Chanpon

A series of four ads from Nintendo touches on the difficult time Japanese people might have in English language dominant environments. As a foreigner who lived in Japan and often nodded and said "thank you" because I didn't want to trouble people too much, I can relate to these short videos. They've done a good brief job staging the yearning awkwardness of trans-cultural communication.

Towards what end? To promote some brain-training games that can help you with foreign language skills. Portable gaming devices are becoming powerful enough to provide translation services - a great reason to justify the purchasing and carrying of these "toys". The Sony PSP has a product with a talking bird that will say things like "Where is a cheap hotel?" through the PSP speakers. The Nintendo DS, judging from this ad, uses the touch-screen input to allow people to practice their English handwriting.