Sales Pitches

I've got a bit of a background in sales, so I know a good sales pitch when I see one. I sometimes even enjoy them. They're kind of like art, but with the goal of inducing a response from the wallet, rather than from the heart.

Bad sales pitches, on the other hand, can be painful. Very bad ones are sometimes even funny.

For example, the owner of this karaoke box is in love with a woman. Not a specific woman, but a general "you" will suffice. In order to convince you (the woman) that he wants to take tender care of you for the rest of your life, he has chosen "killing" as his 'close'.


If the whole Karaoke master thing doesn't pan out, I'm sure he'll have a great career getting arrested for climbing over celebrities' hedges, microphone in hand.



Here is another sales pitch that is a bit too strong.

This fellow likes eating noodles. He also likes kicking you in the face. Here, he's saving a lot of time.





Of all the strong sales pitches in Japan though, there is one group that has set itself apart from all others. Anyone living in Japan knows that people are exposed to a huge amount of advertising here, but I have to say that only one organization has managed to get me to interact with their salespeople on several occasions.

I'll get to the name of the advertiser soon, but I'm willing to bet you've seen them in action if you've spent any time in this city.

Most astonishingly, they have established that I don't speak Japanese all that well, and they have actually started to send me English materials and brochures. This happened after two of their Customer Service Representatives realized that I had no idea what they were saying, they were content to press some English materials into my hand, thank me for my time and let me be. I thought they'd given up, but in almost no time, two English - speaking reps came to make sure I was ok. Amazing!

Despite not having taken advantage of their offers, they actually manage to put English-only material in my mailbox on a semi regular basis. They also keep coming back to try to "close the deal", as they say.

Ok? Any idea which group is so persistent and hardworking?



Give up?







The Mormons








English 911:

Close: The last thing a salesperson says, usually the final push to encourage someone to buy something. eg, "to close the deal".

hedges: Big plants, usually on the edge of someone's property.

glut: like "gluttony", too much, or a huge amount of something.

Stereotypes

Two things of note happened recently. Both were rare and interesting experiences, and both changed my perspective on living in Japan in subtle yet meaningful ways.

Firstly, some pictures were taken of me recently that I was embarrassed to see. Yep. I managed to embarrass myself, rather than just the usual "strangers", "my friends" or "my poor, suffering mother".

So, of course, I'm posting the pictures.

Incidentally, one of the secrets of karaoke is not to sing songs that you like, but rather songs that are sung by people who are only 3893 times as vocally talented as you, rather than the songs that are sung by people who are 283939 times as talented as you.

For example:

Bad: Seal
Better: Green Day

Some Songs by popular bands may go well because everyone will automatically join in. This saves you having to hear your own voice for at least some of the session. Just remember to pick songs that you KNOW everyone knows.

Bad: Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Revolution #9
Better: Hey Jude, Let It Be


Anyway, I've discovered that if you happen to dredge up some serious 80's stadium rock, it can go reasonably well... or not. The bad news is that there's really no sure way to tell how well you can sing a particular song beforehand.

In my experience...
Bad: Bon Jovi
Better: Guns and Roses.

Surprisingly, a vaguely falsetto "knockin' on heaven's door" can be bearable and hysterically funny. Especially if you take it really really seriously when you are stretching out the chorus bits...



heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyeeaeeaaaa.....

..........aaaaaaooooohhhhhyeeeeaaaahhhhhhhyeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh.....



Hrmm... I also saw some cool stuff.

I'll write more about what I'm smiling at in this picture soon.


私は英語の先生と日本語の学生、ね？　”この写真は登富士山ですから。”

Mostly dead. Entirely Delicious.

I would like to say that I am not a squeamish man in terms of what I eat. I figure that since my ancestors bitch slapped their way to the top of the food chain, the least that I can do to show them that I appreciate all the hard work. In my opinion, the best way to show this appreciation is to not shy away from eating things that said ancestors bitch slapped on their way to the eventual signing of the Kyoto Accord, formation of the WWF, etc. In short, I try to stick anything put in front of me into my maw.

With that disclaimer for the following tale out of the way, I can safely say that I love sushi very much. VERY much. And not just those sissy rolls that involve things like “cooking” in the preparation process. Thus, you can imagine that I live in Japan with quite a lot of excitement about the entire eating party. Occasionally, I even get some strange surprises. Like finding a place that offers uber fresh sushi near my apartment as the team was on the way home from Yomuriland-mae.

This sushi restaurant also had an amazing extra little thing on the menu that made the sushi even better…. a little special called “All you can drink for two hours” for UNDER ONE THOUSAND YEN. That’s 980 Yen… or about $9.80CDN at the current exchange rate. Draft or bottles, hard liquor, wine, you name it. Two hours to guzzle as much as you can. OK, raise your hands if you think that this would be the best thing ever…

Yeah. Me too.

To top it all off, they happened to serve a few things that would make a certain ex girlfriend of mine want to call the wraith of the heavens down on my head (…cough….uh…er…again…).

That’s right! This joyful place served both RAW WHALE and RAW HORSE!

The whale is held in my eager chopsticks, and the horse in Nick’s. Yep, they happen to taste pretty awesome, actually. Well, whales wouldn’t be so freaking endangered if they didn’t taste so good. Sheesh. And as for Mr. Ed, well, I now know that you can not only ride him to lunch, but eat him for it too! No cooking required. It was tasty-good!



Shocked? Offended? Hungry? Hopefully all three, because I hate to say it, but the real shocker actually came in the NEXT course.

Fish that was so fresh it was only barely dead. I mean BARELY DEAD. They pull it from a tank, slice off the sides, skewer it and serve it. Probably in not much more time than it took you to read this paragraph. This means that your fish is rather fresh.



So fresh, in fact, that it is still twitching on the table for the duration of your entire meal. A good twenty minutes of occasional jitters and fish flips. Seriously. The mouth opens and the fins jitter, the gills flip every few minutes….. all while you much away.

I wanted to show this poor fish just how much I appreciated his good work on the table, so I made a point of holding bits of said dinner up in front of said fish’s eyes before I ate, which understandably guarantees me the same fate if/when I am abducted by little green men with a taste for Burentomeat. But seriously, it was good, and I wanted the fish to know. It was So. Freaking. Good. Perhaps the best sushi I’ve ever had, and we snagged this little offense to western sensibilities for about 500 yen. I also snagged a few videos, so if you are interested, email me and you can watch us guzzle fish meat in fuzzy camera-phone-vision and drunk-stereo sound.

After we were suitably shitfaced and full of fish for under twenty bucks, we hit up the local karaoke bar, belted out our lungs and made it home incident free!

...


To prove how sober and incident free the night was, here is a picture of me being felated by Santa Claus.



Thank you and good night.