Some Tokyo residents have been grumbling or sneering (or both) in the past few weeks about the latest head-turning novelty on the capital's streets: those giant moving billboards that used to be just plain old green-and-cream buses.
They certainly do catch the eye. There goes an enormous bottle of Lipton's Ice Tea. Oops, watch out for that looming Compaq Presario. And wasn't that Ms. Whitney Houston who just rumbled by, her face as huge and scary as a Brobdingnag housewife's?
Die-hards object that the newly decked-out buses -- the result of a decision by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to relax an ordinance limiting bus advertisements to a Lilliputian 2.7 sq. meters -- are undignified. They say the buses add to the already overwhelming visual clutter of the city's central business and shopping areas. Worse, that they represent yet another beachhead gained by advertising in its relentless, creeping assault on the galaxy.