Hip H(ip)&M

One of the latest international clothes chain that opened a branch in Japan is H&M. Not surprising that this is a highly interesting consumer market for international fashion companies. Japan is THE super fashion-conscious nation and you certainly do not want to miss out on Japanese consumers. Numerous international chains have branches here, from the very high end to casual clothes like GAP, Banana Republic or Zara.
The stories about Japanese women spending the night in front of the new Louis Vuitton flagship store have made it to world news already. This brand is iconic here, the name has made it to literary fame even like hip young author Hitomi Kanehara`s heroine Lui ("Snakes and Earrings", Hitomi Kanehara, 2005) who is named after Louis Vuitton. Questionable as it is to spend the night in front of a store that sells products that you can, well, get for a fraction of the price and in millions of copies from China... But queing in front of H&M?!
H&M opened it`s first shop in Japan last October in the high end shopping area of Ginza in Tokyo. There were endless queues in front of the store in October obviously. I went there in late November, having heard about the phenomenon and still had to queue to get inside. 15 minutes, but it seemed absurd to do that to have a look at mass ware from China and India. The second shop was opened this spring in trendy Harajuku.
Both shops look decidedly more upscale than those in Europe. Despite selling the same cheap clothes, the interior design of the stores and the fact that clothes are not so much crammed into the shelves makes it look much more boutique. H&M certainly did not save on interior and exterior design and on rental cost, considering the expensive locations those shops are at.
An article from the Japan Marketing site that was issued before the opening of the first shop predicted H&M would fail here: http://www.japanmarketingnews.com/2006/12/in_japan_the_bi.html Japan is an attractive, but difficult market as consumers are quality concious and hyper fashion sensitive. The article also points out that the expensive locations will make it difficult for a narrow margin brand as H&M to make profits. It remains to be seen. I have so far neither heard that they are behind expectations nor that they plan to open new stores, so remains to be observec. Regarding the quality issue I would say that Zara should face the tougher situation. From personal experience I have to say that their clothes are lower quality generally than H&Ms and by far more pricey, so should be less attractive to the Japanese customer even. And they do have numerous branches here, so seem to be faring well with the customers. They have to starting advantages: they are new and foreign, that sells.

Electronics paradise

After my laptop kindly broke down right after my arrival in Japan, I needed to do something asap. Running some checks on my laptop, I found out that the hard disk had become unreadable and after checking the error code on a couple of internet forums, I deemed it a waste of money to call HELL helpdesk. So off to Tokyo`s electronics town Akihabara.
Akihabara is known for two things: cheap electronic products and "Otakus" - freaks who are usually dig porn manga. Spending time in Akihabara soon results in a headache, it`s flashy with neon lights in every possible spot and loud to drive you crazy. In front of every store some guy is shouting out the latest offers on electronics, lcd screens showing commercials and then endless beeping, beeping, beeping from whatever appliances that are constantly running. Nothing for weak nerves, really.
I was originally looking for a netbook with English operating system, for obvious reasons. There are only a handfull of export oriented stores that do sell those. It turned out that the choice of models for the English language models is very limited, to about four, two of which were some Chinese brands I had never heard of in my life and would not consider buying. The prices were rather steep compared to the Japanese models and it turned out that it only included a trial version of Office for 60 days and the permanent version would cost quite a bit in addition. Nothing attractive at all. What was interesting was that the new target customer group are the Chinese. There was Chinese speaking staff in the stores and quite a few Chinese tourist groups shopping for electronics.
It turned out that the only place in Akihabara where I could get a cheaper, brand notebook was in some Indian guys` shop on a corner. Just that the models on offer were a couple of years old...
I finally went to the more quiet "Bic Camera" store in Shinjuku and ended up buying a Japanese language Acer netbook for a pretty decent price. They even found a shop assistant who was willing to try his best to consult me in English (it was more a J-inglish conversation).
I had some problems setting the thing up at home then and it would have taken me a while to translate all the kanji (Chinese characters), but what do I have Japanese collocators for? Tomoko and Jun were nice enough to do it for me and now all I have to struggle with are the Japanese language programms... It`s quite funny, not necessarily convenient, but ok for now. Please excuse me if all of a sudden a few Japanese characters appear in the text - it means I hit the wrong button :-)

English with Obama

In Japan there is a huge market for English training. Most want to learn English, most have tried it for years already - with very little success. I had a good laugh recently when I saw one of the social ads on Facebook advertising an English learning method with the label "developed in Japan". C`mon guys, "Made in Japan" is a quality label for many goods. But English training isn`t cars or electronics or healthy food or fashion, it`s something that Japan has hardly any competency in. Everyone learns English for 8-10 years and the only people who speak decent English worthy the name, are those who spent time abroad. I reasonably judge Japanese English teaching methods to be some of the most inefficient on the planet. Yes, English is difficult to learn for Japanese, but so is Japanese for me and I`d be ashamed if after 8-10 years of Japanese classes I wasn`t pretty, pretty fluent in it.
Now the latest craze in the English training market is "Learning English with Obama". The booksstores` foreign language section heavily advertise books and CD ROMs that teach you English through Obama speeches. So what they did was pretty much burning Barack Obama`s campaign speeches and of course the inauguration speech on CD, print fancy looking booklets with the text in written, an English-Japanese vocab section and a pretty Obama picture on the cover and sell it in countless educationally valuable volumes. My favourite is probably the "inauguration speeches over time". It brings the office freshman`s thoughts of Obama and another couple of former US presidents closer to the Japanese learners` community, back to the Gettysburg Address. I am SO looking forward to seeing what kind of English skills this new method will result in... But at least the Japanese are as always fashionable with the Obama mania.

No mobile, no friends

I brought two (Swiss) mobile phones with me when I came to Japan. What I didn't realize is that Japan uses a different technology and our phones do generally not work here. I was annoyed, but thought "what the hell, I have lived without a mobile phone before". Yes, I have BUT a) hardly anyone else had one back then b) I was not in a foreign country frequently meeting people I had just met and c) most importantly I was not in Japan where a mobile phone is the key to social life (it's pretty much become that in Switzerland too by the way).
I soon noticed that Japanese mobile phones are way more sophisticated than ours and that the Japanese use them for many things we generally don't use them for. GPS, dictionary, weather forecast, checking e-mails, blind dating, kanji translator, health and fitness supervisor, cash machine locator, etc., etc. There are few things that you don't seem to be able to do with the more sophisticated versions of the product.
The "keitai" as is its name in Japanese is essential for social life and survival here. And I didn't realize what the consequences would be of not having one. Japanese love to exchange phone numbers. So whereever you go you'd be asked for your phone number (not just by guys ;-). I thought giving an e-mail address would be an adequate substitute. But turned out it was not. These days, a lot of Japanese do not use their web e-mail anymore, but use e-mail over the phone. To filter out spam, all e-mails coming from the web are blocked, only those sent by phone are received. So I ended up being frustrated over failure messages, before I finally found out what had caused these.
Well, a Japanese mobile phone had been on my "must have" list since the beginning of my stay here anyway. Funny, because I never cared about them at home, but here they are just too seductively fancy, hightech, stylish - you name it... They seem to be of quite a different, more advanced breed and I am amazed that they have not spread over to Europe yet. So after having made the mistake of renting a phone for 2 weeks, which cost me a horrendous 70$ while a cheap new phone is 60$, I purchased my own keitai. The guys at the Softbank (Japanese mobile provider) shop got slightly nervous at the prospect of having to explain their deals in English, but somehow we managed to conclude the business (despite my lack of a Japanese address which was a problem too).
It's great to be able to reach people again. I've now had the phone for 2 months and I notice that it's also pretty good to learn Japanese. Writing and receiving text messages really improves my kanji reading and writing skills. I had to first figure out how to write on the mobile phone, but it is actually pretty simple once you've gotten into it. So I can claim that my keitai is useful in more than one way...

Sushi wonderland

I know that many of you back home love sushi (except for my mum probably everyone). And we all know that we spend a fortune when we have sushi at Noohn, Sakura or any of the other sushi bars in town. Usually a sushi dinner would cost around 40 CHF.

Japan is really sushi wonderland, which is not surprising since it's orginating here. Super fresh and many more types of sushi than we have back home. But I'm actually surprised how cheap it is, considering that Japan is said to be really expensive (which I generally haven't found it to be so far). The cheapest way to have sushi is buy maki rolls from a convenience store like am/pm. A roll costs a little more than 100 Yen (~1 CHF) and is probably around 12 cm long, so quite big. You also get a selection of different sushi rolls on a plate for about 300-400 Yen (3-4 CHF).

Then there is the luxury take away version from Iwataya, Japan's equivalent of Globus. The most delicious sushi plates at a slightly steeper price, but still less than half the price of the Swiss take away sushi. See picture... The sushi is super fresh also, you can see the time when it's done on the label. Yummy!

And then there are sushi bars of course. I have found a really nice and cheap one, the "sushi train" kind of place. Delicious assortment of various types of sushi that usually cost 120-300 Yen per plate. For a lunch I would typically spend around 700-1000 Yen (7-10 CHF). Isn't that cool, to have super fresh delicious sushi for the price of a canteen lunch?

I'll be spoilt for Swiss sushi forever...

Sun protection

How popular are suntans in Japan? Well, from what I see they're not at all.
You might see the odd surfer (-girl) on the beach who is deeply tanned and proudly showing it off. Otherwise white skin seems to be the desirable thing here. You see a vast assortment of whitening lotions at drugstores. Malls sell elbow length sunprotection gloves and leg"warmers". And women all either wear a big sunhat or carry an elegant sun umbrella. Malls sell these in all kinds of fabrics, colors, sizes and price ranges. It's much harder to find umbrellas against rain actually.

I decided to go with the trend, although I'm not opposed to having a little tan. As I would inevitably loose the umbrella given the first opportunity and since I consider these a bit ridiculous, I went for the hat. There are tons of beautiful hats on sale. Found mine in a small shop in Daymio quarter and I really think I picked a nice "kawaii" (cute) one. Don't you think so?

How much is a melon worth?

I had read in my guidebook that expensive fruit is a popular hostess gift here in Japan. I went to a supermarket this week and learned what expensive means.

There was a regular fruit section with prices comparable to ours. And there was the gift section with the nicest looking fruit ever. All fruit was really polished and came in a perfect shape as well. Huge peaches, perfectly round melons, polished cherries. All wrapped in nice paper or in little gift boxes. The price? Well, a single melon could cost up to 12'000 Yen (105 CHF). The gift set composed of a melon and a small box of cherries costs 10'500 Yen. And how much would you be willing to pay for this?...