Tales from two American actors in Tokyo: Jonathan Sherr and Ananda Jacobs

Meet: Jonathan Sherr, 36, & Ananda Jacobs, 27

Aspiration: To be taken seriously as performers, even if they’re not always serious themselves

Jonathan Sherr and Ananda Jacobs in Aoyama, Tokyo.

English teaching on set

He’s the boyish actor best known for his break out role as Tony in last spring’s big Japanese movie, "My Darling is a Foreigner," based on the popular manga by Saori Oguri. She’s the face of literally hundreds of advertising campaigns, but usually of the wacky and bizarre variety. 

Together, they’re Tom and Jody, English teachers at the fictional school Be Yes! (say it aloud) in “English Teachers,” a web TV series directed by Anthony Gilmore. The show, shot in Nagoya, aspires to be a somewhat sillier version of "The Office" for the no-less cringe-worthy world of English teaching in Japan.

For the stars Sherr and Jacobs, it was more like therapy.

“It was just such a wonderful opportunity to work with other English-speaking actors,” says Sherr, who is fluent in Japanese and managed the whole shoot as well as the ensuing press gauntlet for "My Darling is a Foreigner" in his second language.

Jacobs likewise says working on "English Teachers" was “very refreshing,” adding, “In Japan there is so much over-acting -- on purpose.”

Anything but serious

Sherr was working at a Japanese company selling parking equipment and time clocks, when he turned to improvisation comedy to combat the mounting tedium of his professional life. He joined a workshop with the Tokyo Comedy Store and there he met the actors and entertainers who painted a whole different picture of what life in Tokyo could be.

Within a few years the Iowa native had quit his job and fell headlong into the world of auditions and casting calls. “It was ‘I’m either going to make it or go home,’” he says.

Earnest and unflappably positive, Sherr, who continues to perform with Tokyo Comedy Store, comes across more like the kind of guy who shows up early for an interview (he did) than a born clown. In fact, he developed his career as a narrator and voice actor over eight slow years, holding on to side work like private English teaching and translating as backup.

Though he is poised to indeed make it in Japan, Sherr, now 36 and married with two kids, admits that he is “flying blind with no instruments.”　

Considering that Japanese performers are notoriously tethered to their agencies, it comes as a surprise to learn that the American actor, though signed with an agency specializing in foreign talents, still finds himself calling his own shots. There is no elevator to the top for foreign actors.

The importance of being goofy

In person, the petite Jacobs is delicate but not dainty, with blue eyes so impossibly big that it is hard not to stare. Her self-described “bug eyes and chicken legs” have made her one of the most in-demand Western faces, filling a niche for a certain kind of porcelain doll pretty.

Still the 27-year-old Los Angeles native credits her quick success with a willingness to check her pride at the door.

“I realized that I can act goofy and that [casting directors] liked it. In Japan, the sillier you are at the auditions, the more they like you, at least for commercials.”

Within six months of getting started, she was able to trade in her English teaching job for playing, say, a dancing squirrel in a music video and feeding steaks to an actual lion in dish soap ad.

Like Sherr, Jacobs came to Japan with little intention of pursuing an acting career. “I thought this would just be a fun little detour in my life,” she says. Now that she’s started something here, however, she’s serious about giving it a go.

Filming on the streets of Nagoya.

Taking it to the next level

The question remains how far Sherr and Jacobs can realistically take their ambitions. Sherr landing the part of Tony in "My Darling is a Foreigner" is not so remarkable as the fact that such a plum role -- a lead in a major production -- existed at all for a non-Japanese actor.

Japan’s foreign 'tarento' -- the word for jack-of-all trade media personalities who may or may not have any talent -- have historically been something of a sideshow. Or at best, typecast, as Jacobs often is, playing something like “the bubbly cheerleader type or the little goth girl sulking in the background of a music video.”

“I realize that we are a gimmick still,” says Jacobs, whose plans to pursue graduate studies in cognitive neuroscience were nonetheless sidelined by her success in Tokyo. Yet she is optimistic, encouraged in part by the accomplishments of her “English Teachers” co-star.

“I think people are starting to realize that there are those of who can speak Japanese, who live here. There’s this image of foreigners that we are flown in for something and we leave. The whole point is that we are foreign, that we speak English, and that we don’t live here.”

Never mind that Jacobs still technically doesn’t live here; her entertainer visa needs to be renewed every three months. And she’s been working here for four years.

Sherr, who has been here for 12 years, would also contend that there are more -- and more importantly, better -- parts for foreign actors then when he got started.

“These days it’s not just like ‘here’s the funny foreigner, but here’s a foreigner who’s actually interested in this part of Japan and isn’t that interesting how much they know about it.’ I really think that there are opportunities to be had if you don’t deny yourself the possibility,” he says.