Watch this video (wmv) or this one (quicktime) and try to guess what they are advertising. No fair if you already know.
Give up?
It’s an ad for a loan company, Takefuji. You can check out their other commericals here and there is even a page to learn the dance here.
Those ads have been running for at least the last 3.5 years. Since I got here. Similar ones have been running since the first time I got here 6 years ago.
Loan companies is one of those things I found different when I first got here as we don’t have any big ones in the states that I know of. Here in Japan there are several. I believe the started as loan sharks but they are now so big they have branches at every major train station as well as ATMs that will give you an instant super high interest loan. Rumor is if you don’t pay it back in a timely manner large scary men will show up at your door. No idea if that’s true but it’s been the topic of a few Japanese TV dramas.
Most of the other companies have ads that make it clear they are a loan company but there have been a few other interesting commericals. A company called @loan had ones where the guy would be put in a crazy situation where he needed money. Like he’s at a restaurant with some girl on a date and says “Anything you want just ask” and she’s like “Anything?, then I’ll take that” and points to a giant wine bottle (3 feet tall, 1 foot wide), clearly expensive and he screams “Ah!!!!” but fades it into “Ahhhhht” as in “at” or @ and he sings a little jiggle which is basically “when you have an AHHHHT! moment think @loan”.
Another is this one were these people do this really stupid dance where they sing “Ba ban ba”. The commericals basically show people wanting to do something but not having enough money, like they are on vacation in Hawaii but can’t afford to take the scuba lessons and then they will say “Sometimes you just have to Ba Ban Ba!” and they will sing their Ba Ban Ba song. Basically sometimes you have to break the bank and take out a loan. The commericals are pretty lame but they are unforgetable.
The links appear to be broken. They just go to “http://www.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/”
oops :-p
Asahi says they started in 1991…
When I was teaching English in Japan 1992-1995, one of my students said she was studying modern dance, so I naturally joked about the yen shop dancers. She said the dancers were all teachers from her school!
I miss teaching conversational english; where else do you get paid to talk to cute women all day (I was lucky to teach at one of the better / least-crappy private schools).
at the end of the commercial, isn’t that small tag line saying like “let’s not borrow too much” !?
huhu
Troy (or anyone else who knows):
I am curious to know whether having an english degree is generally a requirement for teaching conversational english in Japan. I thought about doing that a long time ago when I was first starting out in college, and then ended up dropping out and programming computers for a living instead. Now that I’m getting pretty burned out on the computer stuff, I am starting to look in other directions again, but I’m not so sure I want to go back to school in order to try something else…
Any tips would be appreciated!
English institutes generally require some kind of degree. I’ve seen some people teach without one, but they either knew the owner personally or had some other advantage. See, in order to get you your visa, they need to file a set of documents including a coy of your degree. Of course, you can still give private lessons, but it takes a while before one may actually live off that. If you have a high level of programming, you could get a much better job than teaching, but having no formal degree will always be a problem due to visa issues.
Hope it helps. GL
That’s my understanding too. Just to be clear though, you don’t need a degree in “english” you just need a degree. That’s basically to get your visa. If you have some other way to get your visa (like you are married to a Japanese native for example) then you probably don’t need a degree. You just need to be fluent in English.
I really don’t feel like I have the time or $$$ to go back to school, and to be honest, I think I’d be more interested in trying to find a Japanese native to marry than in being the only “thirtysomething” person sitting in a class full of kids, anyway! :-Q I guess that’s kind of the trap of the computer industry – it’s one of those fields where if you have natural talent, you can find plenty of good jobs without a degree based on your ablilites, but if you get burned out, that approach is really no less of a dead-end than working at a fast food joint (only with better pay). Once you try to “make your escape”, it seems like everybody wants to judge you by that golden piece of paper…it’s disappointing. It sounds like even if I could manage to play the “connections card” to find a teaching job, getting a VISA would still be a major brick wall. (my dad has some Japanese friends at work that brought the teaching subject up a loooong time ago, but even they may have assumed I had a degree or was pursuing one)
Thanks for the input. It puts a little “reality check” in my daydreams. And just to clarify, BTW – I don’t mean to disparage or discount anyone who has earned a college degree. It takes a certain amount of focus and perseverance to make it through school, and I understand why a degree is used as a screening tool, even though it doesn’t prove that a person can do a given job better than someone else. In my particular case, though, I just took the fastest route to getting the best jobs I could find, and as luck would have it, it turned out that I was able to make more money than many of my degreed friends, so it seemed like a good idea “back in the day”. Because of this, and because I never liked school, I have always found it really, really difficult to justify spending time and money on college when I had evidence that a degree wouldn’t guarantee me a better career. Oy. Sounds like standard pre-midlife crisis fare, no?
Sorry for such a long “off topic” post – sometimes it just feels good to vent, I guess…
just so your dreams are not squashed completely, I don’t have a degree. I just have experience, connections and luck. English schools have many applicants so they can be more picky but that doesn’t mean you can’t find other jobs where they will provide a visa.
I appreciate the words of encouragement. Hopefully this won’t come off sounding like a total kiss-a**
, but for what it’s worth, I have to say that enterprising fellows such as yourself are a huge inspiration to me, and one of the top reasons I’m thankful for the web. I am one of those people who remembers *everything*, and every time I read about someone doing something fresh and interesting that I might like to do, I always take mental notes and try to find clues as to how they helped make good things happen.
I never really consider my dreams “squashed” – I am realistic enough to acknowledge roadblocks when they arise, but I am also dumb enough to believe that I can do anything I put my mind to, eventually. Surprisingly often, things just seem to work out! I didn’t mean to sound like a “quitter”. I guess I am just beginning to realize how much easier a lot of aspects of life would be for me these days had I “played by the rules” when I was younger…Of course, that’s what everyone my age says, so whaddaya gonna do?
Thanks for blogging, Gman. I’ll bet you’ve helped more people out of a rut than you know.
it’s possible to get a work visa in Japan without a degree, but it requires your visa sponsor to go out on a limb for you (same thing in the states, too), and given the general job market it might be hard to find a teaching position, unless you can demonstrate needed technical skills beyond being able to just speak english (eg. video editing tools, preparation of coursework). IOW you really have to be cream of the crop to get a visa sponsor without a degree.
I’m also a thirty-something burned-out computer geek; I’ve been thinking of going back to Japan later this year, but english teaching is quite a grind — after two years, doing the same thing every day gets really old.
Bionic
Your best angle would be to merge your skills, computing and fluent English (I should take my own advice, getting tired of what i do too). I also taught English in Japan, long ago, but some of the most fun i had was teaching computer skills to the kids. You might even look into getting an online degree, like Greg said it doesn’t matter what the degree is in. If you’re not in a hurry you could probably get a two year degree without leaving your current job.
good luck