Remember spontaneity? Sure you do; it's what made you decide to come to Japan for a few years. And what made you want to have kids. But you could be forgiven for forgetting--after all, the only spontaneous thing that happens in Tokyo these days is a gas attack (the El Toritos kind; the sarin ones were planned).

Now that is changing. Suddenly, Tokyo seems to have more comic performers than L.A. has screenwriters. And the type of comedy they are most often performing is improv.

Improvisational comedy was not, I was disappointed to discover, invented at my junior high when Jamie McCormick got sick and the understudy forgot his lines in the year-end production of Inherit the Wind. The word "improv" comes from the same root that gave us "improvement," meaning "to add on a family room or enclosed patio." As a form of theater, it goes back hundreds of years, before even Bob Hope.

But now that improv has arrived in downtown Tokyo, it's spreading faster than Ebola through a monkey house. Not only can you find ad lib comedy performances going on several times a month, there are improv classes ("No, no, no . . . that's not unrehearsed enough. Do it until you get it right!"), study groups and even showcases for standup comics.

One of the most popular of these groups, The Comedy Store, takes its name from Mitzy Shore's Los Angeles-based club chain--as do comedian Tamayo's shows at Roppongi's Jiyu Gekijo. Tamayo was a semi-regular at the original L.A. club, while the man behind the other Store--and behind the improv group the Stunning Mullets--is Australian Nick Abrahams, aka Nick Target. The day we met, however, he put out his hand:

"Eric Douglas."

"Nice to meet you, Eric," I said, "but I'm looking for Nick."

"No, I'm Nick. I just got off the phone with Eric Douglas--Michael's brother."

"Oh."

"He wants to do his standup routine here, with us, sometime later this year."

Nick was very excited. Unfortunately, this was just before the highly strung Douglas decided to do a different kind of routine on a U.S. airliner and got himself arrested for "misbehaving." I wondered if Abrahams, being a lawyer by day, might indeed be just the man to spring Douglas for a Tokyo show. (Nick: try offering round-trip boat tickets--just a thought.)

Even without big names, however, Abrahams' British Club dates in Ebisu are doing well. After increasing the number of performances to two per month last July, people are still being turned away at the door.

A typical British Club show starts out with several standup comics, each doing five-minute routines. "There are no auditions, really," Abrahams explains. "With some of the standups, I'm seeing them for the first time on stage. The only thing I ask is to try to come up with new acts each appearance."

I wondered how much that really mattered. The first night I visited, Comic #1 stepped up to the microphone, told a joke that would have made Rodney Dangerfield cringe . . . and the audience went wild. All of these people couldn't be relations, could they? The next gag, something about teenage girls meeting, was marginally better but, even so, Comic #1 must have had an irresistible urge to look around to see if, perhaps, Jim Carrey was standing behind him pulling faces and cracking up the crowd. These people were hungry for comedy. After the show, I asked Abrahams what he thought of the audience. "Oh, they've calmed down a bit," he said. "You should have seen them at our first shows." I pictured people somersaulting in the aisles and cheering in tongues.

At some point during the night's standup routines came the "open mike" segment featuring a real amateur. Again, the crowd responded as if they were sitting next to Vito Corleone while young Michael made his comic debut. No wonder everyone in town suddenly wants to get into comedy--with audiences like these, you simply can't lose.

Isn't open mike comedy supposed to be a tad hostile? Years ago, at the Holy City Zoo in San Francisco, there were times when I thought the comic was going to come down off the stage and physically assault the audience if they didn't start laughing. And the odor of a rapidly decomposing comic is simply part of the thrill of watching standup. But at the British Club, the only "heckling" I heard was when one woman in the audience shushed the whispering couple next to her.

The second half of the British Club show was reserved for improv. And--scratch what I said earlier--compared to this, the first half was hostile. I understand the difficulties of improvisation and respect people who can tackle spontaneous assignments, but there was something about it that brought to mind a Disneyland dancers' party where somebody has slipped Prozac into the punch.

It was the total opposite of a confrontational atmosphere: Abrahams and his Stunning Mullets want to get everybody into the act. Normally, this is enough to make me queasy. When performers start asking for volunteers, I get visual flashes of being hauled up and pushed on stage in women's clothing. But according to Abrahams, the practice is to "involve," never to embarrass. "We often give them something very simple to do--call them up on stage and have them make suggestions, or put them in poses."

Improv is definitely Abraham's main love. "It changes your life," he says with conviction. "One of the main rules in improv is that you can't say no . . . you have to deal with everything that comes at you--and that's a liberating experience."

Now, I know people who, in their jobs, are required to deal with everything that comes at them, and I've never heard them use the word "liberating." But perhaps that's where the improv training comes in. You can now learn to liberate yourself at any number of Tokyo classes and workshops. There is even a local version of the famous improvisational show, Theatresports, presided over by Yoko Narahashi of the United Performers Studio. Narahashi is currently offering classes in English and Japanese, though it's not known what the Theatresports(TM) manual has to say about How to Liberate Students Who Are Sucking Air Through Their Teeth.

Also out to improve improv in Tokyo is Michael Naishtut. With his group, Until Further Notice, Michael performs shows at Las Chicas' upstairs lounge almost as regularly as the waiters downstairs stage en-masse walkouts.

Despite its sudden growth, the improv scene here is still about as diverse as a Tennessee Thanksgiving--everyone pretty much knows what everyone else is doing. Naishtut has worked with Narahashi and the Stunning Mullets; Abrahams has appeared in Until Further Notice, and has used his lawyerly skills to help Narahashi register her company name. (Maybe all those people in the audience really are relations.)

Obviously, the same three concerns are of utmost importance to Tokyo's comedy groups: Location, Location, and How to Get the Bar to Give Performers Drinks at Half-Price.

Concerning the former, Abrahams remains happy with the British Club venue. "Now the lighting's in and everything," he beams. While the lighting may be in, the "everything" is still on back-order; the one complaint I've heard is that the British Club just doesn't quite have the nightclub feel that it needs. The chairs are Early Folding Uncomfortable and are packed so tightly you can count the change in the pockets of the people next to you.

Meanwhile, Tamayo's Jiyu Gekijo--which can at least claim the honor of being the starting point for many a Japanese comedian--looks more like a tiny club. But, at present, the only bar facilities it can boast is getting someone to run to the vending machine on the street.

Las Chicas is by far the smallest venue, although its intimacy makes it a little more audience friendly. I expect we'll have to endure a bit more close-quarters discomfort before the major sponsors decide that nightclub comedy is worth supporting. But that's okay--the bigger comedy gets, the less funny it is. Just ask Steve Martin.

To be honest, with the comedy scene just opening up, this is probably the best time and place to hone a few stage skills and see if you've got what it . . . wait a minute, what am I telling you for? Even if Eric gets off with probation, I've still got at least two weeks to come up with an act.