Incoming!  Below is one of the Softbank commercials we don’t understand but can’t seem to peel our eyes away from watching.

As long as you understand that the father is a human in a dog’s body, the son is a black American, and their maid is an alien incarnation of Tommy Lee Jones, you’ll be fine. Maybe. They are “The White Family,” a staple of telecom Softbank’s commercials on TV, and they have become the most popular recurring commercial characters in Japan. The ads have worked: SoftBank was a newcomer in Japan’s mobile-phone business in 2006, and are now poised to surpass KDDI’s au as the nation’s second-largest carrier.

For our money, the main attraction is the dog, an Ainu-ken, or Hokkaido, whose voice is provided by one of Japan’s most well-known actors (the “Laurence Olivier of Japan,” as he’s called), 69-year-old Kinya Kitaouji. The “maid,” well, that’s a bit of curious casting, but since we’d watch Tommy Lee Jones read a premium notice, it’s all good.