NOTE! The Japanese Commercial Archive is now back online! Speed limits and anti-leeching measures are in effect, but here you are. Please enjoy them, and please share them. Understanding Modern Japan through commercials? Yes, I understand it's a strange idea. More than a few people have wondered why I bother saving these commercials, and more still assume, incorrectly, that it's another collection of "Funny Engrish" or "Silly Japanese" video clips. To be honest, I find those kinds of things a little more than a lowest-common-denominator attempt at humor, and to be clear, this is not my intent. If that's what you're looking for, I'm sure Google can recommend some better sites. I believe commercials offer a unique window into a culture. You at once get to see how companies and often entire industries treat their customers. You see how the customers are handled and approached. The differences between North American and Japanese commercials are often significant, sometimes strangely similar, and not infrequently a mix of both. This collection, made over the months of October and November 2002, includes a mix of all kinds of commercials. Products like automobiles, DVD recorders and laundry soap, pachinko makers, video game companies and celphone providers. Some are funny, some are strange, all of them are Japanese. I often think that Japanese commercials are very surreal, and it would appear to my untrained eye that this is due in no small part to the Japanese belief that, as a general rule, direct confrontation should be avoided. Unlike in North America you won't see any "30% better than the leading competition" or "Cleans whiter than Brand X and costs less!" in a Japanese commercial. Without this battery of carefully worded and often misleading data, Japanese commercials are forced to rely solely on visual and emotional impact to sell a product. It's so strange, to my mind. They don't care at ALL whether their commercials are grounded in reality. The sequence of sounds and images are often completely based in artistic fantasy, or use images completely unrelated to the product. One major instant-load company, Takefuji Yen Shop, has a squad of dancing girls doing a routine, with almost no mention of the company, product or services until the very end. Catchy tunes feature very prominantly. Another interesting facet of Japanese commercials, and this may not be so unique to Japan, is that everything tends to run in genres and waves. It sometimes seems as if there are a limited number of commercial types allowed. There are at least four instant-loan companies vying for your attention. At least as many coffee manufacturers, a few soap companies, a few car companies... There's no significant CableTV infrastructure in Japan, and the majority of the TV watching population has the same eight channels, and each of these eight channels tends to run the same ads. It's possibly my imagination, but I get the sense that there really is only a limited number of commercial types to be found in Japan. Without further preamble (and I'm sure there's already been too much) here's the commercials. There are well over a hundred at last count. Where applicable or necessary comments have been added. Sometimes the archive may be down - too bad, I'm sorry, try again another day. The files are about 3-4MB on average, and are recorded in DiVX 4.12 format. Please enjoy! If you have any comments or suggestions, or anything to say except "The archive is down, when will it be up? Can you send me..." please feel free to send them to me. Note to Microsoft Internet Explorer users: You may have to right-click and save these files before playing them. Random Stuff Might as well start off with a bang. Dakara is a really enjoyable beverage that has no North American equivalent. It's similar, if you've ever tried one of them, to Pocari Sweat, Chara, Amino Supli, and CocaCola's Aquarius. The ads feature porcelain cherub-looking things talking and... urinating. This one is odd, but not as odd as last month's where they'd shoot each other's cowboy hat off. Have a look! Clorets believes lovers come in cans. Wonda Coffee used to feature Tiger Woods, but now... Staff Service features a series of amusingly horrible jobs, Staff Service will help place you in a new job. Schick Razors are very popular. This freaky foreigner will make you wonder why. FYI: 'sugee' is casual Japanese for "great!" Kendo Ramen House Breathmints featuring the most annoying couple I've ever laid eyes on. Nissin Noodles with live-action + anime's Ashita no Joe. Goodyear's Ice Navi Neo tires. Featuring a CG hedgehog! Instant Loan Ads Acomu is one of those instant-loan companies. Normally their ads are kind of boring, but this one, featuring aliens, is just... It's something, alright. Their commercials are normally a little more sedate, as you can see here. Aifuru is your "Heart Loan Advisor" and this short story, about an old man and an ugly dog will tell you exactly why. Here is another about one of the girls working for Aifuru. Takefuji Yenshop is the instant-loan company that says surprisingly little beyond "dancing girls in skimpy outfits look good on TV." See what they mean? Promise, another of the ubiquitous instant loan companies, has a real dichotomous nature. Usually their ads feature a cloying couple overacting their way through an annoying script, but this one features a strange claymation animal talking about what I certainly hope is something more closely related to their business than the above Takefuji ad. All their ads close with "Kiroi Kanban Promisu" which means literally "yellow sign promise". It might be best translated as "Yellow sign means Promise". I consider it a warning. Lake is yet another instant-loan company, which used to feature three caucasian girls and their male boss, I assume, rescuing people from suffering the despair running out of cash can cause, as the Lake Angels. Thankfully they're gone, but this bizarre short ad features instead a very, very strange fish-shaped ship coming to the rescue of a man lusting after a new computer. The fish is unable to complete its duty because the woman wins a computer for the man. Good ad, guys, way to go. Random Stuff Kachao car magazine features two breasts for every idiot! HotDog Press normally features young-adult style, and not talking hotdogs. Don't be fooled. Tokyo Disneyland wishes you a 'Merry Happy Christmas' Denta Toothpaste Casio's Exilim digital camera. My wife bought one, but not because of this ad. These are some long, long CG legs. Japanese Flavour in a bag! The Sponge King is a very popular line of sponges. In different sizes! Liquor ads There's no shortage of Liquor ads in Japan, and there's no restriction, apparently, to the type of liquor ads allowed on TV. From Kirin Classic Lager to Kirin's 21 Lemon (featuring an excited duck), to a hallucinating drunkard begging for more Pin Sake. Suntory Draftfeatures a busty lass who apparently loves to run home, get liquored up and watch baseball games out her window. "Chu-hi" is a name given to a fruit cooler type of alcoholic beverage, and "Super Chu" has been running these strange high-speed ads with men dressed as mice as a kind of series. Namashibori Beer has, for some time, been running really boring, poorly filmed ads featuring very little of your standard beer-ad content. This one is their best effort so far. Sad, really. Jinro, I gather, thinks Santa's a lush. Random Stuff Carbonara Corn. Bugle-style snack. This ad runs a hundred times a day. Coke + Harry Potter are both pretty much worldwide phenomena now. Juicy Melon Gum. Pretty much anything melon flavoured can by found in Japan. KFC was the first major US franchise to open in Japan. Kowa's Skin Cream Some sort of Painkiller. I had to ask what body region the picture referred to. Can you figure it out? Super Top Detergent UC Credit Card featuring the popular Kinki Kids. VAAM! supplement drinks, featuring the adorable Naoko Takahashi, who was a marathon winner at the Sydney olympics, and became an instant star. Automobile ads Automobile ads are very little changed from their North American counterparts. Giant internationals are very good at finding exciting and emotionally appealing commercials that transcend borders... Or something. Maybe they're just starved for ideas. Honda's got their CR-V featuring a few different offroad vehicles and a German rock-song as accompaniment. All of Mazda's ads feature a goofy kid whispering "zoom zoom" at the start, as you can see in MPV ad. Strangly, they left the kid out of this weird one featuring the Demio, and a girl who apparently lives with it in her house. Nissan's been successfully remaking their image in Japan, and apparently basketball culture is the key. Maybe it's the extra-cute approach that works, like this March ad, with the winking headlights. Suzuki's swift has the power to calm crying babies, and their Escudo, uh, has something to do with snow. Then there's the Mitsubishi Colt which comes in an astonishing ten colours. Naturally, in Japan, the only colour people will buy is white or silver. Toyota is Japan's car manufacturer of choice, and they put ads in nearly every show. Their ads aren't always good though, despite their practice. Their Alphard minivan ads feature a prominant French actor as "Mr. Alphard" doing what I'm sure are 'wacky gaijin hijinks'. In today's episode he dives for a pearl for a revolting young girl's necklace, then kicks back in his roomy Alphard to watch the spoiled moppet thread it. In the last episode he cheated at chess by sliding a chess piece across the board with a deft turn of the wheel, earning him an "Oh you rascal" look from his lady companion. Their Caldina can apparently drive on the mirror surfaces of the moon! The FunCarGo can apparently hold lots of sheep and manipulate eyebrows, and in this two-part ad, you can see how concerned they are with bad kids' music and the environment, as well as making sure superheroes have a place to change. Random Stuff Kuro Neko Yamato Couerier (Black Cat Yamato) pretty much owns this region of Japan, and possibly the whole country. All other couriers in the world only wish they were half as efficient. Lawson, like 7-11, serves a lot of fresh food in their stores. McDonald's and Disney - Is anywhere safe? McDonald's cheeseburgers - on sale! Meiji cheese Kraft Cheese RuRu A Gold cough medicine, featuring a girl on a roof! Accuview 1-day Contact Lens Renu contact lens wash Gambling I often compare Japan to America as I imagine it was in the 60s. Men are men, women know their place, and everyone gambles, drinks and smokes. There's all kinds of gambling in Japan, but lately there's been a lot more ads popping up from odd gambling establishments like Keirin (Bike Racing) tracks and everyone's favourite Horse Racing. Then of course you've got your Pachinko manufacturers flogging their latest games in expensive looking ice extravaganzas, or the very Japanese pachinko training video from Pachinko Garden. Random NTT Data has something to say, but I don't know what it is. NTT Facilities trains businessmen to sing, or something. The Olympus Camedia digital camera... halls... freaks... Nikon Coolpix digital camera, and a cashback campaign. Yamasa Nabe Sauce. It's just too, too strange. Game Ads You probably won't be surprised to find that Japanese TV sports a lot of game advertisements. Similarly to North American TV the ads are largely for the same few games over and over. PS2 games are the worst for this, currently there's a lot of Ratchet + Clank more than anything else. While that runs for nearly any show, any channel and any timeslot, most other games see niche markets and are on later at night, or shows that might be skewed to a different demographic. Some ads you'll never see on North American TV, like Gallop Racer 6, a horse racing sim. Most of the game ads are a little more mainstream, and include games like Lupin the Third, Breath of Fire V, and Namco's Tales of Destiny. Some of the games look like a lot of fun, it's a real shame they're on a piece of shit console like the PS2. Rygar is one of them, and so is Guilty Gear XX. They're still running ads for PS1 games too, like Dark Chronicle. the Playstation 2 doesn't have all the game ads though. Microsoft's XBox has a lot of spots, but most of their ads are 'emotional' ads, with very little gameplay footage, and a lot of branding. Shin Megami Tensei: Nine is an exception. Nintendo's GameCube also has a presence, probably on par with the XBox ads in terms of quantity, but showing a lot more in-game footage. And a lot more Ichiro, who's some sort of phenomenon here. Mostly Nintendo shows only two games, Biohazard Zero, Zelda + Biohazard Zero or BioHazard Zero + Zelda. And of course you can't escape Pokemon. Random Stuff Lipton Morning Tea Kirin Hot. But hot what? Kobayashi Seiyaku brand drugs. Fear the "delicate zone". Lotte's Almond Chocolate Lotte's Healing Gum. Consumer Electronics There are a lot of ads for consumer electronics, from TVs to computers to MD players, Cellular phones and vacuums and refridgerators... Some are really quirky and odd, like this ad for Fujitsu's FMV line of computers. Subarashi means "Wonderful". The rough script of this ad is "Subarashi!" "Who are you?" "Subarashi!" "babble" "What's subarashi?" "whisper whisper" "Subarashi!" <fade to black> Here's Sotec's Laptop, Sharp's Muramasa Laptop, and the NEC LaVie F Family PC. Tiny PCs are hugely popular here, featuring widescreen LCD displays, fold-up keyboards, no standard parts and zero expandability. Plasma TVs are all the rage here now, you can get a gorgeous screen with more goodies than ToysRUs for about $3500 USD and up. Here's Sony's Wega Plasma and Panasonic's TAO TV and HS2 DVD Recorder . Face it, you're addicted to love. Pioneer's DVD + HD Recorder will record shows while you fly to London! Panasonic's U-Navi in-car navigation system. Doo do do do do roo doo. TuKa's celphone camera features a fear of airports, and some public nakedness. J-Phone's MovieMail makes it easy to talk to people! Or alternatively you can talk to Santa! AU/KDDI's celphones also have movies. Sanyo's Top-opening Dryer Toshiba's Air Conditioner featuring singing kids. Toshiba's Fridge designed for short people (Everyone here except me) National's Vacuums really suck. National's Lights are, uh, bright. Epson really wants you to print out your digital pictures. Epson and Santa appear to disagree on something. "Mada Christmas dayo" is apparantly a line from a famous play or something. Corona's Heater features UltraMan protection. Or something. Japanese houses and apartments aren't insulated, and don't have any heating pre-installed in the building, as a rule. It's very freaky. And where are you going to buy it all? Why, K's Denki of course! Random Stuff Adelance Hair Restore Art Nature Hair Restore Art Nature Hair Restore 2 AGF Coffee Giftpack. Pre-packaged 'gift sets' are widely available here, but we would probably call them sampler packs. The Japanese culture is big on gift-giving, and these commercialized samplers take all the cumbersome thinking out of your life. AGF Maxim Coffee Banana Soft Cookie. It would freak me out. Boss Coffee featuring a J-Pop starlet as santa. Calbee Kappa brand Shrimp-flavoured snack. The weird things working the line are called Kappas, they're a mythical animal parents warn their kids about to keep them out of rivers and ponds. Gusta 10 Stomach Remedy. You'll probably need this after you eat the shrimp chips. Aflac is everywhere. It looks like that really hurts. Windsor Hotels Eyeful Home - you too can own an overpriced off-the-shelf house with no insulation or quality control! Galaxy Angel DVD and the Galaxy Angel Game. Mitsui Sumitomo is one of the country's largest banks, and these two ads feature someone innapropriately talking about the cart. This poor man's golf caddy distracts and laughs while he golfs, and this annoying woman disrupts her aerobics class with an irritating chant. Then there's the interesting physical humor of the falling mom, and an ad for the bank's services featuring goofy lovable dad. Bonus Material Japanese TV is often very strange, but you get used to it when it's all the same kind of overbright over-enthusiastic and noisy brand of strange. Here's a few TV show intros for you. BanBoo Game Break