Rugby Scrum vs Japanese Train Crammers

The seventh Rugby World Cup kicked off in New Zealand today and I can’t think of a better way to mark the commencement of this sporting spectacle than to recollect from the retro video archives the cool ad from the 2003 Rugby World Cup featuring popular ex-Wallaby John Eales taking on the Japanese train crammers as he tries to board a crowded train in Tokyo. The ad, embedded below, was part of Visa’s advertising campaign launched for the 2003 Rugby World Cup and is a parody of the Japanese train crammers who are renowned for wearing white gloves and stuffing people into already crowded trains.

After rushing through Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and paying for his train ticket with Visa, an airport bound “Ealsy” gets to the train but is confronted by a carriage overflowing with people. Noticing the overpowering white-gloved train crammers at the other end of the carriage stifling the ability of the commuters at his end of the train from boarding he uses his Rugby prowess to pack a scrum with fellow commuters that overwhelms the push of the white-gloved train crammers helping to pack more people through his train doors and eventually squeezing himself in too.

The soundtrack to the advertisement is Turning Japanese, possibly the most misinterpreted song of all time! Released in 1980, it is the second single by the band The Vapors and is popularly interpreted to be a euphemism for masturbation as it is believed to euphemistically refer to the face a male makes during the act of masturbation.