Gastrolust

Staying on the subject of beans, and since I’ll be in Tokyo in just a few weeks, I wanted to share some cute (and yet strangely disturbing) bean-promoting ads from Japan. In each, a dog (shiba) bean (mame) magically appears, giving some factual trivia that’s not so pleasing to the person who’s eating.

Here are three of my favorites. First, a girl eating natto (mmm…fermented soy beans…I love it!) learns that white asparagus in France is called “Mademoiselle’s finger”:

Next, a man eating edamame finds out that a kangaroo’s pee (bed-wetting) smells really bad:

And my favorite…a man eating peanuts gets repulsed to know that kissing exchanges two million bacteria:

If you check out Youtube, you’ll find more, sometimes with different trivia even though the scenario is the same. And here’s a Youtube page with a collection of the ads.