Weird advertising
Japanese advertising is really different from North American advertising. Frequently, I have no idea what a commercial or an ad is for, for example. Some of them are really amusing though, especially when they use English.
Japan Tabacco is running a smoking manners campaign right now. Yesterday on the train I saw one of their adds and had a good laugh. Basically it has three panels. The first talks about throwing butts down the sewer drains and the second is about smoke billowing out of ashtrays (people put garbage in them so the cigarettes then cause fires in the ashtrays - this is more of a stupid people putting their garbage in the wrong spot than a manners thing IMO). Now the third one is great. Note that all of these panels have diagrams... like the rat looking at the cigarette butt in panel one. The third panel says. "When you pass gas you check behind you. You don't bother when you are smoking."
Maybe I should be on the lookout for people glancing back! The diagram for this picture has this huge square blocked out behind the farter and a poor unsuspecting soul behind him. Or maybe the guy in front is a smoker... I'm not sure.
I thought it was amusing. I hope I can find a big billboard of this add so I can take a picture to put in my photoblog!