American comedian Conan O’Brien took an unexpected step into the world of international negotiations. After discovering that the Japanese city of Hokuei, in Tottori Prefecture, is also known as “Conan Town” (after anime/manga Detective Conan, whose creator was born in Hokuei), O’Brien devoted a segment of his talk show to detailing the ways Detective Conan is just an imitation of him, such as both of them being men trapped in children’s bodies and having unusual hairstyles. He then demanded three trillion yen (US$27 billion) in indemnities.

However, Hokuei’s mayor, Akio Matsumoto, then issued a statement of his own, telling O’Brien that if he wants justice, he should come visit Conan Town. O’Brien responded by adding additional demands (such as remodeling Hokuei’s Detective Conan statue to look more like the comedian), prompting Matsumoto to tack on supplementary demands of his own: his face on Mount Rushmore, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and 15,000 American hamburgers (one for every resident of Conan Town).

Meeting all of Matsumoto's demands (in a hilarious way), O'Brien then states that he will indeed be going to Japan to collect the three trillion yen owed to him.

Now, considering the logistics involved in a major U.S. television production traveling all the way to Japan, odds are a trip was already in the works for some time, and in researching things for O’Brien to do in the country, Conan Town came up and the weird negotiation is something both sides agreed to from the start. Either way though, O’Brien is headed to Japan.

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