To help customers experience the speed of its new data service, Japan’s top cellphone provider is…frying up some shrimp?

Battered by declining profits, NTT Docomo Inc. is using humor and some frighteningly high-tech cooking gear in its latest television commercial.

The commercial, called “Three-Second Cooking: Explosively Fast Fried Shrimp,” at first mimics the format of a typical Japanese cooking show. But things quickly heat up as the chef straps on heat-resistant goggles and loads ingredients into a Rube-Goldberg-like contraption. The shrimp, fired from cylinders, fly in two lanes through bread crumbs, oil and flames. As promised, they fry in three seconds flat.

Some small print in the video says that Docomo made the equipment specially for the commercial, using six pressurizers, a computer system and shock-absorbent material to halt the fried shrimp in their flight.

Choosing two lanes was an “expression of the two bandwidths that only LTE uses,” the company said, referring to its Long Term Evolution service.

The video online spread almost as quickly as the shrimp flew out of the gates, with thousands of tweets and retweets.

Still, the company warns audiences not to get too enthusiastic: “This is very dangerous, so definitely do not try to imitate it, please.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkaIoH6Um60