The Japanese not only love their cats and use them frequently in commercials, but often those commercials are baffling to Westerners. Here are some of them that advertise Pizza Hut in Japan. Having looked at all of them—this is just a sample—I can’t imagine that they’d really sell pizza. But perhaps the mere association of pizza with lazy moggies is sufficient.
From Tokyoite:
Just when you thought cats on the Net had had their day, Japan launches Pizza Cat. This new pizzeria is run by a group of lazy, hairy eyeballing cats named Tencho, Hime, Dora and Detch. You can watch them at ‘work’ – taking orders on the phone, dealing with spreadsheets, cleaning, making deliveries – in a series of short video clips on the store’s official website. Ready to order? Just don’t complain if you find a furball in your cheese.
What baffles me is that these commercials portray Pizza Hut as a place full of lazy, uncaring staff who eat the pizza themselves! How does that sell pizza? Perhaps a Japanese reader can explain.
Here are the kawaii titles of a few commercials given on the Japanese video channel. But there are twelve such videos, and you can see them all here.
“Morning assembly! Fire us up!”
“It’s time for work, y’all”
“Shut up, paws off the phone! They’re all for me!”
“Destination checked! We’ll be there safe driving!”
*******
In case you don’t know of this Twi**er site, it’s pretty damn funny: “Why my cat is sad.” Here are a few examples of tw**ts:
If you don’t know Bagpuss, it was an awesome British kids’ show (go here for a few videos).
h/t: Zach, Matt, Andrea ~
I liked this one:
WHY MY CAT IS SAD @MYSADCAT
My cat is sad because he keeps asking people “Can you tell me why I am a cat, please?” but nobody ever answers him.
This seems a perfect answer to all those smart alecks who claim that philosophy, theology, any religion, or any other ideology offers the answer to the “big” questions: “Why are we here?”, “Please, can you tell me what is the meaning of our lives?”
Then it is time to pull out this “Why my cat is sad” quotation.
Having seen pix of how people are herded on Tokyo subways – packed in by workers whose job is to do that – maybe the fundamental appeal is that cats can’t be herded, and so anything in re. cats wins.
This also seems like a reason for the cat being sad in the other part of the post.
Hi Jerry
I’m an American who’s been living in Tokyo for the last 7 years.
I just recently started following your blog, by the way, after watching you on the “Moving Naturalism Forward” videos on YouTube.
About the cat commercials selling pizza… In Japan, a big cultural difference in advertising is that everything needs to be “cute.” So, cute cats are used to sell just about anything. Just like in American advertising you hear the expression “sex sells,” in Japan it’s “cute sells.”
That’s right about the ad culture, Robert-san. Word play is often key in the advertising here, too. One example can be seen in the first video, within the second phrase that flashes onscreen:
“猫の手も借りたい” みなさまに、
Literally, “For those who need a helping hand, even from a cat
is a Japanese idiomatic expression that means
“For those who’ve been desperately short-handed/understaffed”
Fwiw, the initial video introduces the cat staffers with these five phrases:
1) Emergency notification from Pizza Hut!
2) For those who have been desperately short-handed
3) So that delicious pizza could arrive as soon as possible
4) At long last these guys showed up
5) “Pizza-Cat!” shop Grand Open
Andrea 🙂
“Tencho” means store manager. Since the texts are pretty slangy – I guess this is PHJapan’s idea of being “with it” – you could just say “boss”. “Hime” means princess, which is a reasonable enough cat name. “Dora” and “Detch” I can’t place.
Just ran across this quote:
If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
-Alfred North Whitehead
Actually both of them are hoping to be fed.
If you think Bagpuss was awesome, you have got to meet the Clangers!
I’m surprised that the cats weren’t named Speedy Cerviche, Guido Anchovy, Polly Esther, and Francine.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/SamuraiPizzaCats