Japander

A Japander is an American or European celebrity who goes to Japan in order to shill products on cheesy commercials. Like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, being paid a million dollars to spend a few days in Japan and talk up Santori whiskey. "For relaxing times...make it Santori time."

Well, in that Salon article this morning about Arnold Schwartzenegger, which I discussed here, they had a link to this fantastic website, Japander, that contains many Japanese advertisements starring your favorite celebrities. Well, probably not your favorite celebrities, but Ashley Judd, Brad Renfro and Mariah Carey.

And Harrison Ford. He's represented Kirin Beer in Japan since the mid 90's. Here's a photo of Harrison enjoying a Kirin while relaxing in a robe with a Japanese guy in oversized glasses.



He does look refreshed, you've got to give him that. Yes, sir, nothing beats a nice, room temperature beer when you're in some sort of a cramped Asian sauna.

And, a bit of trivia for you guys, that gentleman to Harrison's right? That's the guy who plays Chewbacca out of the costume. Honest!

Harrison's ad campaign is actually one of the most dignified and classy. He's just a guy, hanging out, drinking some beer, usually in a business type setting. I guess that's how they see him over here, which is lucky for Harry, because over here, we still tend to see him as a guy in a vest shooting laser beams at aliens and robots.

Check out this far more bizarre capture from a lemonade ad featuring The Simpsons:



See, the joke in this ad is that both Homer and Bart are in the kitchen, naked, enjoying some CC Lemon brand lemonade. And then Marge comes in and sees that they're naked. And they both laugh. And then the yellow lemonade bottles seem to cover up their, well, nude yellow members.

This is disturbing for a number of reasons. Though the show has, at various times, toyed around with the concept of animated nudity, featuring Homer's naked rear end just about every week at this point, it's never come right out and given the characters substitute genitals. And why would Bart and Homer be naked in the kitchen in the middle of the day, drinking lemonade? And why is it funny? I can't understand the dialogue in the ad, of course, as I'm not yet fully versed in Japanese. If only it were in Urdu! But I can't imagine any possible words they could be saying would adequately explain their lack of clothes.

But the most troubling ad of all is actually a series of ads for Japanese gas company Eneos. In the ads, a severely deranged Mr. Willis harnesses massive amounts of electrical power through his car and into the atmosphere, thanks to the life-giving Eneos corporation. Just look at this picture:



Is he selling gasoline or injecting a cocktail of heroin and ecstacy between his toes, exactly? This commercial doesn't make me want to buy gas so much as avoid Bruce Willis, neon lights and psychotropic substances for the rest of my life. It's a whole series of ads, as I said, in which Bruce and Eneos gas lay waste to wide swatches of Japan, and at the end of each one, Bruce turns to the camera and says, "Move You." In English.

I get the idea. He's saying that Eneos gas will move your car where you want it to go. Although I suspect any gas would accomplish this task. But the way he says it kind of puts a comma in between the two words. "Move, you!" Like, Bruce and his electromagnetic gasoline of choice have places to go, and we the viewing audience are merely in his way.

Anyway, definitely check out the site. There's lots more weird ads I haven't discussed here, like one in which Cameron Diaz implores you to attend Aeon English Schools, in English, and another in which Quentin Tarantino kung fu fights a guy for the satellite TV remote. While dressed as a Reservoir Dog. Which doesn't at all cheapen his brilliant debut film of the same name.