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Missing your market: Facebook in Japan

A classic anecdote: Jean Snow reports that a fellow blogger’s wife is unable to open a Facebook account due to her family name being Yoda.

Any word yet on whether New York Islanders right winger Miroslav Satan has a Facebook account?

Shibuya’s Butlers Cafe makes CNN

Financial markets are closed today, so here’s the latest mass-media fluff piece to be done on Japan:

CNN is reporting on the “Butlers Cafe” staffed with western men in Shibuya with the sub-headline, “Japan’s women go ga-ga over a cafe filled with Western servers.” ¹

The two customers definitely could have played along and seemed a bit happier to be there.

¹ The headline itself is actually, “White man cafe in Tokyo.”

Butlers Cafe website

Amidst rising prices, might foodcrime be the next trend?

After all the hoopla surrounding food safety and labeling in Japan over the past year, and the subsequent hand-wringing over higher prices, especially of dairy products and grains, it seems just about time for a new trend to come in: Foodcrime.

To set up some background, first we need to keep in mind that wholesale wheat prices have nearly doubled in Japan in the past year. According to data released by the Bank of Japan yesterday, the rising price of wheat and wheat flour imports continue to contribute to Japan’s rising wholesale prices. Products such as noodles and spaghetti, which are made from wheat, have seen consumer price increases over 10% over the past months.

Japan is certainly not slowing down in its importation of wheat. According to figures released by the USDA this morning, the size of Japan’s wheat purchase from the US increased to 84,200 metric tons last month, ranking third behind Nigeria and Chile. This accounts for just over 13% of the wheat exported by the US in that time (on a side note, Japan purchased 33.6% of the corn that the US put up for export sale, though Japan did buy less corn than South Korea).

On the domestic front, a 30% price hike has been approved for wheat sales for the 2009 crop.

back to the story: this morning, the Mainichi reported that 2 tons of flour had been stolen from a wholesale company’s warehouse in Saitama. Although we’re not told if this was wheat flour, or whether it was imported or domestic in origin (which would be more likely), we do know that the flour was valued at 270,000 yen and that it was stolen with the firm’s own truck, which was returned to the warehouse, showing an increase of only 8 kilometers on its odometer.

This is hardly the first time food has been stolen in Japan, but we’re forced to wonder if the current environment of rising prices mixed with the guaranteed rise of prices for next year’s crop won’t lead to an increase in such incidents. If nothing else, more cases of mislabeled food should be expected.

Problem solved: Home antennas for cell phones legal from next summer

This morsel was in this morning’s Nikkei:

The government plans to revise telecommunications regulations to allow cell phone users to install small ground stations at their homes, offices or stores by summer 2008 to improve signal reception.

The change will make it possible to use handsets in high-rise condominiums, underground facilities and mountainous areas — places that are often outside the range of cellular phone service.

You won’t need an engineer to show up and install the antenna (they’re being awfully careful not to use that word. I guess ‘ground station’ is somehow more marketable), which is the law right now. Just head on down to Bic Camera, buy yourself an antenna and set it up at home. Instant cell phone reception.

No word yet on when DIY service provider kits will be hitting the market…

The Last Resort Travel Cafe?

According to their website, a firm named “Last Resort”, which offers study and work abroad programs, has teamed up with another company named Travel Cafe to open a “Last Resort Travel Cafe” in Tokyo’s Kamedo Station.

They look like they know what they’re doing, but the name “Last Resort” strikes me as odd for a firm that helps people seek work and study opportunities abroad. Is the Bank of Japan their shareholder of last resort?

The best part of Travel Cafe’s site is the picture of Juan Valdez. He sure is getting younger. Has he been rebranded?

Pesek on Japanese Women in the Workplace, and Riyo Mori

In a January 2007 interview with the Daily Telegraph, then Chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council (and former METI Minister under Koizumi) Shoichi Nakagawa told the paper:

Women have their proper place: they should be womanly…They have their own abilities and these should be fully exercised, for example in flower arranging, sewing, or cooking. It’s not a matter of good or bad, but we need to accept reality that men and women are genetically different[.]

With all the trouble Japan has, and its stubborn inability to empower women in the workforce and provide them with the sort of employment opportunities that might actually help Japan, this is what the guy in charge of the ruling party’s policy research council had to say. Of course, Abe hired him. The comment went virtually unnoticed in Japan, but the attitude is hardly surprising.

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Catching up on late night business stories…Wal-Mart and Seiyu

Wal-Mart, which has invested over $1 billion in taking a 53.6% stake in supermarket chain Seiyu, announced that it expects to post its sixth consecutive annual loss in 2007, to the tune of about 5.9 billion yen, or about $50 million. Despite that, Wal-Mart holds that it is not considering pulling out of the Japanese market.

Wal-Mart pulled out of South Korea and Germany last year. Seiyu accounts for 10% of the firm’s international receipts.

Free advice to Wal-Mart: Get out now. Seiyu is a money pit. Here’s why:

1) Being in Seiyu is like being in the late 1970s or maybe up until the mid 1980s. The stores are dirty, cramped and generally useless. Renovating them is a waste of money, because being in them will still be a waste of time. It only serves to enrich the owners of construction firms (Ahem). Not to mention, Seiyu has one of the worst seafood sections in Japan. That should tell you something.

2) Supermarket sales in Japan? How are they going for you? On a year-on-year basis, supermarket sales in Japan have been down 18 consecutive months, and 39 of the past 40. The population is shrinking. Taxes have been increased (tax breaks have been rolled back). The consumption tax will most likely be hiked soon.

3) Seiyu’s brand image is not so good. It’s not going to improve. Rather than simply renovating the stores and hoping that helps the brand image, why not try actually adding value for the customers by carrying a different range of goods (at pretty much the same price) as every other supermarket chain in the country? What does Wal-Mart think is unique about Seiyu?

4) Seiyu customers are not as attractive as Tokyu Store customers. This is true. When I go into a supermarket and see people devolving, I think to myself, “They must eat shitty food.” Then I never go back there. I’d rather be surrounded by attractive fellow customers. Think about it.

The view’s so clear from the outside, isn’t it? If Wal-Mart can turn this around, I’d say it would approach a miracle, but I don’t believe in miracles. Then again, if I had sunk $1 billion dollars into Seiyu, I suppose I’d have no choice.

Free money found in Japan’s municipal toilets

Usually I avoid Japan’s city and ward offices, as well as the (shudder) immigration center. Tomorrow, however, I may just have to go treasure hunting. Apparently, envelopes with 10,000 yen notes stuffed in them have been discovered in men’s restrooms in city halls in at least 15 prefectures over the past few weeks.

Looks like a male perpetrator, and one has to wonder how long it will be before he wanders into a ladies room to try to balance the gift giving…

No sign that this is part of any new BOJ quantitative easing policy.

Tokyo slips! Down one spot, now only the fourth most expensive city for expats!

Mercer Human Resource Consulting has released their 2007 annual rankings of the most expensive cities for expatriates, and Moscow has stayed on top while Tokyo slid from the third to the fourth spot. London climbed from number five to number two, and Seoul fell one place to number three. Rounding out the top five is Hong Kong.

If you’re looking for the budget expat experience, Asuncion in Paraguay was the least expensive city surveyed for the fifth year running, coming in at #143.

Although Moscow remained on top apparently due to rising housing costs, and London is notoriously famous for such, one has to wonder if the property value boom in Tokyo might help push it back towards the top.

At the end of its description, Mercer included this line in both bold and italic text: We do not recommend that expatriates use these figures to compare their own compensation packages.

Don’t worry, Mercer! Expats in Tokyo use a different yardstick, but it wouldn’t be a secret if I told!

Church of England to Sony: We have nothing better to do than go after your video games

This week’s award for being out of touch with both the market and Japan goes to the Church of England. According to the Christian Post:

The Church of England on Wednesday urged the people of Japan to join its campaign against a violent Sony Corp. computer game that allegedly uses a British cathedral as a backdrop.

“For a global manufacturer to recreate the interior of any religious building such as a mosque, synagogue, or in this case, a cathedral, with photo realistic quality and then encourage people to have gun battles in the building is beyond belief and in our view highly irresponsible,” the dean of Manchester Cathedral, the Very Rev. Rogers Govender, said at a news conference.

In Tokyo, Sony’s video game unit said Wednesday it had begun talks with the Church of England over its complaint that Manchester cathedral in northwest England had been used in the shooting game for Sony’s new PlayStation 3 console.

First of all, no one buys Play Station 3s. If this was a Wii game, it might be relevant, and people might have heard of it. I suppose this is the Church of England’s way of officially announcing they have nothing better to do, no more pressing issues than attempting to police video game content.

But the best part is the attempt to urge the people of Japan to speak out against a video game (which Japanese people know isn’t real - thus the word ‘game’) which depicts violence against a church. About all I can say is that delusion runs deep in the West. If they do persuade more than five Japanese people to take up their cause, I’ll sign up for their marketing course.

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