Cameron Diaz is a greedy whore. Or: Why I stopped worrying and bought in to it all.

In the film Lost in Translation, Bill Murray plays a semi-washed up actor from America who travels to Tokyo to do a series of promotional advertisements for Suntory whisky. "For good times, make it Suntory times," he says into the camera over and over again much to his chagrin, as well as to the dismay and frustration of the Japanese director who, despite all his best efforts, can't communicate the intricate subtleties of tone, body language and facial expressions needed to make the hazy Mr. Murray gazing into a double whisky on the rocks appear to be something more than pensive drunk.

Despite the hangups, the ad campaign comes off successfully and Bill's face is plastered on the sides of city buses and beamed into TV sets all over Japan. All the while, he feels strange and out-of-place, like he's living his life in some sort of glass asylum, where he can see and hear everything, but can't really get his hands and feet muddy. Stuck in a box, with Scarlett Johanson in an endless city of neon and mystery.

What was never mentioned, however, is that if the ad campaign were truly successful, the percentage of Japanese businessmen drunk on Suntory whiskey and slumped over on the midnight train must have skyrocketed, thus increasing an already astronomical number.

Sadly, here in real Japan, we have no Bill Murray. We have no Scarlett Johanson. But we do have Suntory whisky. And we do have Cameron Diaz.

Just like back in America, and any other major capitalist world economy, Japan has lots of different cell phone providers. One of the big players used to be Vodafone. Recently it was bought out (or maybe just renamed? Not a fact worth researching...) by an entity called SoftBank.

And just like in the film or any real-world massive capitalistic endeavor, a big-time promotion was on the ticket. Except instead of getting a thoughtful and well-respected thespian who is able to play a sauced and washed up celebrity who can no longer cut it stateside, we get the real thing. Cameron Diaz.

She has taken this nation by storm. Her face plastered on posters and billboards. Her eyes and bleach white smile glowing from the TVs in every living room in the country. And what is she towing behind it? The nation's cheapest cell phone plan. It's less than 1000Y a month. That's not even 10 dollars.

And along with most of the other new Iwaki ALTs, I signed right up. At the time, I had no clue about how to go about acquiring a cell phone in Japan, let alone did I know about how the various plans were promoted. Advertising, Cameron Diaz specifically, played no role in my selection of SoftBank as my service provider. I was completely unaware of the massive marketing campaign. I heard it was cheap, and when you're nearly a grand in the hole and two weeks from payday, cheaps sounds like a good deal.

But ever since my bright yellow SoftBank phone came into my life, I've had an adverse subconscious reaction to the advertising. I see their logo, I recognize it, I make a relevant association because I use their service. I say, "Ahh, yes. I use SoftBank. I'm part of their family. My phone is sexy and yellow. I can call all my friends who also use SoftBank for free. How nice."

Then I see Cameron Diaz. And I want to vomit in my mouth.

But there's no turning back now. I'm locked in a two-year contract. Actually, I hear it's much easier to break a cell phone contract here than it is back home, where those greedy bastards at Sprint tried to make me pay $200 to get out of my contract. But negotiating a new cell phone contract in Japanese is not an easy task. I don't even think Japanese people understand Japanese cell phone contracts. They are full of ambiguous numbers and unknown kanji. I sat there in front of the saleswoman, having my passport and address and bank account information ready. And she would start talking in honorific Japanese (which no foreigner understands) about the various options I could add or not add to my basic plan (for which the vocabulary I did not have) and I did not understand a single thing she said to me. And I could see in her eyes she knew this too. All I wanted was for her to give me my yellow phone. And I had the feeling all she wanted to do was to get the crazy foreigner away from her counter as fast as possible. But it's her job to ask me if I want to pay extra for voicemail, it's her job to ask me if I want to purchase insurance. She would flip through the pages of the contract, pointing at random prices and mysterious charts, and I would sit there looking like a deer in the headlights begging for mercy from the horror speeding towards me.

However, everything has worked out so far. I'll know for sure once the bill comes. In the meantime, I'll keep enjoying my cool yellow phone. And learning to embrace Cameron Diaz.

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