Career
Amao was born in Osaka, Japan, and grew up in Nara. While a student at Osaka City University, he started to learn acting and traditional Japanese dance. His career as an emcee also started while a college student. After graduating from college, Yoshi Amao worked in computer sales for four years while concurrently worked as a radio personality at MBS Radio in Osaka.
Yoshi Amao is well known as the feature host of the highly rated TV series Samurai Sportsman premiered in 2004 on Outdoor Life Network (now known as Versus). On this show, Yoshi is seen trying American traditional outdoor sports, such as bass fishing, duck hunting, axe throwing, off-road biking and rodeo (bareback riding, bull riding, and steer wrestling). At the same time, Yoshi teaches his samurai spirit and sword technique to each of the outdoor experts he worked with. In 2004, Amao was invited as a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on NBC where he discussed samurai philosophy and blew away the audience with his unique sword technique.
In 1999, he started to assist a samurai sword fighting workshop for Rome Kanda, who is host of the Majide game show within a show on the American version of Big in Japan, I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Four years afterward, he started his own samurai sword fighting class and formed a sword fighting performance group, "Samurai Sword Soul," with Bob Kuwayama. Samurai Sword Soul is seen performing around New York, including at the annual cherry blossom festival held at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, where he is the emcee.
Yoshi Amao's other credits include the Budweiser commercial (Wasabi Version), which was selected as "Best Commercial of the Year" in 2000; principal character for the play Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon (Kozue Ookami) at Japan Society in 2005; and main samurai for the Monday Night Football promo on ESPN in 2006.
On April 1, 2009, as an April Fools prank, Yoshi Amao surprised and charmed American audiences by standing in for regular host Jimmy Fallon on Late Night, which succeeded Conan O'Brien's hosting tenure.
Read more about this topic: Yoshi Amao
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)