Cream Stew (comedy duo)

Cream Stew (くりぃむしちゅー) is the name of a Japanese comedy kombi consisting of two comedians, Shinya Ueda (上田晋也) and Teppei Arita (有田哲平). Originally from Kumamoto city, the pair first met in high school when Arita and Ueda found a common interest in pro wrestling. Both of them attended Waseda and Rikkyo Universities, but dropped out to pursue comedy.[1]

More than 15 years later, Ueda and Arita are popular personalities on Japanese television, and can be seen performing daily, often on multiple shows in one day, sometimes on different channels simultaneously.

As with many Japanese kombi, one of the comedians is referred to as the boke, and the other the tsukkomi. As the boke, Arita is loud and prone to strange comments, while Ueda (sometimes called tempa, see note) is the more reasonable of the two, often criticizing Arita's remarks while setting up further jokes and often providing Arita with a one-man audience (even when nobody else is laughing). Ueda also distinguishes himself from most tsukkomi as the king of unchiku (うんちく), or the ability to lecture on about something that the speaker's audience really has no interest in whatsoever.