Suntory was one of the first Asian companies to specifically employ American celebrities to market their product. One of the most notable is Sammy Davis, Jr., who appeared in a series of memorable Suntory commercials in the early 1970s.
Samuel George “Sammy” Davis, Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer. Primarily a dancer and singer, Davis was a childhood vaudevillian, and became known for his performances on Broadway and in Las Vegas, as a recording artist, television and film star, and the only black member of Frank Sinatra’s “Rat Pack”. In the 1970s, he appeared in commercials in Japan for Suntory whiskey.
A blended whisky (or whiskey) is the product of blending different types of whiskies.
John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer and singer.
Shōchū (焼酎) is a distilled beverage native to Japan. It is most commonly distilled from barley, sweet potatoes, or rice.
Takara Sake USA Inc. holds the rights to distribute Kirin Brewery Company products in the United States, but have not started importing Chu Hi for distribution in North America.
Kirin eventually, somewhat belatedly, in early 1996, gave in to consumer preferences and changed Kirin Lager to a less bitter, draft beer.
Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) is an influential Japanese technopop band formed in 1978, and renowned as a major influence in popular music and for pioneering the technopop music genre. The principal members are Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards). The band have reunited in 2007 for an advertising campaign for Kirin Lager which lampooned their longevity and charted No.1 on various Japanese digital download charts (including iTunes Store chart) with the song “Rydeen 79/07″, released on Sakamoto’s new label commmons.
Moog synthesizer (pronounced /ˈmoʊg/, rhymes with “rogue”) may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for analog and digital music synthesisers.
In the mid-1980s Kirin maintained a domestic market share in beer of about 60 percent, with Sapporo holding 20 percent, Asahi at 10 percent, and Suntory Ltd., a whiskey distiller that had entered the beer market in 1963, at 8 to 9 percent.
The 1990s brought [Harrison] Ford the role of Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, as well as leading roles in Alan Pakula’s Presumed Innocent (1990) and The Devil’s Own (1997), Mike Nichols’s Regarding Henry (1991), Andrew Davis’s The Fugitive (1993), Sydney Pollack’s remake of Sabrina (1995), and Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One (1997). During production of The Fugitive, he reprised his role as Indiana Jones in an episode of the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Ford has also played straight dramatic roles, including an adulterous husband with a terrible secret in both Presumed Innocent (1990) and What Lies Beneath (2000), and a recovering amnesiac in Regarding Henry (1991).
Kirin Brewery Company, Ltd. (麒麟麦酒株式会社, Kirin Bīru Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese company. It is a member of the Mitsubishi core group of companies.
Some Japanese find social importance in going to public baths, out of the theory that physical proximity/intimacy brings emotional intimacy, which is termed skinship in Japanese. Others go to a sentō because they live in a small housing facility without a private bath or to enjoy bathing in a spacious room and to relax in saunas or jet baths that often accompany new or renovated sentōs.
Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an Academy Award nominated American actor. He is best known for his performances as the tough, wisecracking space pilot Han Solo in the Star Wars film series, and the adventurous archaeologist/action hero, Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones in the Indiana Jones film series.
Coors Light, the “Silver Bullet”, a 4.2% abv beer first brewed in 1978 as a low calorie beer. It is Coors top selling brand, and the third-best selling beer in the United States. It has won several medals for “American-Style Light Beer” at the Great American Beer Festival, and is the official beer sponsor of the NFL and the NFL Network.
Takeru Kobayashi (小林尊, Kobayashi Takeru) (b. March 15, 1978) is a Japanese competitive eater and a member of the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE). He held the world record for hot dog eating for nearly six years, and holds several other eating records, and is the second ranked eater in the world according to the International Federation of Competitive Eating.
Due to wartime shortage of World War II, Kotobukiya [the company that would become Suntory] was briefly forced to halt its development of new products. In 1961, Kotobukiya launched the famous “Drink This Whiskey and Go to Hawaii” campaign. At the time, a trip abroad was considered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Duran Duran is a British pop/rock band notable for a long series of popular, synthesiser-driven hit singles and vivid music videos. They were the most commercially successful of the New Romantic bands, and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the United States. They are still often identified as an “Eighties band” despite continuous recording and chart success over their twenty-eight year history.
“Is There Something I Should Know?” is the eighth single from the British pop band Duran Duran. It was released in March 1983 and became the band’s first UK Number One record. In New Zealand, it was the longest-running Number One single of 1983, staying atop the charts for nine weeks. It also reached #4 in the United States.
Benjamin Edward Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an Emmy-winning American comedian, actor, film producer and director. He is the son of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, both of whom are veteran comedians and actors themselves.
The traditional Chuhai is lemon flavored with a shochu base, though some modern commercial variants have a vodka base. The flavors available have recently also multiplied, including lime, grapefruit, apple, orange, pineapple, etc.
Fugu is a Japanese dish prepared from the meat of pufferfish (normally species of Takifugu, Lagocephalus, or Sphoeroides) or porcupinefish of the genus Diodon. Because pufferfish is lethally poisonous if prepared incorrectly, fugu has become one of the most celebrated and notorious dishes in Japanese cuisine.
Tsukiji (築地) is a district of Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan, the site of the Tsukiji fish market. Literally meaning “reclaimed land,” it lies near the Sumida River on land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay in the 1700s, during the Edo period.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (born November 11, 1974) is a three-time Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor well known for his roles in blockbuster movies such as William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), Titanic (1997), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), and Blood Diamond (2006), and was, as a young man, famed for his global celebrity influence dubbed as ‘Leomania’ in the late 1990s. More recently, he has worked regularly with director Martin Scorsese which has lead some to compare their partnership to that of Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro.
Translation: Orient Corporation, Inc. (Orient Corporation) is a major credit and credit card issuing company in Japan. Its name is abbreviated as “Orico.” The company has ties with the Mizuho Financial Group and the old Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Ltd. (presently known as Mizuho Bank, Ltd.).
To reduce the risk of spilling Champagne and/or turning the cork into a projectile, a Champagne bottle can be opened by holding the base and rotating the bottle (rather than the cork). By using a 45 degree angle, the surface of the champagne has the maximum surface area, thus minimizing the excessive bubbling. The cork can ease out with a sigh or a whisper rather than a pop. The flavor will be the same, irrespective of the method used, but the volume left in the bottle will differ.