To start things off lets have a look at some commercials. I often hear from friends that Japanese TV commercials are 'crazy weird!' or seriously 'WTF?!'. Seriously peeps, they are no stranger than what we see on the TV back home. One thing lacking is sex. Japanese commercials rarely use the old adage 'Sex sells' (at least on the TV). The result, mind bending randomness that at times makes you look forward to the commercial breaks, and good lord, there are a lot of them on Japanese TV.
First up is Kuraray which the ever knowledgable Wikipedia explains as,
"a Japanese manufacturer of chemicals, fibers and other materials founded in Kurashiki, Okayama, but based in Otemachi, Chiyoda, Tokyo (Ote Center Building) and Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka (Umeda Hankyu Building). As of June 2007, Kuraray was the sole worldwide producer of Vectran liquid crystal polymer (LCP) fibre. Kuraray was founded in 1926."
All this aside this commercial (or CM from here on) makes absolutely no sense to me. What is it's demographic? What does it hope to achieve? or just plain WHAT?! According to Mr A (my long suffering Japanese partner) all the company wants to do with these CMs is to let the public know of it's existence. Fair play, enjoy.
Next up, Japanese/Korean food manufacturer and distributer Lotte tells us all about their new (and rather good) chewing gum, Fit’s.
There are a hell of a lot of these commercials, each with the same song but in a different location. The main stars are Nozomi Sasaki a fashion model from Akita and Takeru Sato an actor famous for his role as the popular children's TV hero The Masked Rider (Kamen raida). In the background of all of these CM's you will also see the 'chubby' comedian Naomi Watanabe who made here TV debut dancing in an amusing way to Beyonce songs. What can I say about these CMs that isn't obvious, they are infectious and fun. The song sticks in your head like, well, something sticky that you just can't get off. A (very) rough translation of the lyrics: "When you chew it it's squishy squishy squishy squishy, when you chew it it's squishy, when you chew it it's soft, Lotte's Fit's!" Learn the dance and impress your (crazy) friends!!
And finally my personal favourite, Dr Takasu and his clinic. Japanese cosmetic surgery 'god' and all round fun random type Dr Takasu introduced himself to the Japanese public with this gem of CM goodness,
Dubai? Helicopters? Recommendations from impressive looking Saudis? That background music?! Serious WTF overload but it worked as Dr Takasu now appears on Japanese 'Variety' shows and social commentary programmes. Recently he has upped the ante with these,
I'm going to leave these untranslated as it adds to the fun. A lot of Japanese CMs are just that, fun, because when you work upwards of 14 hours a day with little to show for it you need these little punctuations of randomness to make you smile.
