snl skit: the office...in japanese

I had a lot of people writing in tell me about the Japanese Office spoof on the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Steve Carell. I honestly don't know what to make of it.

Ricky Gervais, star of the original British series, introduces a fake Japanese "true original" version of the hit TV show, where everything is in Japanese, and the office is filled with all sorts of the usual Japanese stereotypes—karaoke, excessive bowing, giggling behind the hands, even a weird commercial break.

If you're familiar with the show, it's basically a re-enactment of the pilot episode, except it's all in Japanese. They're not in yellowface or anything—everybody's based on the characters from the NBC version (pretty dead-on too). Very odd. Even more confounding is Gervais' comment at very the end: "It's funny, because it's racist." All that said, I actually thought it was funny