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★Kawaii Interior Decoration★
25/JUL/2009 on air

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What are they saying? I can tell you…

Today Japanese Yen hit strongest againt USD for the first time in 14 years. Yesterday’s big news was that 1USD was exchanged at 86 yen for the first time in 14 years, but today it broke the record.

Strong Yen is damage to Japanese economy, as it relies on exporting business. It’s said that we have to strengthen domestic consumption more and try not too much to be dependent on foreign demand.

Then what’s going on among domestic business?
I have to say it’s in the middle of deflation, unfortunately, which we can feel everyday even before we heard the statement from our government some time ago.

We’ve been soaked in deflation for a decade, and I cannot even remember what it was like to be inflation. (I’d say I don’t know inflation, because in the 1980s I was only a kid who didn’t know how adults enjoyed our bubble economy. Our economy has been bad since I started to work and nothing’s changed in a good way. Things are rather getting worse! ) In the past 10 years up until now, our salary is less likely to be raised, bonus is highly cut off, lay-off or bankruptcy is always, almost 0% of interests for the bank savings, and low prices are the only valid reason to attract customers.

*Disclaimer: The photo is quoted from g.u.’s PDF flyer from here.

Especially low prices, I’m afraid this trend is accelerating. Do you know that we can buy a pair of jeans for only 990 yen at g.u. (g.u. is cheaper version of Uniqlo) or for 880 yen at super market such as Aeon or Daiei, and even for 690 yen at Don Quijote today? As far as what I hear, the good thing about that is not “You get what you pay for.” I’ve never tried these things, but people say they are mostly satisfied with the price and what they can get. Thus, they get more than what they paid for.

I miss old days when people said “Everything is expensive in Japan” as now it’s apparently wrong today. When I am inside the deflation economy, my perception or judgment is based on Tokyo pricing. With such observing point, there’s no wonder I felt that eating out in Australia or Europe required too much money when I travelled last summer. But now I know that they are normal, as their economy is growing with healthy inflation. It’s not that they are charging too much, it was our problem. Our economy situation was very weird and something insane.

Everyone is happy about low prices, including me. On the other hand though, I am so worried about what’s going on in our country. I feel sorry for the situation of our economy that allows extraordinarily cheap things like under 1000 yen jeans. How do you see this?

When you have sequence of negative experience, sadness, madness, disappointment, failure, and etc. don’t you think you feel like blaming your fate?

When I was younger, I couldn’t stop comparing my life or myself with my friends’, although I knew that was completely nonsense. It just made me sad whenever I wondered why my family was not happy while my friend’s one was, why I was so bad at math, why I had less good friends, why, why, why…and that only tortured myself more and more…

This bad habit didn’t change even after I started working. Whenever I saw my colleagues’ good designs and cool ideas, I questioned myself “Was I able to come up with such an idea? No, I don’t think so…” and I was upset.

There’s no one who has only good things, and vice versa. That’s too natural to be told. Yes, I know. But I want that to be told from time to time. SInce most of Japanese people do not have religion, which however doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in whatever God, I think I sometimes want to listen to preaches from someone who has deep experience of his life.

Lately I read a book “Seifu no housoku (正負の法則)“. It means principle of positive and negative in this universe. And this book taught me something very interesting.

According to the author, Akihiro Miwa, anyone’s life is even with good things and bad things happening equally. One of the parts I found interesting was that if your life is too many good things so far, you’d better go for charity or something before bad things actually occur to you. If you just enjoy good things, you will have to have very bad things to balance your life, because that’s how life is supposed to be.

In that sense, he says if your life is so-so or OK, that’s considered good enough because you wouldn’t have very bad things to set off. People would envy beautiful, rich, popular and successful people, but they should have negative things to set off such positive things.
I thought that’s one of the reasons why celebrities or rich people make donation often, in order to set off their too many positive things.

My life has become something more relaxed since I stopped comparing.
This book also made me expect good things from so many bad things so far happened in my life.
What do you think? Have you heard of similar story?

Aflac (American Family Life Assurance Company) is an American insurance company that is successfully increasing its sales in Japan, too. Basically I don’t like TV commercials of any insurance companies, and Aflac was not exceptional. I have negative images on them because sometimes I’m annoyed by their sales pitch phone calls.

As you may have already known it well, duck is often used in a TV commercials of Aflac. In Japan, it has been the same. The duck has been a symbol of Aflac. You can watch several commercials of Aflac in Japan from here.

But recently they released a cute original character named “Manekinekoduck” and I’m in love with this since I got a mascot from some medical seminar that was sponsored by Aflac the other day.
Video is worth a thousand words. There’s Manekinekoduck song available.

Here’s a photo of the mascot I have.

What I am impressed is not only the cuteness of the character or the song, but their effort to compete in Japanese market. I mean, “When in Japan, do as the Japanese do”. That is to say, creating original character or paying for a copyright to collaborate with famous character such as Rilakkuma is inevitable to win more Japanese customers today. Characters are not only for kids or girls. Any aged men or women like to have character goods in Japan.

In fact, Manekinekoduck has already changed my negative image towards insurance company so far, and I do press it several times a day to enjoy its singing. This cute character is awesome. It’s going to brainwash us and someday I may knock on the door of Aflac’s office to join their insurance. :p

Many international companies come and leave Japan. It doesn’t mean their strategy that worked out in the U.S or Europe will do in Japan, too. I can see that Aflac is adjusting to Japanese market now, and I liked that.

How did you like Manekinekoduck?
(Manekineko= beckoning cat)

Upon this post, I received an interesting comment from Shayna and I’d like to share my opinion in this post.

Here’s her question:
“Why do Japanese people tend to dress up almost the same as everyone else (etc. wearing same color workshirt – which is White most of the time, carrying the same design of work bags and also shoes, belts, etc?)
I really want to know what is the reason behind this…. Hope you could share with me…”

She is speaking of the photo I uploaded in the above post (you can check it from here) and you can see every young Japanese man and woman is getting dressed almost exactly the same as the one next to him or her.

This photo focuses on those who came to seminars run by Japanese blue chip companies that were trying to hire new graduates next or next after next spring. That’s why they dress in this way to stay as “safe” (無難). I don’t want you to misunderstand that we are dressing like this same way to this extent in any cases, which is apparent if you are a regular audience of Tokyo Kawaii TV that tells what’s going on in today’s Tokyo fashion.

But you’ll still wonder why we have to get dressed with the same color, same bag, same shoes, same coordination, etc. I said that is to be liked by HR of the companies they met on the day. But you’d think, “It shouldn’t be that same, and it should be alright as long as the looks are appropriate for such occasions.” Right, and I think so, that’s why I sometimes feel that I don’t fit into Japanese culture, although I am 100% Japanese! LOL

First of all, let me tell you this. In Japan, it’s basically considered good to be the same as others. This tendency gets stronger when you go to country side, or when you have to be conservative, just like the meeting with companies mentioned above or in such occasions like everyone orders the same thing at a restaurant when they are not close each other. Men are basically more conservative than women, and I think that’s why every Japanese business man looks almost the same as others.

There are following proverbs in Japan and being unique and sticking out of the crowd is regarded “not pleasant”. And staying the same as majority of other people is considered safe, peaceful, pleasant, and nice in Japan.

-出る杭は打たれる。(Nail sticking up is ready to be hammered.)
-寄らば大樹の陰。(Select a big tree for your shelter. / There’s safety in numbers.)
-長いものには巻かれろ。(Yield to the powerful.)

Being homogeneous race and speaking only Japanese in a small island may have created such culture. I sometimes feel sick when I’m back from other cosmopolitan big cities where many other nations live together to feel how small it was where I was living. This sense is very difficult to explain, but it’s there!
Considering that these people are trying to get job under such bad economy, they should not give bad impressions to the companies. There are some stupid companies that secretly say no to specific colored suits like navy blue and the students need to be safest because it’s ridiculous if they didn’t pass the interview or a ticket to the next step because of what they put on.

But it’s also true that Harajuku – Shibuya fashion that is often picked up by Tokyo Kawaii TV is also something special. Most of the places, you’ll hear such conversations in Japan.

shop assistant : “This shirt is selling well in this season. It was also introduced in this fashion magazine and that one, too. The model XX-chan wears this. Isn’t it cute? Many people come buy it, so why don’t you get one for yourself while there’s a stock?”

shopper : “Which color is most popular?”

shop assistant : “Definitely this one!”

shopper : “Then, let me take it!”

To me it’s no way! I don’t want to wear something many people like to. I just like to buy what I like, and whether it sells well or not doesn’t matter at all! How about you? I wish I were good at sewing and enjoy making and wearing clothes of my original. :p