Hasta La Creative!

Fox Mulder would surely be intrigued by this short tale from Geometry Global that promotes tourism for Saga, a city located on the island of Kyushu, Japan — in a very unusual way.

The Mayor of Saga, Mr. Toshiyuki Hideshima, who stars in the films, says in a statement:

“I was initially surprised by the idea of this project and wondered how we might attract more people to the area through WARASUBO – which is not traditionally special to us. The final product is hugely entertaining, and I have no doubt that it will help to encourage people to visit and explore the beauty of Saga.”

Not sure if a monstrous, ravenous creature is key, but Geometry developed a nice clip that makes us nostalgic for The X-Files, Cloverfield, and the 2006 cult horror classic The Host. The twist? Warasubo, aka the “Alien of Ariake,” is actually a delicacy that people have been challenged to eat.

Not the most appetizing dish, but kudos for the cinematic scope of the promotion.

Advertising Agency:       Geometry Global Japan (GGJ)
Client:                             Saga City
Creative Directors:          Masato Mitsudera (GGJ)
Art Directors:                  Akihiko Ono (GGJ)
Producer:                       Masao Omokawa
Director:                         Kengo Arima
Camera:                        Yuta Shimotsu
Computer Graphics:      Yoshihisa Toyoda (GGJ)
Casting:                         Shoichiro Nakajima
Colorinst:                       Hiroshi Yasuoka
Offline Editor:                Shingo Sasaki
Mixer:                            Yu Sato
Production Manager:     Takeshi Shichijo
Production Assistant:     Yuka Funakoshi
Cast:     The mayor of the city, Mr. Hideshima and citizens of city of Saga

We came here from the Internet as fast as we could to tell you of a brand-new development in seafood technology: the fried shrimp gun. With flour, egg yolk, tempura flakes and a soupçon of billowing fire, you can blast your shellfish craving into oblivion, apparently. 

The minute-long video appears to be an ad for Japanese cell phone company NTT DoCoMo, the biggest cell provider in the country. It has a few other shorts on its YouTube channel that are difficult for non-Japanese speakers to appreciate, but hooray for the shrimp gun.

This is a mother-daughter team of shrimp-projectile experts, I guess? What’s great about it is that the mom stops the daughter mid-fry to tell the daughter there’s obviously a better way to make shrimp tempura. And so begins the daughter’s nightmare journey into invertebrate firearm cookery, complete with an excellent shot of the younger woman flinching as her mother calmly launches the shrimp toward a target across the room.

Shrimp guns may be specific, but the experience is universal.

Here’s an odd slice of weird from Japan. As seen on Japanese blogs, people are putting their purses and wallets into tiny beds before going to sleep themselves. The resulting pictures are strangely charming.

Kazuyo Matsui

TV and Internet personality Kazuyo Matsui recently made the following statement on air: “We sleep to recharge ourselves, don’t we? Well I believe that if we don’t let our purses and money sleep and recharge, they won’t have any power.”

This has inspired several people to start photographing their tiny little sleeping money holders in the hopes that the next morning their wallets or purses won’t be tired, and perhaps good luck will follows the.

If you’ve got a little extra cash in your pocket, and you’re not really feeling the DIY thing, you can order one of these restful creations from Matsui’s blog for ¥2,800 (which is about $26). Take a look below at some of these perfect little sleepy bundles of Yen.

Via Rocket News 24.

Sleepy guy. But that poor little iPod left out in the cold!

Butterflies and floral patterns inspire wealth, apparently.

But real flowers might just inspire more.

This is probably what Donald Trump’s wallet sleeps in.

Either that pencil is huge, or that wallet is tiny.

For the woman with several different options:

Next time you see a sale online, be sure to read the details closely. 

Yahoo Shopping’s Japanese division is running hilarious ads promoting 50 percent off several items: suits, bicycles and household appliances, to name a few.

But there’s a catch: The prices aren’t cut in half. The items are.

Yahoo partnered with Web promo company Burg Hamburg Burg for this 15th anniversary sale that actually exists. Take a look below at a few of these ridiculous ads. 

The only way I could see this look working is if I were a model: 

Actually I am pretty sure there are dudes in Brooklyn who would buy this: 

I hope this sweatshirt is for sale, too:  

Via RocketNews24.

If there are two things that go together on the Internet like cats and pizza—it’s cats and friggin’ pizza! 

The latest treat from Japan is a website announcing the grand opening of Pizza Cat!, a Pizza Hut restaurant apparently run entirely by cats. The campaign is rolling out as tiny “episodes” of each “employee” cat doing jobs like delivering pizzas, cleaning the floors and managing the money. The results are pretty hilarious, bordering on totally absurd. 

We’re not quite sure of the actual point of it all, but according to the translation of the YouTube page, “Pizza Cat! Store is a fictional store.” Shocking, I know, but it’s great anyway. 

Check out the official Pizza Cats! grand opening announcement, followed by the many episodes of feline frivolity.

Happy hunting, indeed!

A staggering 707 unique illustrations of Haruhi Suzumiya, the anime icon, have been hidden on billboards, in magazines, and even handed out on the street all around Japan. Each one has a QR code and a number that lets you report your find over at Haruhi.com, where fans are slowly filling in the film frame by frame with their snapshots—slowly giving shape to what appears to be a short anime teaser of Haruhi singing a song.

The incredible web design lets you pinpoint the found locations and hear the song so far—with the missing bits scrubbed out. Fans have been hoping it’s a teaser for the first Haruhi movie from Kyoto Animation since 2010. But it seems it could be teaser for Sankyo pachinko game instead.

Still, it’s a fun way to announce anything, and a truly herculean media buying effort.

Next time you’re out at bar tying one on, you might want to reconsider your choices—if you happen to be drinking in Japan. 

Ogilvy & Mather and bar chain Yaocho bring us this glimpse into a strange phenomenon in Japan where lots of people apparently literally drink till they drop, and sleep on the street.

To curb this disturbing trend, the slumped-over drunks are made into PSA billboards—framed within a square of white tape and adorned with the hashtag #NOMISUGI, which translates to “too drunk.” Instagram users all over Japan have been capturing these impromptu ads, which are an effort to shame people into behaving better.

We’re not sure if it’s staged or not, but it’s a hilarious concept, and worth a look below. 

Via Ads of the World.

CREDITS
Client: Yaocho
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Japan
Chief Creative Officer: Ajab Samrai
Creative Directors: Yasuhito Imai, Federico Garcia
Copywriter: Federico Garcia
Art Director: Junkichi Tatsuki
Production Company: Babel Label
Director: Kentaro Shima

Need a new reason to cry at weddings? Tosando, a Japanese company that offers musical instruments and lessons, is pleased to oblige with this intense, time-tripping tear-jerker.

The short film tells the story of a widowed, middle-aged father and his daughter on her wedding day. At the reception, dad sits at the piano and attempts to play Pachelbel's Canon, which opens the floodgates for memories both happy and sad. The flashbacks are a tad disorienting at first, but you'll get the gist. (RocketNews24 has a handy breakdown/translation for those in need.) There's a nice shot of the bride's hands playing along on the table as pop struggles with the song. Her pissy disapproval of his decision to play gives the scene an extra dose of reality and keeps things from getting too sentimental.

Judging from reactions around the Web, this finely crafted cinematic spot, clocking in at more than three minutes, has left more than a few viewers misty-eyed.

Indeed, emotion-stirring ads from Asia are a big deal these days. Thai mobile company TrueMove told an immensely popular sob story last year, and Thai Life Insurance has twice turned on the waterworks to impressive effect. In Japan, Intel recently pitched in with this epic 13-minute base-bawler.

All advertising is manipulative to some degree, but at least these weepers win us over with deft manipulation. Such spots broadly play on our emotions without stepping over the line into maudlin territory. These commercials truly make us feel something, which is a lot more than I can say for much of the self-consciously wacky ad campaigns still being trotted out for American audiences. Sometimes that crap is so lame it makes me want to cry.

Voici une compilation par Spoon & Tamago des meilleures photographies de fleurs de cerisiers qui ont été faites en 2014, par différents photographes japonais ou qui ont voyagé dans le pays du cerisier. Les photos de ces beaux arbres blancs et roses très inspirants sont à découvrir dans la suite.

By Yuga Kurita.

By Sue Hsu.

By Yukatan.

By Akio Iwanaga.

By Masato Mukoyama.

By Nobuhiro Suhara.

By Noisy Paradise.

By Saori.

By Onotch.

By Poojartiwari.

By Torne.

By Zhangning.

By Tomosang.

By Takeshi Tanaka.

By Ta3mam.

By Ryosuke Yagi.

By Hikaruno Mikoto.

By Haru Digital Photo.

By Danny Dungo.

By Kyle.

Cette maison à Kyoto, au Japon a été conçue par le bureau de conception Alts. En raison de sa faible largeur, la maison apparaît disproportionnée en hauteur. Les architectes ont donc choisi de mettre l’accent sur cette caractéristique en créant des portes et ouvertures à bout pointu.