"Hello. Welcome to Hotel Nakamura. May I help you?" |
iGo to Japan is the fifth through seventh episode of the second season of iCarly and the 30th-32nd episode overall.
Plot
The iCarly team is nominated for the iWeb Awards and are invited by vice chairman Theodore Wilkins to attend the in Tokyo, Japan, where in order to qualify for the award, they will be expected to perform a skit live on stage. Prior to their trip to Japan, they create a sketch called Melanie Higgles: Space Cheerleader. They receive three first-class tickets. Mrs. Benson initially refuses to allow Freddie to go on the trip, even after Spencer volunteers to chaperone the kids; she agrees, instead, to come along, despite Sam's initial objections. Since they don't have enough airline tickets for five people Spencer gets the idea to trade the three first-class tickets for five lower classed ones. However, he subsequently calls in a favor from Socko which results in the team riding to Japan aboard an unsanitary, possum-filled cargo airplane bound for Korea, flown by Socko's friend, Freight Dog. After a rough ride, the group are forced to skydive into Tokyo. They end up landing in a deserted area, but fortunately, a Japanese policeman finds them and brings them safely to Hotel Nakamura, where they would be staying. After checking in and sleeping off of their jet lag, they are visited by Kyoko and Yuki, the stars of a competing webshow. They give Spencer and Mrs. Benson free passes for traditional Japanese seaweed massages at Nakamura Spa, and take Carly, Sam, and Freddie shopping before the iWeb Awards.
As generous as their gestures seem, Kyoko and Yuki have their minds set on sabotaging iCarly's chances of winning the iWeb Awards. They purposely fight over and over again in Japanese until Yuki "admits" they are lost. They stop in the middle of nowhere and get out of the car, staging a kung-fu fight, until Sam breaks it off. The siblings apologize for ruining their trip, and offer to give them a gift in their van, but they drive away after claiming to get the gift from their car. Meanwhile, Spencer and Mrs. Benson find themselves bound to their massage tables by seaweed, naked. Spencer manages to eat his way out, but Mrs. Benson is unable to due to her short neck and Spencer is too full to do it himself. He manages to get a sword on the wall to cut Mrs. Benson out, and they put towels on since the masseuses took their clothes. When a man unlocks the door to the room they are in, they run back to the hotel room to get dressed and find the iCarly gang.
Eventually, they all reunite and are able to get to the iWeb Awards, only to be prevented from entering the studio because the security guards only speak Japanese. Mrs. Benson distracts the guards and they get in, only to be quickly apprehended. The guards keep them to the utility room, and Carly and Sam attempt to communicate with them by acting out everything that happened to them during their trip. Freddie cleverly decides to videotape them, plugging his camcorder into the iWeb Awards screen. Unbeknownst to the girls, their manic performance is being broadcast to the audience, overshadowing Kyoko and Yuki's performance. Luckily, Mr, Wilkins shows up and since he speaks English and Japanese, explains to the Japanese security guards why iCarly are supposed to be there and brings them to the stage.
iCarly wins the award for best comedy, though Carly and Sam have no idea how they won until Freddie explains what he did. After Kyoko and Yuki’s evil plot is revealed, the siblings are arrested for kidnapping and abandonment. Finally, the iCarly gang along with Spencer and Mrs. Benson return to America on a large fishing boat owned by one of Socko's family members, since they refused to go on Freight Dog's plane again. When they ask if there is any food on the boat, Spencer tells them he brought back a bag of Japanese candy, forgetting it was soap, and gives them all some. They all cough and gag in disgust as the movie ends.
Guest Stars
- Jeremy Rowley as Lewbert Sline[2]
- Mary Scheer as Marissa Benson[2]
- Ally Maki as Kyoko[2]
- Harry Shum Jr. as Yuki[2]
- Jonathan Mangum as Henri P'Twa[2]
- Don Stark as Freight Dog[2]
- Eliane Mani Lee as Hotel Clerk[2]
- Michael Butler Murray as Mr. Wilkins[2]
- Lauren Shiohama as herself
- Good Charlotte as themselves
Trivia
- This movie was made available to watch on Nickelodeon on Demand for Comcast customers in October, a month before the premiere on Nickelodeon.
- If one counts this as three separate episodes, it is the first time more than one episode is based on the same plot.
- This is the first iCarly television movie. It began production in Spring 2008 and was released November 8, 2008.
- This is the first iCarly episode to display the episode's title in the beginning.
- One of the pictures on the security guard's message sign has Dan Schneider's Head of the Class character, Dennis Blunden.
- An instrumental version of the Leave It All To Me, iCarly theme song, plays after iCarly wins the iWeb Award for best comedy.
- Henri P'Twa and Oompe might have inspired Robbie Shapiro and Rex Powers in Dan Schneider's next show, Victorious.
- Only the opening of this episode has an iCarly webcast. This makes parts 2 and 3 of the multi-part edit of this episode one of the few episodes to not have an iCarly webcast.
- The iWeb awards host shares the same name as one of the dancers in the Drake & Josh episode "Dance Contest."
- The scenes where they land after parachuting and when Kyoko and Yuki are driving the iCarly gang were filmed through the usage of chroma key. Flickering outlines are visible when the actors move.
- In Part 2, Yuki does the Akanbe, which is a Japanese rude gesture and is done by stretching the eye to reveal the red part underneath.
- Though this was the 1st episode filmed for Season 2, it was the 5th aired. Freddie has his deep voice, which was mentioned in the first episode to air for the season, "iSaw Him First", but not here.
- Most of the background music in this episode is the regular background music redone to sound like traditional Japanese music.
- The deserted road where Kyoko and Yuki abandon Carly, Sam, and Freddie is the exact same set from the Drake & Josh episode, "The Wedding".
- The announcer of the iWeb Awards is Dan Schneider.
- During an interview with Miranda and Jerry, they reveal they never actually went to Japan for the filming. Every single scene was filmed at Nickelodeon On Sunset studios.
- A clip of Lisa Lillien (Dan Schneider's wife, as well as Hungry Girl) at the iWeb Awards was later seen in "Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh", which happened to air less than a month after this episode.
- This is the first episode to be 74 minutes long, making it, at its time of airing, the longest iCarly episode ever. The extended version of iParty With Victorious beat the record at 120 minutes.
- When Spencer tries to speak Japanese to the security guards, the American closed captioning says "With all your pants!"
- The Japanese words said by the iCarly crew aren't actually Japanese, with the exceptions of when Spencer says, 'Arigato', which is Japanese for 'Thank you', and when Kyoko and Yuki called each other "baka", which is Japanese for 'idiot'. At one point, Spencer says "omaeda", which translates to "you guys."
- The iWeb award makes a cameo in the subway lost and found in the Game Shakers episode "Lost Jacket, Falling Pigeons", along with other iCarly props, like Freddie's camera and Sam's remote.
- The Japanese characters are portrayed by Japanese-American actors that do not actually speak Japanese.
Allusions
- Melanie Higgles yells "What's up, what's up, what's up!?" This is a reference to the pilot episode of Dan Schneider's first Nickelodeon series, Kenan & Kel, where they imagine themselves in a new car yelling the same exact phrase.
- The names Kyoko and Yuki are possibly a reference to the characters Kyoko Honda and Yuki Sohma from the anime series Fruits Basket.
- The gift basket Kyoko and Yuki give has a big red Yoshi from the Mario series. This is not surprising, since Nintendo headquarters is in Japan.
Character Revelations
- It is revealed that Freddie's mom had a GPS locator chip placed in his head when he was a child by a questionable Venezuelan doctor. Many fans have speculated that this is why he speaks random Spanish.
- It is revealed that Spencer took a year of Japanese in college.
- Marissa has a fear of heights but seems to overcome it when she jumps out of the plane, after Freddie.
Goofs
- Before the opening sequence, Carly pushes Freddie on the swing as Sam heads downstairs. However, after the opening sequence, Sam comes downstairs with Carly and Freddie when she should have already been downstairs.
- After everyone jumps out of the plane, Freddie's backpack is red. However, later in the film, Mrs. Benson finds Freddie's backpack and it is blue.
- Freddie's red backpack might be a special one for his camera and the blue one might be the one with everything else he needs.
- The area where the iCarly team land is shown to be in an area that is devoid of just about everything, without any visible water their suitcases could sink in (as they later claim).
- Spencer turns off the Swedish translator when he talks to Socko, but when he starts talking to her again without turning her back on, she turns on by herself and shocks him.
- The plane was still moving when Freddie was pushed out and everyone else jumped, so they would have landed in different positions.
- Also, their luggage lands on them after they all land, but it was not tossed out when they jumped, so it should have landed farther away from them.
- Kyoko and Yuki leave the stage to complain about iCarly's interruption to Theodore Wilkins. When it cuts to the main stage before Carly and Sam finish their story, Kyoko and Yuki are back onstage.
- Carly, Sam, and Freddie believed Kyoko and Yuki when they said they didn't have cell phones with them, but they should have heard Yuki's phone vibrate when their cousins texted him. They also believed them when they said they had a gift for them in their car, but it is very unlikely that they would have a gift on hand at that exact moment.
- Kyoko and Yuki's steering wheel on their car should be on the right side of the car, not on the left, since they are in Japan. Japan, Australia, UK, and other countries have their steering wheels on the right side of the car. However, left-hand-drive imports are common in Japan, as seen in the cramped Fiat 500 taxi that Spencer and Mrs. Benson hailed to find the kids. In this case of Kyoko and Yuki, it's unlikely that the car would be imported or shipped back to the States. It's a second-generation Scion xB, built in Japan, but only sold in North America (as a Scion, at least. In fact, the Scion marque as a whole is only sold in the United States and Canada). It's unlikely that the vehicle would be imported back to Japan (or somehow intercepted before being shipped to North America in the first place) because it's already sold in that market as the Toyota Corolla Rumion.
- Seaweed is especially crackly and easily ripped, even without much effort.
- Mrs. Benson says that they'll need a voltage converter, but in Japan, they use 100V AC power. That's only a minor difference from the 110-120V used in North America, which isn't enough to affect most devices. Mrs. Benson's misconception probably came from the fact that the vast majority of the world outside of North America uses 200-240V power. Japan in this case is a notable exception, it even uses the same type of plugs. This is why many Japanese electronics (for example, the Nintendo DS) have AC adapters or chargers with writing in both Japanese and English on them: exactly the same units are used for both markets.
- When Kyoko and Yuki pull the car over, it's on the right side of the road. Japan drives on the left. As well, the road sign indicating a 30 km/h speed limit is also on the right side of the road when it should be either on the left side of the road or facing in the opposite direction.
- A lot of the signs on the stores in Tokyo are in English when most probably would have been in Japanese.
- All of the Japanese people that talk, with the exception of the security guards, speak English and some Japanese. They also have poor accents and don't actually pronounce Japanese words correctly.
- When Spencer tries to speak Japanese to the security guards, the American closed captioning says "With all your pants!" instead of saying "(speaking Japanese)", and when Kyoko and Yuki leave the stage, the closed captioning says "(speaking Japanese)" but they are speaking English.
- The videos by Henri P'Twa and Kyoko & Yuki are both in English, when they most likely would have been in French and Japanese, respectively.
- Spencer loses the tracker Mrs. Benson had. However, in iMove Out, Mrs. Benson remembered she could use the chip to locate Freddie, so she must’ve either got it back or had a spare at home.
- When they first arrive to the hotel room, Spencer goes to the bathroom to take his "first pee in a foreign country", and Carly even tells him "have fun". However, less than a minute later, Carly wasn't sure where Spencer went.
- She probably didn't see him in the bathroom from where she was standing.
- The robe Mrs. Benson is wearing and shows Freddie is a kimono. Hotels in Japan, however, do not give out kimonos, as they are for traditional purposes.
- It's possible it was a robe that looked like a kimono.
- Spencer gets full from eating the seaweed and cannot eat Mrs. Benson's seaweed, but in order to bite his way out of the seaweed, he did not need to swallow it.
- The sign the security guard held up said "I do not speak Spanish", however, the sign should say "No hablo español." The same goes for the sign that said, "I do not speak French", which should have said "Je ne parle pas français".
- In fact, security guards for international events are almost always required to speak English, and often even Spanish and French as well, as they are spoken in a substantial amount of countries and are major business languages.
- When the security guards are laughing at Spencer's false Japanese, the one security guard's message sign showed the picture of the green bra, but the next shot shows the picture of the jack rabbit without enough time for him to flip the sign.
- When Spencer and Mrs. Benson are searching for the kids, their red Fiat 500 is on a paved road. When they spot the iCarly gang, they are on an unpaved road.
- If the luggage was thrown off the plane with no parachutes, the equipment would have been damaged from the fall.
- When Carly and the gang get tricked, Freddie gets a visible black eye. Later on, in the iWeb awards, Freddie's black eye disappears.
- During the Space Cheerleader bit on the iCarly web show, Sam throws her pom-poms down twice before her and Carly start hitting each other with their sticks.
- If Carly, Sam, Freddie, Spencer, and Marissa are all in the room next to the control booth (where the controllers are clearly seen in the room next to them speaking English), they could've knocked on the window of the control booth and told them who they were so they could get on stage faster.
- It is unknown how Kyoko and Yuki knew what hotel and room number that the iCarly crew was staying at, because hotels are not allowed to give out such information.
- They may have asked Theodore Wilkins or another authority figure of the iWeb Awards for information on the iCarly crew's hotel room, explaining how they wanted to introduce themselves as fellow contestants and bring gifts.
- Tokyo is the largest city in the world, and as such, it would be unlikely for Kyoko and Yuki to desert Carly, Freddie and Sam in the wilderness so easily.
- Part of the made-up Japanese used in Kyoko and Yuki's argument sounds like a real Japanese-language slur.
Running Gags
- Spencer thinking the mini soap blocks are Japanese candy.
- The ventriloquist complaining about his "poopet."
- Mrs. Benson getting hit by falling objects from the cargo plane and collapsing. Then Freddie rushing to her aide to see if she is okay.
- Someone (Sam and Spencer) causing the ventriloquist to chase after Oompe.
- Spencer repeatedly getting shocked by the shock collar.
Series Continuity
- The iWeb award trophy appears on a shelf in the iCarly studio and is easily visible for the rest of the series, similar to the hammer in the wall from IWanna Stay With Spencer that remains as part of the decor.
- This episode marks the first appearance of Fat Cakes.
- Freddie gets caught looking out the peephole of his apartment door, waiting for Carly to come home. This is a reference to iPilot, when he ran out to pick up Carly's water bottle almost as soon as she arrived. Neither episode explained why Freddie would think Carly would necessarily take the main elevator to her floor, rather than take the freight elevator directly into her apartment.
- This episode is indirectly mentioned in the revival episode I'M Wild and Crazy, when Carly, Freddie, Spencer, Harper and Millicent are playing Never Have I Ever and skydiving is mentioned. Spencer says he has never been skydiving, but he did skydive into Japan in this episode. However, while that is considered a goof, Spencer might have forgotten the events of this episode.
Quotes
Sam: You sure you don't mind if I hang at your place 'til dinner? |
Sam: Hey, you think Freddie's home from school yet? |
Sam: Carly, when Mrs. Briggs told us we couldn't pick the kids to be in the talent show, did you give up? |
[Spencer paces around his apartment living room a few times before turning his Japanese learning machine on] |
Carly: [as Melanie Higgles] No way! Get outer my space! Oh yeah! |
Freddie: My mom is a nutcase! |
Mrs. Benson: [Holding up a syringe] Just one last shot, Freddie! Come across the hall and I'll give it to you at home. |
Mrs. Benson: I am not going to do my business in this bucket! I'm a lady. |
Freddie: Are you cold? |
Sam: [holding a possum] Hey! Look at me with the possum! |
Freddie: Guys, there's no way my mom's jumping out of this airplane! |
[Sam checks the suitcase for her Fat Cakes after it fallen out of the plane] |
Spencer: I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't found us. |
Receptionist: Hello. Welcome to Hotel Nakamura. May I help you? |
[Spencer and Mrs. Benson enter the hotel with towels on. Spencer sees the real Japanese learning wizard.] |
[Spencer and Mrs. Benson run up to the lobby desk where Henri P'Twa is talking to the clerk] |
[after acting out their whole journey] |
[On the fishing boat back to Seattle] |
Related iCarly.com Blog Posts
- Sam's blog: The Highlight of My Trip!
Reception
Gallery
See photos of iGo to Japan here.
|