Anyone know anything about stand-up in countries besides the US? One of the things that I love about stand-up is how comedians can talk about serious topics (like politics and religion) and be funny while making you think at the same time. Some of my favorites are Bill Hicks, Greg Giraldo (his roast stuff is good but his stand-up is much better) and George Carlin.

Being Japanese, I've always wanted to find Japanese comedians that are similar to those guys (but talk about issues in Japan) but I haven't really found anyone yet. Kitano Beat Takeshi is about the closest person that I can think of. A lot of Japanese comedians work as duos and they do skits or talk about less controversial subjects. For example, I've never heard a Japanese comedian talk about the Japanese government like Bill Hicks talked about Bush Sr.'s administration. It would be great if someone talked about Japanese b.s. (ex. plenty of things to say about the government) but it seems like no one wants to do it or there isn't a big enough audience for it.

So my question is do you know if other countries have comedians that talk about those kinds of subjects? I'm assuming no for countries heavy on the censorship but there's got to be more places besides the US and the UK or somewhere.