Last night I was watching TV and stumbled across (well, sat there passively as it flickered on the screen) a rather amusing advertisement for plaque-control toothpaste. Apparently in your mouth, plaque is just a bunch of tiny dudes dressed up in puffy-looking costumes, all hanging out and having a party.
But lo! All is not well in plaque-land. Suddenly, an earthquake rumbles through and everyone panics. The plaque-people all run to the nearest gap between teeth and seatbelt themselves in to ride out the coming storm. What is it? What will happen to these slightly-cute-slightly-scary creatures?
Zoom out to the very cute woman who's about to use the special toothpaste. With the utmost in dramatic skill, she squirts the paste onto her toothbrush and begins her task.
Zoom back inside her mouth. Catastrophe! Mayhem! Morbidity! Puffy plaque-people go flying, their (apparently not UL-approved) seatbelts dissolved like nothing. Hot damn, this toothpaste really works!
Zoom back out to cute lady, grinning cutely despite the genocide she has just enacted.
Naturally I laughed, particularly tickled by the plaque people and their reaction to the coming destruction. I sat there for a moment, warmed by a geniunely entertaining commercial. It's these (far more entertaining than the usual offal that they call programming) that find me turning on the TV on occasion.
But then I realized. Inside the cute Japanese girl's mouth, the plaque-people were all gaijin.
What the hell?
So either gaijin are a tenacious and unsightly growth on the otherwise pristine surface of Japanese society ... or they just make better panic-in-the-face-of-destruction faces. You decide.
UPDATE: I just found the commercial online, you can view it at the LION website. Or just click on this link.
Comments
why can't they make it easy to find the commercial on the website? the direct link you had didn't work for me... :(
Posted by: Nina | October 23, 2006 8:57 PM
veerryy interressstiing........ is that the way many Japanese commercials are? Do Gaijin often take a prominent position? Hmm I think you need to make a more detailed study of this phenom....
Posted by: ma | October 23, 2006 9:44 PM
oh..and vveerryyy cute dudes.
Posted by: ma | October 23, 2006 9:46 PM
why can't they make it easy to find the commercial on the website? the direct link you had didn't work for me... :(
It should work. It might try to come up as a popup or something, in which case it might be blocked. It also takes a little time to load, so you'll have to bear with the black screen for a short time.
Posted by: Justin | October 24, 2006 9:18 AM
Years ago in Tsukuba a bunch of us were sitting around watching the tube and a motor oil commercial came on featuring a gaijin guy who opens up his trench coat to reveal a series of car engine pistons turning inside his chest.
Ward of Wolverhampton (he who gave me the immortal phrase "They don't know they're born") said, in the most appalled voice imaginable, "They simply don't think we're human!"
They don't, really, you know.
(Know they're born, I mean.)
Posted by: Ibadairon | November 10, 2006 10:40 AM