SMAP’s Kimu-Taku Tries His English on Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle appeared on the annual Red and White Song Battle providing SMAP’s Takuya Kimura a chance to whip out some of the English language skills he and his wife, Shizuka Kudo have been working on.

I provide the link below for as long as it lasts on YouTube so you can see it go down…

Look for it about 1 minute and 20 seconds in:

Yeah, he spoke English and Susan Boyle went right for the interpreter to figure out what he was trying to say.

Actually his pronunciation doesn’t sound that bad. She may have understood him better if he had spoken a little more clearly and not taken her off-guard. (Naturally with an interpreter on duty next to her she would be expecting the interpreter to be used.)

I actually like SMAP, and feel they add something positive to Japanese pop culture, but I don’t like the attempt to create an unreal mythology around Kimu-Taku… that he’s fluent English, stories put out by his agency about how Beyonce was flirting with him while filming a commercial, the platform shoes and camera tricks during press conferences with other performers, and the show they made once at a Native American reservation at which he was declared a spiritual chief and member of the tribe. That was a weird show, and I believe there was an interpreter there who was kept off-camera so as not to destroy the image of him as bilingual.