Year: 2007

Tarako

I someone tells you that making a CM about “A new pasta sauce made with Gaddidae fish rod (“Tarako” in Japanese) for a company called Kewpied Corporation”, would you think that you could became one of the most popular person in the country? That’s exactly what happened some months ago to this two 11 and 13 years old girls.

Note: from now on I will refer to “tarako” as “cod roe” since cod is one of the most common species inside the Gaddidae family.

I was walking around Tokyo streets when I realized that I was whistling an strange song that had came to my mind in a mysterious way. Later the same day, near a pachinko I listened the song I had been whistling a while ago. My curiosity drove me near the pachinko where I saw this in a big screen:

A big WTF! and thousands of questions came to my mind. Is this a CM? What the hell are they selling with this CM? Who are those two girls? WTF are those little read potatoes with a happy face? Some days later I was listening “Tarako, tarako, tarako” everwhere, it was the one of the main converstation themes among my coworkers, it became a BIG nightmare!

I have no idea if Kewpie is selling a lot of pasta with cod roe sauce but the two girls how performed that strange dance in the CM that where totally unknown at the moment they already have two CDs, they are invited to many TV shows and we could say that they are pretty famous in Japan right now.

Did you guessed what are the huge red hats that the girls are wearing in the first video? Those hats are cod roe is tarako! And those little cute things jumping and dancing are also code roe!

This plush is a best seller in Japan. Is a tarako plush know as “tarako kewpie”. At my work place there are five of these including different variations.

That’s real tarako. I find it pretty amazing how they created a mascot and song from this thing.

JapaneseIdols

Maria Ozawa

Maria Ozawa is a 21 years old Hokkaido girl and her “blood” is French-Canadian-Japanese. I think she has the perfect balance of asian-caucasian mix in her face, is just perfect. She was a bikini model and idol but she moved to the AV industry. What do you think, is that bad or good? 😉

During a 2007 interview, Ozawa reported that her interest in the AV industry remains high, and her video cabinet contains nothing but AVs. She makes a good living from the industry, living in a mansion (a high-class apartment) with a US$1,682-per-month rent, and earning a minimum of $8,000 per month. However, while she says that she would quit the industry only if she is forced to do something else, she would try to prevent a friend from beginning work in the AV industry. Ozawa’s family and friends are against her chosen profession in spite of her apparent pride in her work. When she brought several of her videos home to show her parents, they refused to watch them and told her to get out. Read more

Tango

Funny

Bicycle bells

When I first came to Japan one of the most annoying things I found was that while walking on the streets I had to evade bicycles. Yes!, bicycles in Japan can ride in the sidewalks. Then I got a bike and did the same as them, go by the sidewalks and ring the bell when too many people was blocking my way. It works really well, you ring the bell and they just move to one side automatically.

At his video you can see a smart guy that is walking and using a bike bell when the sidewalk is too crowded.