Open to Change Zima Commercial

A lot of you know that the main reason I can't move back to America is my debilitating addiction to Zima. Well, my illness just got that much radder!



Zima is back in a BIG way! Zima truly is clear magic!

Maybe you think that ad doesn't make sense, but you probably just don't understand how they're making a bunch of new flavors like peach and coconut. You don't get that because they don't explain that at all in the commercial. Also, even if you know that, the commercial has nothing to do with the "open to change" theme.

Just thought I'd point out that the views are in the 30s and this video has been up for over a month. It's about to blow up!

Pepsi Pink Cola

Japanese Food Review #94

I hope this doesn't "ruffle" any feathers, but I'm going to review a drink as if it were a food. No hate mail, please.

One thing I hate about cola is that it's brown and tastes like cola. Luckily, Pepsi in Japan often has limited edition flavors. Perhaps you remember Salty Watermelon Pepsi. It wasn't good.

When I first opened Pepsi Pink, I thought it smelled like a fake fruit punch or something. Then I tasted it, and it had a little bit of a cola flavor mixed in. I didn't know this at the time, but it was released once before in 2011. At that time, the bottle said it was strawberry and milk flavor. I did think it had a faint fake strawberry taste, but I didn't notice any milk flavor.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 4  It wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I'm not a big fan of Pepsi, but this was sort of nice to try one time. It, at least, had an original taste.
Girlbot: 7.5  She almost never drinks soda. Like, she doesn't know if she prefers Pepsi or Coke and can't remember how they taste. Still, she thinks this is slightly better than Pepsi.
Overall: 5.75

Crash Biscuit Cake

Um, pretty sure you meant Crash Cookie Cake, you idiot!

Deoball

This ad is for a deodorant ball. The best part is when the balls shoot out of the Deoball fairy lady's armpit. It's cool that all the women appeared to be on the verge of death and then wanted to show off their armpits at the end. I also like that the containers look exactly like their lip balm containers called Chulip. Chu is the sound a kiss makes in Japanese. Um, check that out I guess:




See? Same shape. I can easily see waking up after a destructive night of drinking and wanting to kiss something my girlfriend (the one who probably really left me last night) has touched to her lips, and then I accidentally make out with her deodorant, get violently ill, and end up in rehab. Or maybe I develop an armpit fetish and mistakenly kiss lip balm. That would be sort of fun, too.

These products are all made by a company called Rohto, by the way. I wanted to show the difference in their marketing to men and women. So that top commercial was girly and colorful. Below is a soap for men that specializes in making you not smell (unlike that soap you use now that doesn't actually clean you).




So women want to be cute fairies and men want to be evil Greek gods or something.

Goteara Pork

The old Goteara Pork ad was about as good as it gets. Every time I walk by sausages in a grocery store that song comes to mind. It took me a long time to come to terms with this, but I guess the new campaign is okay. The song is crap, but it's sufficiently strange. Actually, the whole thing almost seems like a parody of a Japanese commercial.



I like the sound the sausage makes when the kid bites into it. They also made an animated version in case seeing human children with cartoon eyes doesn't make you want to buy stuff. Check it out.

Easter Apple Pie Kit Kat

Japanese Food Review #93

Happy Easter! I hope you all found the traditional Easter pie that a rabbit hid for you!

I don't know why Japanese Kit Kat chose to make an apple pie flavor for Easter, but once you get beyond that, this just makes a lot of sense. On the bottom right it says it's apple pie flavor made with carrot. I'm not sure if that's because bunnies eat carrots or because they got apple pie and carrot cake mixed up. Anyway, the treat is 4.2% apple and 0.3% carrot, so it's a healthy snack. That egg on the top right basically says, "Get a good start with Easter!" On the back it explains that they mean a good start to spring. They know that you are supposed to look for eggs..., so they made some of the Kit Kats say "Lucky Easter". You should look for those. If you find one of them then... you will have found a Kit Kat that says "Lucky Easter".

The flavor was not very good. It didn't taste anything like apple pie. I was expecting some cinnamon or something, but it tasted more like a green apple Jolly Rancher. I guess the wafer sort of adds a pie taste? Also, they wanted it to look like bunny ears so they made the bottom third with white chocolate  flat across the surface. Because of this, you can not break the Kit Kat in half. I literally could not give you a break of that Kit Kat bar. So ironic!

Ratings:
Gaybot: 4
Girlbot: 6  She was surprised by the strong smell, but she also thought it was a good smell. She thinks it would be good with coffee. Also, she notes that she was very hungry when she tried it.
Overall: 5

Happy Easter

Looks like the Japanese are finally adopting the traditional practice of decorating trees with eggs for Easter.

On a side note:

Yeah, so Jesus was born  in the dead of winter. That's why we chop down a tree. Yeah, and he died in the spring sometime, so we decorate eggs, which I believe represent death in all cultures. Got it... wait! What the hell are you doing, Yoshi?! Eggs in a tree? You fool! The dying tree represents birth not rebirth! Plastic grass is rebirth! What...? Of course pink plastic grass is fine! What...? No you can not pleasure yourself after you're finished decorating! What are you thinking?! I have to say, Yoshi, that was a strange question even for you, and I... Yoshi...? Where did you go? Yoshi! You're scaring me, Yoshi... I... Wait..., was there ever a Yoshi... or was I Yoshi all along?

If someone from the New Yorker is reading this, yes, you can publish that story.

Shoe Trouble

I don't want to get too preachy, but I do want the young readers out there to realize that looking at your feet before you leave home in the morning is fairly important. I didn't look at my feet yesterday until after I had completed the fifteen minute walk to the station. It was then that I finally noticed I was wearing one of my normal work shoes and one of my ugliest tennis shoes. It was too late to go back home, and I ended up wearing small, pink slippers at work all day. The slippers were likely designed for women, and they also looked like common bathroom slippers here in Japan.

A lot of people laughed at me and all that jazz. One woman who worked at my son's daycare looked very puzzled and asked what was going on with my shoes. I told her I had simply made a mistake and left it at that. She stared at me for a good five seconds and then said, "American joke?"

Poop Points

These are the directions for a game at the arcade near my home.

1. Put in a token!
          There's a slot for tokens on both the right and left!

2. Push the button to give food!
           Carefully aim for the fish!
                The food drops from the top!

If a hungry fish eats the food, you'll get tokens! (or a token?)
If a fish that's not hungry eats the food, "poop" will come out!

*The poop is saying, "Collect me!"

If you collect poop points, what will happen!?


A couple thoughts:

Obviously I'm willing to spend quite of bit of money to find out what happens when I collect poop points. It could only be something amazing.

It seems like step 2 is a little longer than step 1. Perhaps they could restructure the steps?

I really liked the use of exclamation points here. They really let me understand which sentences I should be excited for.

Momoiro Clover Z vs KISS

I think most of us thought Kiss had reached their pinnacle when they named their arena football team after themselves, but somehow this band just keeps getting better! This time they've hooked up with Momoiro Clover Z to make a couple of "rocking" songs. Also, it's the same song twice. The main difference is that Kiss sings the main part on "Samurai Son". That version will be released on a Kiss CD and not the internet. This is because their biggest fans are mostly autistic 50-year-olds and are much better at CDs than youtube.

Above is the Momocuro version. The cartoon only part stops around the 1:40 mark. After that you can finally see some men in their 60s wearing clown make-up.