I usually put up my Hive Goals post on Mondays, but I'm just not feeling it today. I don't know... sometimes talking about my own earnings just feels too much like bragging to me. I know my Goals posts inspire people because I get comments saying as much, but... ah, I'm just not feeling it today.

Instead I thought we'd take a look at a fun series of Japanese commercials. These are like mini movies, so I think this should fit in the Cine TV community.

You may have read somewhere on the internet that Western celebrities have been appearing in Japanese commercials for years, even before it was acceptable to do so in the West. If you search YouTube you can see some pretty crazy Japanese commercials from Arnold, Sly, and other film stars.

This brings us to everyone's favorite stone-faced actor Tommy Lee Jones and his Boss Coffee commercials.

In Japan, canned coffee from vending machines is pretty popular. Within the last few years they have started to use larger plastic bottles more and more often, but the most common container for a very long time was the steel can. This:

There are seemingly endless flavors that all taste more or less the same the same to me (just tastes sweet) so I only buy black when it's available. The vending machines keep them cool in summer and hot in winter. A perk in winter is that the hot cans make great hand-warmers.

Anyway, back to Tommy Lee Jones.

In 2006 he made his way to Japan to film a series of Boss Coffee commercials. In them he played an alien who was exploring Earth to study us and report his findings. Hmm.. Kind of like Mork.

^{Nanu Nanu}

To make it easy for you guys to understand I'm just going to give commercials that I could find subtitled in English.

Here is the very first one in the series.

The ad campaign was the brainchild of Fukusato Shin'ichi who wanted to do something that would counter the negativity of the daily news and politics and would instead make people smile and be more optimistic. So he designed a series with an alien observing us who at first would be aloof and unimpressed but would later start to see the greatness of us earthlings. It was decided a non-asian foreigner would work best because at the time (and even today) foreigners are not a daily sight in much of the country so there is a feeling of otherness, which worked well for an outsider observing things. Tommy Lee Jones wasn't yet well known in Japan, so that helped. The series was original designed to run for five years, but it proved so popular that it ran for many many more.

Here's the second:

Otsukaresama is a strange phrase. It literally says "you must be tired", but is used to mean something like "Thanks for working hard" and is often said at the end of the day as a goodbye. It has become a polite phrase for a great many situations like when you finish a test, in which case it would be more like "I'm sure you tried your best and did a good job". It gives a general feeling of appreciation. It's a handy phase.

Anyway, on to the third in the series:

Anyway, I won't show all of them, as they go into the sixties in number. The last one was in 2020 (I think) and newer Boss Coffee commercials don't feature him anymore so it might finally be over. If so, that's a pretty good run for a goofy ad campaign!

Here are some of my favorites. Again I tried to find subtitles when I could, but there is one or two without. There isn't anything too complicated in them so you can probably still enjoy the ones without.

As a rice farmer

As a 70s cop

As a super businessman

As a dancing security guard (special guest mega-star boy band SMAP)

As a teacher

Anyway, there are many more. Nothing amazing, but they are fun in small doses. Hmm.... those first two I listed (the 70s cop and the rice farmer) might be my favorites.

If you want more, just do a Youtube search for something like "Boss coffee Tommy Lee Jones". Using English would make it more like to find English subs, but if you don't care about that, you could try searching in Japanese to find more of them. Something like this might work well: "BOSSコーヒートミーリージョーンズ ＣＭ"

Have fun!

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.