Their skin is immensely tan. They wear flashy, expensive clothes, unreasonable amounts of cologne and earn their living getting drinks with older women. Their hair is unnaturally blonde and the hair style of choice among them is something descended from Rod Stewart. They are…

                                                    GYARUO!

Apparently not all the Gyaruo are chic and stylish, though, only the successful ones. There are some rough-looking Gyaruo out there as well.

Thanks, Wikipedia:

Gyaruo (which can be written as ギャル男, ギャルオ, ギャル汚 in Japanese) are a sub-group of modern Japanese youth culture. They are the male equivalent of the gyaru. The o suffix that is added to the word, is one reading of the Chinese character for male (男). Recently, the Chinese character for ‘dirty’ in Japanese (汚), which also has the same reading, is often used by gyaru and gyaru-o in a light hearted way, poking fun at themselves because of the reputation that their subculture has gained within society due to their dark skin, hairstyles and often grittish, rough style of clothing that they wear. Gyaruo are characterised by their deep tans, dyed hair, party lifestyle and a liking for all different types of trance music including para-para dancing music, Eurobeat.

From Cracked.com:

And what do they do for these women? Nothing; except sit with them, drink with them and slip them a romantic line every once and a while. That’s it. And since they were smart enough to figure out a way to make money drinking and talking to women in bars, they set off a trend among young Japanese men.

Don’t know if you caught this on that recent Tommy Lee Jones post I made, but in one of the videos you see tons of these dudes jumping around and singing in a “host bar” and their pictures (and numbers) are up on the wall. Tommy Lee Jones plays the part of a loser Gyaruo.

Tommy Lee Jones is Boss Coffee’s newest icon and his face is painted everywhere in Japan. Not only is he one of the many debonaire Hollywood gentlemen who have been imported into Japan’s marketing campaigns, but he gets the privilege of portraying an alien who inhabits the body of ‘Jones-san’ in order to study the human race through the Japanese people (and for some reason he doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb to all of the other Japanese people in the ads). 

There are about 20 ads, but these are the best and weirdest. And I think among all of them my favorite part is at the end when the narrator says “Lainboh Montahn”.

Is it just me, or do the Boss Coffee ads remind you of Bill Murray’s character in Lost in Translation? It’s ironic that the same company, Suntory, is behind both of them.