by , 9:00 AM EST, December 13th, 2002

As many Observers know that part of our staff spent some time in Japan earlier this year, we have been asked by many people what the people in Apple's Japanese Switch ads are saying. In particular, we have been asked what Kikuchi Momoko is saying. Ms. Kikuchi is the Ellen Feiss of Japan's Switch scene, or at least she is to many Western Observers. The problem is that no one knows what she is saying.

We tapped Brett Rumble, a New Zealander who lives and works in the Tokyo area, and greatly assisted us during Macworld Tokyo 2002. More importantly, his Japanese is excellent, and he was able to translate Ms. Kikuchi's commercial for us.

Mr. Rumble told us that her spoken spiel in the commercial is different from the written Japanese on her Apple Switch Web page. Accordingly, we are including both the Japanese, and the translated English. To make sure we have browser compatibility, we are doing so with an image:

For those wanting to cut and paste, we offer the translated text in HTML, as well.

My old computer was this big thick thing and well, I was writing this e-mail to my friend. I worked really hard struggling to write it in English. As I was making the finishing touches to it all of a sudden... MY COMPUTER FROZE UP! I lost everything I had written. I really thought "this thing is absolutely useless!" Now I use a Mac. Not once have I had this problem. Isn't that amazing?! - KIKUCHI Momoko, Student.

You can find her commercial at Apple's Japanese Switch site. We would like to thank Brett Rumble for his outstanding assistance.