Those outside Japan probably will not catch on to this...
During the non-stop news reports of the tsunami, most advertisers pulled their commercials. No one wants to have their products be associated with gloom and doom, nor do they want to seem insensitive by playing their perky commercials during disaster coverage. Pretty sensible on their part, really.
This left the stations with empty commercial breaks. For some they just recycled previous footage. For others, they filled in the time with public service announcements from Japan`s big non-profit organization - AC Japan.
One of these had a catchy song. It will eternally be associated directly with the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and has developed quite a following. Mainly because it was played EVERY break, usually 2 or 3 times. At first it was annoying... Then it became "comforting"... Then "addictive". People are calling it a type of brainwashing. (Humorously, of course.)
As it looks like 99% of the people watching the coverage from overseas were tuned into NHK (which doesn`t run commercials) they missed out on this.
So... I thought I`d give everyone else the chance to experience The Magic of Greetings.
Full version - 60 seconds; Run very rarely, and special enough that people would call each other to watch it (Seriously) "It`s the full version! Hurry!!"
Half length version - 30 seconds; Actually probably just as rare as the full version. Led to plenty of mistaken full version calls, only to be disappointed when it was shorter.
Quarter length version - 15 seconds; This is the one that was played over and over, and over, and over... And over and over again. Sometimes back to back.