One of my guilty pleasures is Japanese TV. We don’t watch every day, but sometimes we catch certain shows, and sometimes we just keep it on for background noise. I like to think that it’s helping my Japanese, even if it is often just silly fun. Variety shows, anime, game shows–there’s tons of fun, crazy stuff on Japanese TV, especially the commercials. Lots of the CMs involve dancing and catchy songs, and some of them are really strange.

One that caught my eye recently was this commercial for Acerola, a juice drink aimed at women. It’s really quirky, the song is super catchy, and the dancing is a little bit weird in an amusing sort of way.

I thought it seemed a bit familiar, but I didn’t place it until I was going through some of my old pictures and realized that it’s actually the Strange Kinoko Dance Company, 珍しいキノコ舞踊団, whom I had the pleasure of shooting at the Kennedy Center a couple years ago during the “JAPAN! CULTURE + HYPER CULTURE” event.

I really loved their playful nature, and the piece they performed was beautiful, fun, and funny. I’m glad to see that they’re still around, and hopefully getting some big bucks these days from the Acerola people, too! I really hope that I can catch a performance in the near future!

You can click on any of the photos to enlarge, or go to my flickr set to see more of Strange Kinoko’s performance. This is my entry in this month’s Japan Blog Matsuri, hosted by one of my favorite J-bloggers around, Haiku Girl. This month’s theme is “Faces of Japan,” and I can’t wait to see the other entries!