watashi to tokyo

Tokyo metro manner poster

 

The new Tokyo Metro manners poster for November is a good one. Ha ha ha… good before and after pictures. By the way, my American friend said that he doesn't care if women put on makeup on the train, but I feel that doing makeup in public is wrong because for me, putting on makeup is related to getting dressed, so personally, I wouldn’t do it in public. Maybe many people feel the same, because we had a similar "makeup" poster in May 2008 too. Which of these do you agree with and which seem strange? (I mean which activities seem strange, not which have strange English, he he)

Wow this is the meat towel for meat lovers. The packaging is good too; in the past, we used bamboo leaves to wrap meat (sometimes meat shops still do this).

 

 

The line and dot notebooks ranked among this year's hit items. Japanese people like quad-ruled notebooks very much and I read some funny news about it: an American engineer thought it was crazy when he saw Japanese people using excel as a quad-ruled sheet. For example, he made this great diorama and he used the grids on excel to design it. We usually use excel like this. Is this strange?

Ahhh, what a good idea! I want these origami teabags. Speaking of tea, Gogo no Kocha (afternoon tea) is the most popular bottled tea brand in Japan. I like their double tea leaf milk, which is dark and sweet.

sapporo beer great TV ads

Wow! Memories! I love this series of TV ads. Those guys are staying in a ryokan (a Japanese style hotel) and are wearing ryokan yukata and slippers. They had serious table tennis match. Here are the other ads from the series:

Kingyo Sukui version

Karaoke version

BBQ version

Snow fight

revenge version

mame-shiba

A bean character with the face of a Shiba dog is called Mame-shiba. It was created by Dentsu as a cute new character. Their TV ads are funny: when you eat beans, you accidentally find a mame-shiba and you can eat it because it’s so cute. By the way, we call a factoid or trivia fact a "mame chishiki" (bean knowledge), which explains why the peas offer their little bits of knowledge.

Japan choose the change too?

I know this is just CG, but still it's looks great. It's a TV ad of amusement park Fujikyu Highland park.

MTV iggy picked this amazing post "Kirsten Dunst Proves She Looks Good In Anything". Wow Hollywood actress did that in AKIBA! I think she is cute, but she can choose better costume. That is not good idea.

Japan choose "Change". I don't know what wil change though yet and I couldn't except a lot. This is our new prime minister Hatoyama!. Wow his hair style.....orz. Last picture he wears heart motif shirt! I gues HOPE it's his joke Heart=Hato (sounds same in Japanese). By the way a guy how has gun is ex prime minister Rozen Aso.

Brad Pitt with Sumo wrestler

 

Cute ads of softbank with Brad Pitt and Musashi Maru.

You can't tell my emotion from my face.

This is a TV ad for Saitama prefecture's environmental protection campaign, it is kind of Surrealist.

I read that the first commercial complex dedicated to J-pop in the United States opened on Saturday in Japan Town, San Francisco, drawing a long line of young people crazy about Japanese music, fashion and animation.

Brian sent me this interesting article; Western people can't read the emotion of an Eastern person’s face (I understand this very well, especially since Japanese people try not to show emotions). But this article said that Easterners can't read Westerners’ emotions from their face either. Hmm… really? Even though we see so many Hollywood movies? Now I am wondering if you can read the emotions of Japanese emoticons. Is it hard for you?

Banned TV ads

I enjoyed these “12 Banned and Controversial TV Ads.” I have to say I understand why all of them are banned. I like this one though: "Tidy Up" by IKEA:

In Japan, this famous TV ad for "Siren" (a PS game) was too scary and kids started to cry when they watched it.

It is understandable why those ads were banned. But there are some ads that were banned in Japan for stupid reasons. In a curry rice TV ad, a woman opens a fridge and says "Wow, I found some beef! I bought it before!?" Since beef is very expensive in Japan, people complained that they would not forget having bought beef and would not cook beef so casually. The situation made people uncomfortable and the ad was banned... orz

When Emperor Hirohito’s condition worsened, the part where a guy in a Toyota TV ad asked "Are you doing well?" was replaced with silence. Maybe Toyota thought it was impudent.

Jaleco will survive?

Old but cute cupnoodle TV ads :Cheese Alien

Garlic Alien

Katsuobushi is dried bonito flake. We eat it by Onigiri, topping of Tofu etc,. Since it is very thin, when you put on something hot, katsuobushi flake whiff by steam. This nifty portal Z's post is good. She cut katsuobushi as human shape and put on Okonomiyaki, so katsuobushi people dance on it? no looks like they doing sit-ups!

This Beatles game looks interesting. I heard it'll be rhythm game like PaRappa the Rapper.

Talking about game, if you were gamer, you know a game maker Jaleco? They released Maru's Mission or Ninja JaJaMaru-kun etc,. They have some well known game on Nintendo Family computer. But they don't go well recently and stay in the red for 11 business period. On 2ch, gamer talked Jaleco will go bankrupt sooner or later, on the other hand the president of Jaleco wrote "we won't go bankrupt ass**le! You wanna fight?" on his blog. Like that, we saw such battle between gamer and Jaleco. Funny part is they make it good joke, there is old almost broken building in their official site and when you put cursor on it, it br! eaks more. However a few years ago, they started count down on it and when you touch a staff in building, he said "we were in red such long time, we've done very well". I am not sure what will happen after count down. I guess they will get out of the red finally. We will see it 2 days later, maybe the building will renew.

TV ad of athlete's foot

I can't understand this at all but I can tell that it is a very interesting discovery. "Cicadas Primed for Defense."
Wired Japan has this article: "Fantasy Love Hotels." Ha ha ha! They are such strange places, I feel like they’re for really sick people!?

This is an ad for athlete's foot medication. Their pitch is that athlete's foot is very persistent.

On their official site, you can download the toenail (the toenail will follow your mouse cursor around) and see other strange ads too. Oh, how sick (pun intended!).?Though American people may not laugh, I think that this product is really weird too!?

macho pikachu?

The biggest advertising award in the world is the Cannes Lions Advertiser of the Year Award. I remember when UNIQLO won the Grand Prix last year with this UNIQLO clock ad that was a fusion of dance video routines,time signal music and a clock utility. Another big ad award is the Clio Awards and a Japanese beauty salon won the gold award this year. This is it. What asilly ad...

I take one hour to clean up my house on Saturday morning and cleaning the dust off the floor takes the longest time. I wonder where the dust comes from because nobody is in my house during the day on weekdays. Since I like cleaning, I don't mind doing it though this Panasonic wiping cleaner seems helpful, though the way it moves is a little bit creepy. Fukirotimushi means “wiping worm.”

I watch more than 5 movies in a week. Last night, I saw Kamome shokudo (Kamome diner). It's rare that I watch Japanese movies, but the movie was okay except for the first monologue about a cat. My friends said that I’m similar to the actress Satomi Kobayashi. Not in the face, but in that I have the same kind of funny air about me. Yes, maybe... Actually, I like her comedy "Tenkosei (I Are You, You Am Me On )" the most. Story is about two teenagers, Kazuo and Kazumi, who fall down a long flight of stone steps from a hilltop shrine. While unconscious, their bodies are mysteriously exchanged. Upon regaining their consciousness, they develop affectionate feelings for each other.

This was funny: an interview with the president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata(web translated). He said when he brought Pokemon to the US, American people said that such cute things couldn't be called “monsters,” and they sent Nintendo a sample of muscular monsters and wrote "monsters should be like this." Ha ha ha… That was why some Japanese game characters were changed into such tough guy types.