Joi tweeted about this yesterday: an inspirational bullet train commercial has been going viral.
It's a 3-minute spot featuring a shinkansen making its debut trip across the southern island of Kyushu on March 12, just one day after the earthquake. The commercial was pulled from TV stations in the immediate aftermath, along with all other advertisements--the stations feared inundating people with commercialism after a tragedy would be inappropriate--and just appeared on air a couple of weeks ago. In it, you see school kids in uniforms, farmers, Power Rangers, cheerleaders, and costumed mascots all cheering the train on as it makes its way across the country.
I love this because it's really representative of Japanese solidarity. It's really unselfish, non-aggressive, and community-oriented. One of the YouTube comments points out that the conductor and the cameraperson were crying the whole time as people ran alongside the train.
I love Maia Hirasawa.
Posted by: Saint Isaac | April 27, 2011 at 09:19 AM
This is beautiful... made me cry a little..
Posted by: Robin Sh | April 30, 2011 at 05:05 PM
I moved to Kagoshima in February, and the scenes at the beginning take place in Kagoshima-Chuo Station. Last weekend, my wife and I took the Sakura Shinkansen from Kagoshima to Hakata Station in Fukuoka, and I recognized many of the places that were featured in the ad. She told me that before the full test run of the Shinkansen (which was the run during which this commercial was filmed), JR had announced that they would be filming this CM and that if people wanted to be seen, this was the day they would be doing it and which side of the Shinkansen they would be looking. They talked about this CM last night on one of the many Japanese talk shows. It's becoming a phenomena here, too.
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