Cwazy Japanese Commercials

I don’t watch any television in Japan. At least not anymore. It’s an electricity sapper and this laptop does enough of that. As mentioned this week, I can’t understand what is on television dialogue-wise and there is only so much anime and crazy game shows you can watch. Okay, maybe not the game shows. I think I could actually watch those Clockwork Orange style for the rest of my days. I do miss those wacky commercials, though. When I first landed here, back in the days of the great Hotel Takutski, I spent my evenings writing this journal in the hotel lobby consuming many, MANY cups of free coffee or up in the room flipping through Japanese television…mainly for pornography. Something about those chicks in sailor outfits. I then discovered the insanity that is late night Japanese television. Game shows and commercials served for some of the most comedic television for me since Seinfeld went off the air. I’ve written of both. I think the hotel staff must have believed they’d rented a room to a madman as they would pass my room and hear such great spurts of laughter over a corn soup commercial. Hey, I certainly didn’t think corn soup could be so comedic. One really shouldn’t underestimate the comedy potential of corn soup. Japanese commercials are lunacy incarnate but I suppose they look at us and think our advertising is exactly the same. I’ll give them the Cadbury Egg Bunny. That thing still haunts my dreams. Though not always comical, most are always downright weird and though part of that stems from the foreignness of it all I can’t give that reason full points. Singing garbage trucks, eating raw fish off of naked people, maid cafes, cartoon bondage hotel rooms, Rockabillies in 2007, pumpkin Kit-Kats, Cucumber cola, exploding wrestling rings and five million Pokemon? No, sir, Japan can be just plain loony. Don’t believe me? Watch some of these commercials:

Baseballzilla Attacks!!!
Upon my first viewing, second viewing and even my tenth viewing I wasn’t sure quite what they were trying to sell me here. Was this a commercial to promote a Japanese baseball team? Was it going to sell me some sort of pain reliever? Those looked to be the two marks this thing was trying to hit. Baseball and pain…lots and lots of pain. By the end it appears to be selling digital television but my mind is still trying to comprehend what it has just witnessed. Is Japanese baseball this dangerous? Watching this you think Vince McMahon has a hand in the content. When do the chair shots come into play? Oh, wait, there was that guy that got whacked with a bat. Am I the only one who wanted to giant baseball to turn into another giant Japanese monster that would then proceed to ravage Tokyo? Oh no, Baseballzilla!!! This commercial did not succeed in making me want to purchase digital television but it really made me want to go to a Japanese baseball game…with earplugs. I don’t think I could put up with the screaming for long. It’s like trying to listen to a full Yoko Ono album. Is the world ready for EXTREME BASEBALL!!! This commercial thinks so and so do I. Where the XFL failed the EBL will prevail!


Enjoy Your Pizza With Extra Gay
They’ve surrounded him with pretty, young girls in tight, red leather pants but this guy isn’t fooling anybody. There’s gay and then there is I’m so flaming the NYFD doesn’t have enough hoses to put me out. There’s gay and then there is I’m so flaming that the world hasn’t manufactured enough asbestos. This guy is really just using this pizza commercial to come out. Nobody is that happy over a slice of pizza. The Ninja Turtles didn’t even get this worked up over a slice of pizza. I mean, okay, I was really, REALLY happy when stuffed crust pizza came out. Cheese…in the CRUST! It was amazing! All gooey and goopy and clinging to your chin. Now that was a moment where the world should have globally dropped all arms and sang together in world peace. Peace for Pizza, I’d call it. As happy as I was, though, I wasn’t THIS happy. I don’t know if I have ever been THIS happy. Well, maybe when they made the Facts of Life Movie. Nope, this isn’t pizza happiness. This is blazing gay. That said, I decree that large bald gay men dancing in cheese now should be the definition of euphoria…ultimate happiness. This should be the pinnacle of happy. Does question here is does this ad make me want to order me up a slice of LA Pizza. Yeah, I’d say based on this ad I’d order me up some LA Pizza…just, please, errr…no sausage.


Try It! Don’t Be A Chicken Shit!
Did I just see a giant chicken take a chicken shit in an automatic toilet in the presence of a giant Kermit like frog? Hold on while I rewatch. Damned if I didn’t just see a giant chicken making McNuggets while a giant Kermit like frog voyeuristically looked on. If ever you find yourself saying “Now I’ve seen it all” please board a flight to Japan and turn on any television and wait…just wait…eventually this will come on and then you will see the error of your phrase. The chicken and the frog are awfully content by the results. Okay, so their not bald gay pizza happy but pleased at the results, the two flash us an okay sign before, I imagine, leaving the bathroom to partake in even more strange sexual practices only know to frog and chicken. Some things are not meant for the eyes of man. Anybody remember the intro to the old Muppet Show? At one point during the song about four giant monsters come out, do a little dance, and the scene changes. That single moment horrified me as a child. I was sure those things were lurking under my bed or in my closet. Years later I would learn that those sounds in the closet were really coming from my drunk uncle but back then I feared the monsters. Today, as an adult, I fear the giant frog and chicken bursting into my room and forcing me to sit on the toilet for an eternity, wings and flippers beating me until I produced nuggets of my own over and over again, that silly jingle playing until you wanted to shove your face in the bowl and drown yourself. As horrific as that sounds I have to admit the fact that the seat actually raising up for you as you walk towards it is pretty neat. This is the ultimate crapper for people too lazy to raise the seat or lower the seat. I imagine this covers the bulk of the populace. Who wouldn’t want an auto raising and closing seat. This would kill off the popular male toilet seat stereotype in one fatal swoop! You don’t even have to flush! This thing flushes for you. Wait, maybe the monster chicken was telekinetic and is able to control toilets with his mind! Next the duo of frog and chicken will be removing our very souls as they claim the Earth as their own!!!! Ah, whatever…I’ll take two. As an aside, with toilets like this in Japan why do people persist on keeping those squat models around? I’m banking on fear of the chicken, folks.


Drip Girls To The Rescue!
In all my years of video game playing I never once thought about Laura Croft’s, the girls of DOA’s or Chun-Li’s menstrual cycle. Because of this commercial and the sexy video game girls in it now I can say I have. Is it wrong for me to call the video game girls sexy? This is one of my favorite Western contrast commercials to show the clash in culture between the here and the there. Back home tampon and pad commercials are serene and gentle. Women in a field of flowers. Puffy clouds. Soft voices. Here it’s like somebody is taking a rusty chainsaw to your senses. I’ll say one thing for these pads…they make girls real slutty and I’m for such things. I say more women need to battle their menstrual cycle with low cut skirts, provocative dancing and high kicks. Let’s ignore the freaky Fifth Element woman from the beginning and focus on the fact that not only is this a catchy sanitary napkin advertisement but let’s be honest…wouldn’t this would make a pretty good video game. They already have the two main characters. THE DRIP GIRLS! You have to take the Drip Girls on a quest to find…ah, then again, maybe not. How intense do you like your feminine hygiene? The ironic thing is that this very loud commercial is for WHISPER pads.


Please! No! Not The Poor Lemons!
This commercial is supposed to be cute. The Japanese LOVE cute. This is NOT cute. This is horrific! This is nightmare fuel! It’s obvious the poor lemon is being tortured to death by this vile dominatrix! Listen to its screams of pain and tell me that this lemon is happy to have his lifeblood squeezed into a cider and then consumed? Those sounds will never leave me as long as I live. Again, I think of a Yoko Ono album. And the woman! She smiles as she murders this lemon, her eyes bright as she inflicts her torment upon it. She is enjoying it, lusts after it even, the murderous bitch. If somebody were to squeeze her until she popped and then thirstily lap down the remains…why, they would be arrested but lemons…what of their rights? I ask, neigh, I DEMAND you all to write the people of Mitsuya and share your disdain for their blatant torture of lemons. We here at the People for The Ethical Treatment Of Lemons (PETEL) have fought far too long for the plight of this fruit to see such a disregard for their lives. Actually, all this has kinda’ made me thirsty for some lemonade. I’m a disgrace to the uniform. Oh yeah, PETEL has uniforms. My mother made them. Their yellow. The buttons? Lemon shaped.


Nothing Sells Apartments Like Gigantic Raccoon Testicles And Underage Girls Fondling Themselves With Large Breasted Woodland Creatures
Meet Anabukin-chan, the spokes-girl for the Anabuki Construction Company. Meet Anabuki-chan’s friends: bear, rabbit, wolf and deer. Anabukin-chan, very much like Little Red Ridding Hood, is walking through the forest in a red hood. The similarities end there. She’s not heading to grandma’s house. Anabuki-chan is here to sing us a song about the wonders of the Anabuki Construction Company and to help her are her friends. Her, um, large breasted friends. Together they sing: “Okay! Expanding dreams! Service mansion! Expanding hopes! Service mansion! Expanding chests! Expanding, expanding, Wow! Wow! Service mansion!” Together, the girl and the woodland creatures dancing singing of mansions and breasts while touching the upper portions of themselves. Their dance is interrupted by a raccoon with balls the size of, well, that bald gay man from the pizza commercial. This commercial is all kinds of wrong. In fact, it blazes new paths into the woodlands of wrong. Wrong! Wrong! Wrooooooonnnnnnnnnnng! . . .

. . .
. . .

Wrong.

This ad starts out just fine and would have been perfect if the girl had made her way through the woods, found granny lived in a large condo built by Anabuki and together they share the picnic lunch. Quaint and effective. But the folks over at Anabuki don’t think this enough. I want to be part of the ad meeting when somebody proposes large breasted animals as mascots and then ads “And then we have a young girl dancing with them as she rubs her chest”… “Um, Yuka-san, I don’t think we can do this…WITHOUT A RACCOON WITH ENORMOUS BALLS. Booya! Hi-fives!” For obvious reasons, this commercial would never be made back home. I was so creeped out, so weirded out by this commercial that I wasn’t laughing as most folks in the comment section over at YouTube are. How is this selling apartment buildings? I just don’t get the condo/breast connection. This would make more sense, although be no less creepy, if Anabuki constructed breast implants. Time to go wash out my eyes.


This Is Beach, BITCH!
Now this…this right here, folks, this is funny. 14 seconds of unintentional comedic gold! But only because of what you hear due to pronunciation. This commercial is right up there with Engrish in why it is funny. Why use English words to sell, in this case, Okinawa beach, flash them in large font on the screen, when the bulk of your populace isn’t going to understand? As my good friend Mog once said, it’s fashionable and this fashion trend, much like the clothing of the disco era, inspires great comedy. Now he’s saying “This is beach” but it sounds like “This is bitch!”. I’ve watched this one about seven times and it still cracks me up. The shouting of the word of “FISH” does me in but it’s the pelvic thrust that really drives me insa-a-a-a-a-ane. Actually, I’ve read that the man pointing to his nipple says “This is bichku”. Bichku actually means nipple in Japanese. Makes sense. Well, sort of. Still, any way you slice that pie “This is nipple. This is beach” is a strange sand and surf selling combo.


I Will Terminate You…but first…Celebrities endorse all sorts of things in overseas markets. In my short time here I’ve seen Cameron Diaz sell phones, Tommy Lee Jones pimping coffee and Brad Pitt…well, he’s also selling phones. Wait, Bill Murray sold whiskey. Actually, that was fictional. I could probably do an entire post about celebrity endorsements but not today. This is about crazy commercials. Crazy commercials get even crazier when you add crazy celebrities and in strolls the Terminator himself. Mr. I’ll Be Back…Ahnold! This may cause you to do a double take, as it did me. Is that really him? The thing begins leading you to believe that you are watching news footage of a guy that looks like…while, I’ll be damned. It’s the freakin’ terminator and he’s….he’s…a nerd? Comic Schwarzenegger never sat well with me. I feel the same way about comic DeNiro. Arnold goes the comedy route here when really he should have just said a lame catch phrase and then shot everybody in the room. He succeeds when he is not trying to be funny. What’s funny then Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent when he is speaking English? Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent when he’s speaking Japanese! With the power of beer Arnold manages to defeat his foe. This is the way he should have went in Predator. Maybe then Poncho would still be alive. Did anybody catch that this was a beer commercial, by the way? I sure as hell didn’t. I thought we were just watching a news crew following Arnold on a governatorial visit to Japan until he started flying around through the air after his transformation into evil Arnold. Much like most people, alcohol turned him into an asshole. Arnold actually has done a slew of these commercials over here prior to his foray into politics. I wonder if these had leaked back in the States if he’d have been elected. I imagine so. None of these commercials can be worse then Jingle All The Way.


Some Folks Get 15 Minutes of Fame…here is 30 seconds of shame
This one is so perfect because I actually believe, even as I sit here now, that Japan is a figment of Andy Warhol’s imagination.


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The end. Or is it?