I'm not familiar with this guy, but I gather that he's a professional funny Japanese guy who makes Internet movies, at least some of them involving various challenges, as in this one. Here, he's ordering pizza over the phone, in English. (I guess they're in the US.) He's accepted a number of missions: order particular pizzas, decline any offers of something to drink, give his address, and so on. A chyron in the corner helpfully tracks his progress.
His English isn't so hot, and he struggles here and there. But through it all, he never loses his smile and go-getter optimism. I won't spoil the thing for you by letting you know whether he successfully completes his tasks, but I'm not sure that's even the point. For me, it's watching him do something most of us find really difficult—trying to communicate in a foreign language you don't have proficiency in—and just plugging away at it. When he doesn't understand what the pizza guy on the other end of the line is asking, he just plows ahead, hoping it'll all work out. And I should say: the pizza guy is very patient, in keeping with my observation that Americans—for all our vaunted xenophobia—are pretty decent when it comes to helping out people who are having a rough time with English.
It reminds me my experience tutoring ESL students at the community college. These people—all adults—came from all over the world. Some of the students had a solid command of English. You could tell right away they weren't native speakers, but they had no trouble holding a conversation in English. Others, even though they might have been living in Seattle for years, needed a lot of practice. But there they were, studying, chatting, plugging away. I had a lot of admiration for them.
This pizza challenge also makes me imagine how I would do ordering over the phone in Korea. It would not be pretty.
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