Telephone Shopping”, various comically useless products are presented in a deadpan home shopping TV format, one of which being a styrofoam cup of dehydrated sludge.

Clips after the break!

"Interview with Kumiko Aso and Ryo Kase?"

"Ryo Kase is searching for something..."

"He's looking for kappa... on the set!?"

"Kumiko Aso throws a cucumber into the pond. Is that a kappa...?"

Nikko Telephone Shopping