今もっとジョンさんある！Now with more Tommy Lee Jones!

The images that have slowly meandered west from the Japanese islands are at once perfect representations of the Japanese people and utterly inadequate. My reunion with my girlfriend now just around the corner, various memories of my time in Japan have bubbled up to the surface of my mind. My recollections of Tokyo, however, are vying for prominence against the flood of media endured over the span of the previous seven months. Sifting through these thoughts feels as though I am peering through a tarnished lens. The truth of the matter is my memory is completely fine, but my freshest images of Japan are those found in American mainstream media. Currently, I am using two dependable news sources for accurate Japanese news coverage. The BBC and Japan Times provide reliable news flawed in their absence of a visual link. I am mired in the unfortunate situation of applying present day descriptions to the memory world that now constantly clashes against what is filtered through the television and internet. The issue does not lay in the glaring misconceptions commonly portrayed by these mediums but with their accuracies. American sentiments of Japan are skewed by the average individual being entertained by realities masquerading as fantasies.

Due to the genuinely impure and confusing nature of representations of Japanese people and culture in America, the only way to adequately enlighten you, dear reader, is to talk about Mr. Tommy Lee Jones. No doubt, you know Mr. Jones from various projects including the academy award winning No Country for Old Men, a visceral, gripping tale. Turning back the clock a few more years, aside from revealing that Mr. Jones has looked exactly the same age for over a decade, revisits the entertaining, science fiction-buddy cop mash-up that was the Men in Black series. The average U.S. movie buff knows Tommy Lee Jones’s acting portfolio well enough to, at the very least, recognize him and his previous escapades across the silver screen. Although I will not go so far as to call the man an icon of the American movie industry, the fact that he has starred in blockbusters taking place in every conceivable setting of every genre (Space Cowboys anybody?) should be enough to convince anyone that he is well known, respected and serious about his line of work.

In Japan, Tommy Lee Jones is famous, but not for his films. He has become extremely well known by the name Jones-san for his work in the employ of Suntory Boss Coffee, Red Bull’s Japanese equivalent in the canned coffee market. I have to take a moment here to convey a feeling of shock and awe at the population of vending machines loitering on every street corner and in every train station. There are full twenty four hour periods when those mechanical soft and sport drink peddlers are more numerous than foreigners so to say that their market is large would be an understatement of epic proportions. If one were to ask the prototypical Tokyo native, the name Tommy Lee Jones would evoke crickets while Jones-san would illicit a grin of recognition and a reserved chuckle at the very least. To the Japanese, our Tommy Lee, an alien in the land of the rising sun, is the silent alien spokesperson observing earthen culture for his home world. Tommy Lee Jones has been stripped of the vast majority of his reputation and become the humorous yet eerie face of a major native product:.. He drinks Boss Coffee, and you should too.






I don’t want my blogs to be full essays so the next installment will put all of this Tommy Lee Jones talk back into its proper context. As always, thank you for reading.

PS:  As a rule I will be avoiding posting images that do not belong to me.  These are my souvenirs that I am sharing, not those on Google Images.