Archive for March, 2010

Japanese yoghurt commercial

Cute kid + Japanese spoken in weird foreign accents = advertising success?

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
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Hugh Jackman drinks Asahi Super Dry

Hugh Jackman is the new face of Asahi Super Dry beer:

In addition to the above commercial, he is also appearing on billboards around Tokyo.
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Narrow Concrete House in Japan

ATV’s Japanese-speaking foreign reporters visit a narrow concrete house:

Apparently 4 people live in the house. Their bedrooms are only big enough to fit the beds themselves, and in the case of the parents, the area under their bed serves as a storage cellar. It’s a bit cramped, but looks pretty nice inside.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
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Whale meat sold at California sushi restaurant

A restaurant in California has been caught serving meat that allegedly came from an endangered species of whale:

Two undercover diners requested whale as part of a $600 “chef’s choice” meal. The women were working with producers of the Oscar-winning documentary, “The Cove,” to videotape the meal.

Court records say they pocketed a sample, and testing confirmed it was Sei whale meat.

An attorney for Typhoon, Gary Lincenberg, says the restaurant accepts responsibility and will agree to pay a fine. If convicted, the company could be fined $200,000.

Yamamoto faces a year in prison and a $100,000 fine, if convicted. His attorney, Mark Byrne, declined to comment.

This case raises many questions. If whale meat is illegal in the United States, how did the restaurant manage to buy some? If one is to assume the meat came from Japan, how did they smuggle it into America? And, perhaps most important of all, if the restaurant went through the trouble of obtaining illegal whale meat, why were they dumb enough to sell it to any person who requested it?

The Japanese chef who prepared the whale meat, Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, is named in just about every article about the whale meat. Oddly enough, none of his bosses at the the Asian restaurant company (Typhoon Restaurants Inc.) that employed him are named. The source of the whale meat remains unknown.

[hat tip to Steve]

Related Link: Here’s a 2-channel thread discussing this news story. Quite a few users are astonished that America has laws banning the sale of any whale meat (including non-endangered whales). Others doubt it would even be possible to smuggle whale meat from Japan into the United States. A couple, perhaps aware of the fact that Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church controls most of the sushi industry in the United States, try to place the blame on that group or on Koreans in general.

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Free sample monitors

Around 60% of Japanese consumers in their 30′s want to try the products before they actually decide to buy them.

Sample Hyakkaten gathers 1000 monitoring women to the event site 6 times a year where the participants get a lot of free samples of over 50 different items that are worth more than 30,000yen. The participants are required to report about the samples in their blogs or by twitter, because these samples are not just giveaway for nothing. Word-of-mouth communication is what’s behind this business model.

Pana home’s “switch house” is a free sample house for those who want to explore how it is like to live in Pana home.
It’s so popular among those who are interested in building a house that they have to wait for a couple of months until they can make a reservation. Especially it’s good to be able to try IH cook top for cooking. Model house tours are not good enough as we cannot imagine how it’s like to live there. IH cooking is not familiar to most of Japanese people who have been using gas for a long time, so it’s a good opportunity to explore it.

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Contributor Bio: Kirin is a Japanese woman spending her life so far somewhere around Tokyo. She now works from home and is also spreading Japanese kawaii culture and etc. through her popular blog, Tokyo Kawaii,etc.
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Toyota CEO appears on Letterman to apologize

Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota, appears on the “Late Show With David Letterman” to comment on the safety of the vehicles his company produces [skip to the 1 minute mark if you don't want to listen to Letterman's intro]:

Also worth watching: Toyoda comments on Letterman’s treatment of Conan O’Brien.

[via JapanSoc]

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