Tommy Lee Jones is the Boss of Japanese Coffee

Boss coffee is “My buddy coffee for working people,” according to its maker, Suntory.

That’s the same Suntory whose whiskey Bill Murray struggled to endorse in Lost In Translation.  (“For relaxing times… make it Suntory time.”) The corporate giant sells whiskey, beer, tea, coffee and mineral water. The equivalent here in the States would be Starbucks Ale or Maxwell House Bourbon (“Good to the last drop!”).

Tommy Lee Jones may actually be echoing the crow-footed, pipe-smoking man from the Boss logo:

Boss coffee tastes just like what you’d expect of canned coffee, but no worse. It’s also vending-machine hot and available at 6:45 am, when most Japanese coffee shops are still closed.

Here’s an early-morning can of Boss Simple Style (that is, black) coffee atop the Hotel Claska in Tokyo, with Mount Fuji in the distance. Fuji-San is the tiny hump just over the right corner of the big white building.

So much for Boss coffee. Now see Tommy Lee Jones wrestling a man dressed as a wild pig >>