Even if it's a call from the moon!

[owlectomy]

Vintage Tokyo subway manner posters.

My favorite of the ones I saw in Tokyo was a takeoff on the Kaguya-Hime legend, in which a poor bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl in a stalk of bamboo and takes her home to his wife, and she grows up to be a princess from the moon.

The ad shows a beautiful young woman gabbing on her cell phone while an old bamboo cutter and his wife look on, annoyed, holding their hands over their ears. The message?
"Even if it's a call from the moon, don't answer it!"

One wishes they could be plastered up all over the New York subways, though it doesn't translate cross-culturally. I hear that the subway stations are going to be getting cell service in the next few years. I may snap.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Those are amazing! I like Doraemon telling drunks not to pass out on the train.

I'm sure people are pushing cell service on the subways at least partly as a sop to anti-terrorism measures (see something, now say something even easier, b/c we aren't going to repair any of the few remaining pay phones in the subways!--but also, hey, if there's an incident, you can contact your loved ones easier). But... yeah. It's mostly going to be people yammering who can't face the idea of being stuck w/their own thoughts for 1/2 an hour on the train & don't have a book (or don't want one!). Yuck.

[starlady]

Wow. They don't make them like they used to.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Love Jesus overcome by umbrellas while the rain falls outside the window.

The most famous in my time was the black and white poster of a pair of muscular naked male buttocks (gaijin, as was later ascertained) with notes seeping out of the crack and a suggestion that one adjust the volume of one's walkman.