"wow!!"
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Buying, Selling, and Twittering All the Way
Jerry DeFrancisco twitters to a Best Buy customer. Retailers twitter to attract shoppers.
Once upon a time, people mailed their holiday wishes to the North Pole and hoped for a reply on Christmas Day. Nowadays they are sending their wishes into cyberspace and are apt to get a reply in minutes.
Ms. Kern in Los Angeles used the service on Friday. After she could not get her new navigation system to work, she tried Best Buy’s telephone support line, only to receive a warning that her wait would be an hour. So she posted on Twitter instead, and within minutes, Best Buy employees were sending her useful links and details about her gadget. “It’s amazing,” she said later in the day. (Her interaction with the employees ultimately helped her realize she would need to go back to the store for help.)
Once upon a time, people mailed their holiday wishes to the North Pole and hoped for a reply on Christmas Day. Nowadays they are sending their wishes into cyberspace and are apt to get a reply in minutes.
America’s first Twitter Christmas got under way in earnest on Friday. Across the land, retailers and their customers used the social networking site to talk to one another about bargains, problems, purchases and shopping strategies.
After buying a new navigation system at 6 a.m. on the most frenzied shopping day of the year, Laura S. Kern of Los Angeles could not figure out why it was not giving her traffic updates. She sent a message to Best Buy’s Twitter account and within five minutes not one, but two Best Buy employees responded with fix-it advice.
In Bloomington, Minn., Mall of America used its Twitter page to tell consumers two of its parking areas were at capacity and that their best bet was to park near Ikea.
Twitter permits public communication via short, to-the-point messages. Many people use it to send mundane updates to their friends, but increasingly, the nation’s retailers see it as a business tool.
It gives customers a practical way to cajole a retailer, complain about something or ask questions.
A Twitter post can in theory be seen by millions, and thus packs more punch than an e-mail message or a phone call to a store. The big retailers are all scrambling this Christmas to come up with Twitter plans. They are designating tech-savvy employees to respond to the posts, sometimes by providing up-to-minute inventory information from a sales floor, for example, or by offering help with some balky gadget.
“It’s one of the greatest emerging communication channels out there,” said Greg Ahearn, senior vice president of marketing and e-commerce for Toys “R” Us. “This is a way people can stay connected with the brand in a way they’ve never been able to before.”
So far this shopping weekend, special deals have been posted on Twitter from stores as varied as Best Buy, J.C. Penney, Toys “R“ Us, Staples, Gap, Bloomingdale’s, and Barneys. (Links to the retailing Twitter accounts mentioned in this article can be found in the Web version of the story on NYTimes.com.)
For the uninitiated, Twitter.com is a Web site where each member has a password-protected page. It has a blank box for typing in a message of 140 characters or fewer, an act known as tweeting.
To see a retailer’s messages, Twitter users “follow” the retailer, which means that the chain’s posts show up on their Twitter home page when they log in. And the system allows users to send messages in the other direction, so that a retailer’s employees will see them.
“I think in this economy you need to leverage every asset that you have,” said James Fielding, president of Disney Stores Worldwide, who sends messages under the Twitter name, or handle, DisneyStorePrez.
On Friday morning, as consumers flooded Disney Stores around the country, Mr. Fielding messaged: “We have amazing ONE DAY ONLY deals previewing on our Facebook page — become a fan today and find out more!”
Retailers hope that if they send Twitter messages, consumers will come. About 47 percent of retailers said they would increase their use of social media this holiday season, according to a study by Shop.org, part of the National Retail Federation, an industry group. And more than half of retailers said they added or improved their Facebook and Twitter pages. There are advantages for consumers too, like discounts. For instance, those who decided to follow Gap Outlet received an offer for 15 percent off purchases of $75 or more.
As shoppers jammed the aisles on Friday at a Best Buy store in Arlington Heights, Ill., an employee, Jerry DeFrancisco, went up to a computer kiosk and used his Twitter account to tell customers about Best Buy’s home theater deals. Then he resumed his in-store duties, helping a customer decipher a sales circular.
A few months ago, Best Buy began piloting a Twelpforce — a Twitter-inspired play on “help force” — of some 2,500 employees that answer consumers’ questions in real time.
“It’s 24-hour access to our employees,” said Brad Smith, director of interactive marketing and emerging media for Best Buy. The Twelpforce had fielded about 25,000 questions even before gearing up for Thanksgiving weekend.
“It’s 24-hour access to our employees,” said Brad Smith, director of interactive marketing and emerging media for Best Buy. The Twelpforce had fielded about 25,000 questions even before gearing up for Thanksgiving weekend.
Ms. Kern in Los Angeles used the service on Friday. After she could not get her new navigation system to work, she tried Best Buy’s telephone support line, only to receive a warning that her wait would be an hour. So she posted on Twitter instead, and within minutes, Best Buy employees were sending her useful links and details about her gadget. “It’s amazing,” she said later in the day. (Her interaction with the employees ultimately helped her realize she would need to go back to the store for help.)
Many retailers will be posting to their Twitter pages throughout the weekend and the entire holiday season. Some chains have an official Twitter account. Others have many, like one for each store, or one for each employee who wants to post messages. There are Twitter pages for designers, like Nicole Miller and Diane von Furstenberg.
Retailers also use Facebook to interact with their customers. But Facebook, with its photo albums and various applications, does not have the same no-frills immediacy as Twitter — which is why Twitter is ideal for instantaneously announcing sales.
In addition to bargains, stores are also using Facebook and Twitter to promote contests and games that they hope will keep consumers engaged and coming back. Best Buy has an interactive Secret Santa application on its Facebook page. Gap is using Twitter to inform New York City residents and visitors where its “Gap Cheer” bus (filled with dancers and drummers) will be parked and giving away sweaters and jeans.
Of course, sometimes retailers simply use their Twitter posts to capture the spirit of the season. At 3:30 Thursday morning, an employee posted seven words on the Macy’s Twitter page, about a marching band that was practicing hours before the chain’s Thanksgiving day parade.
It said: “Is he really running with a tuba?”
Friday, November 27, 2009
IKEA Facebook Showroom
Does it remind you of the "burger king sacrifice your friend for a burger"campaign?
Awesome promo that let's users win stuff by tagging photos of IKEA rooms on Facebook.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Your doctor wants you to smoke
Doctor on CallO.K., hindsight is 20/20, and when this ad was created in 1946, the link to lung cancer wasn't totally set in stone. But the curator of the exhibition, Dr. Robert Jackler, not incidentally the chair of the department of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine, still thinks it egregious. "The ads were intended to reassure a worried public about a product even known back then as 'coughin' nails,' " he says. What's more reassuring than the small-town doctor? "The response of the organized medical community was to do nothing, because the ads showed doctors looking wise," adds Jackler. (Note the unintended irony in "Camels: Costlier Tobaccos.")Read more: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1848212_1777633,00.html#ixzz0Xhjb1EAO
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Fat Fees and Smoker Surcharges: Tough-Love Health Incentives
Psychology Professor Anita Blanchard has a pretty sweet deal with her employer. Even if the 40-something mother of three leaves her job at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the state of North Carolina guarantees her premium-free health insurance that will cover 80% of her health care costs for life. But's there's a hitch: she can't gain too much weight or start smoking. If she does, she could be on the hook for an additional 10% of her health care tab.
Companies have long promoted healthier behavior by subsidizing gym memberships and smoking-cessation classes. But several private and public employers have started tying financial incentives to their health-insurance plans. North Carolina this year became the second state to approve an increase in out-of-pocket expenses for state workers who smoke and don't try to quit or who are morbidly obese and don't try to lose weight. Alabama was the first to pass what critics call a fat fee, in 2008, and several state insurance plans have started imposing a $25 monthly surcharge on smokers.
There's even a push in Congress to let employers further link lifestyles to insurance premiums. Right now companies that run their own insurance programs can reward employees with bonuses or premium reductions of up to 20% if they meet certain health guidelines. John Ensign, Republican Senator from Nevada, and Tom Carper, Democratic Senator from Delaware, co-sponsored an amendment to the current health care bill that would raise the limit to as high as 50%. The Senate Finance Committee gave it a thumbs-up in September.
Nationwide, employee insurance premiums have increased 131% over the past decade, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And it's well documented that smoking and obesity are associated with higher medical costs. That helps explain why 34% of respondents in a new Aon survey of more than 1,300 employers said they plan to introduce or increase financial incentives to encourage participation in wellness programs and why 17% plan to do the same for disease-management programs.
But there's a big difference between handing out gift cards and jacking up people's co-pays. The Tar Heel State in particular has been criticized for using a big-stick approach. Starting in July, state workers who smoke will be moved from the plan that covers 80% of health care costs to one that pays 70%, an out-of-pocket difference of approximately $480 a year, unless they agree to enroll in a smoking-cessation program.
In 2011, the state will turn its attention to the obese. Workers who have a body mass index (BMI) below 40--e.g., someone who is 5 ft. 6 in. and weighs 250 lb.--can remain in the 80% plan for the first year. But after that, they need to either have a BMI of 35 (5 ft. 6 in., 217 lb.) or enroll in a weight-loss program to qualify for the less expensive plan.
Alabama, rather than adopting penalties, is offering discounts on state workers' $70 monthly premiums. To get $30 off for not using tobacco, participants have to sign a form under penalty of perjury. (An audit of relevant medical records could result in back-billing and a recall of claims.) Since the plan started giving such a discount in 2005, it has seen a 4% decline in the number of smokers.
After Dec. 31, state employees in Alabama will be eligible for an additional $25 discount on their monthly premiums if screenings indicate that their blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol and weight are in the normal range or if they see a doctor to address any risk factors. People with a BMI of 35 or higher have to enroll in a weight-loss program to receive the discount.
"We're trying to get across to the population that they have to take responsibility for their well-being and engage in more healthy behavior," says Jack Walter, executive director of the North Carolina State Health Plan. The plan estimates that claims for chronic diseases related to obesity may top $108 million a year and claims for tobacco-related illnesses more than $137 million a year.
It's too early to know whether raising the cost of insurance will lead to behavioral changes. But dangling carrots seems to work. In 2005 the Safeway supermarket chain implemented a voluntary wellness plan. Employees who take and pass tests for such things as blood pressure and cholesterol levels can reduce their annual insurance premiums by nearly $800. The company credits the plan with keeping its insurance costs flat on a per capita basis for the past five years.
You might think organizations that focus on improving health and eradicating disease would be thrilled that employers are coming up with more incentives to lose weight and stop smoking. But in October the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and 61 other organizations sent a letter to Congress calling the Ensign-Carper amendment discriminatory and warning that it could make health insurance too expensive for the people who need it most. Says George Huntley of the American Diabetes Association: "This is not a wellness program. It's a penalty for failing to achieve a specific health status."
The University of North Carolina's Blanchard, a fit nonsmoker, is among those troubled by the changes to her state's health-insurance plan. "I understand the perspective that people who are carrying more risk should pay more, but it just doesn't seem fair," she says. "I don't think it's the best way to get people to lose weight and stop smoking." Then again, people who get caught speeding have to pay more for car insurance. Has that made us all safer drivers?
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1940693,00.html
Companies have long promoted healthier behavior by subsidizing gym memberships and smoking-cessation classes. But several private and public employers have started tying financial incentives to their health-insurance plans. North Carolina this year became the second state to approve an increase in out-of-pocket expenses for state workers who smoke and don't try to quit or who are morbidly obese and don't try to lose weight. Alabama was the first to pass what critics call a fat fee, in 2008, and several state insurance plans have started imposing a $25 monthly surcharge on smokers.
There's even a push in Congress to let employers further link lifestyles to insurance premiums. Right now companies that run their own insurance programs can reward employees with bonuses or premium reductions of up to 20% if they meet certain health guidelines. John Ensign, Republican Senator from Nevada, and Tom Carper, Democratic Senator from Delaware, co-sponsored an amendment to the current health care bill that would raise the limit to as high as 50%. The Senate Finance Committee gave it a thumbs-up in September.
Nationwide, employee insurance premiums have increased 131% over the past decade, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And it's well documented that smoking and obesity are associated with higher medical costs. That helps explain why 34% of respondents in a new Aon survey of more than 1,300 employers said they plan to introduce or increase financial incentives to encourage participation in wellness programs and why 17% plan to do the same for disease-management programs.
But there's a big difference between handing out gift cards and jacking up people's co-pays. The Tar Heel State in particular has been criticized for using a big-stick approach. Starting in July, state workers who smoke will be moved from the plan that covers 80% of health care costs to one that pays 70%, an out-of-pocket difference of approximately $480 a year, unless they agree to enroll in a smoking-cessation program.
In 2011, the state will turn its attention to the obese. Workers who have a body mass index (BMI) below 40--e.g., someone who is 5 ft. 6 in. and weighs 250 lb.--can remain in the 80% plan for the first year. But after that, they need to either have a BMI of 35 (5 ft. 6 in., 217 lb.) or enroll in a weight-loss program to qualify for the less expensive plan.
Alabama, rather than adopting penalties, is offering discounts on state workers' $70 monthly premiums. To get $30 off for not using tobacco, participants have to sign a form under penalty of perjury. (An audit of relevant medical records could result in back-billing and a recall of claims.) Since the plan started giving such a discount in 2005, it has seen a 4% decline in the number of smokers.
After Dec. 31, state employees in Alabama will be eligible for an additional $25 discount on their monthly premiums if screenings indicate that their blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol and weight are in the normal range or if they see a doctor to address any risk factors. People with a BMI of 35 or higher have to enroll in a weight-loss program to receive the discount.
"We're trying to get across to the population that they have to take responsibility for their well-being and engage in more healthy behavior," says Jack Walter, executive director of the North Carolina State Health Plan. The plan estimates that claims for chronic diseases related to obesity may top $108 million a year and claims for tobacco-related illnesses more than $137 million a year.
It's too early to know whether raising the cost of insurance will lead to behavioral changes. But dangling carrots seems to work. In 2005 the Safeway supermarket chain implemented a voluntary wellness plan. Employees who take and pass tests for such things as blood pressure and cholesterol levels can reduce their annual insurance premiums by nearly $800. The company credits the plan with keeping its insurance costs flat on a per capita basis for the past five years.
You might think organizations that focus on improving health and eradicating disease would be thrilled that employers are coming up with more incentives to lose weight and stop smoking. But in October the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and 61 other organizations sent a letter to Congress calling the Ensign-Carper amendment discriminatory and warning that it could make health insurance too expensive for the people who need it most. Says George Huntley of the American Diabetes Association: "This is not a wellness program. It's a penalty for failing to achieve a specific health status."
The University of North Carolina's Blanchard, a fit nonsmoker, is among those troubled by the changes to her state's health-insurance plan. "I understand the perspective that people who are carrying more risk should pay more, but it just doesn't seem fair," she says. "I don't think it's the best way to get people to lose weight and stop smoking." Then again, people who get caught speeding have to pay more for car insurance. Has that made us all safer drivers?
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1940693,00.html
The rise of Japan girlie man generation
Forget the salarymen, Japan's new 'herbivore' generation of males believe that life is far more important than work
Young Japanese Man
Philip Delves Broughton
Yasuo Takeuchi makes an improbable radical. Skinny, wearing jeans, a striped sports shirt and a baby blue cardigan, he is fidgety and talks in a near whisper. He is 33, works for a major publisher in Tokyo and inspired a label now applied to a new generation of Japanese men. He is the archetypal soshokukei danshi, ?herbivorous male? or Ojo-man ?girlie man?.
Herbivores are shy and quiet. They seek the friendship of women and spurn aggressive dating. They are thrifty and abhor consumerism. They like quiet evenings in with friends rather than drinking till they vomit in the izakaya bars of Tokyo. They are the antithesis of the macho Japanese salarymen, on whose long-suffering shoulders modern Japan was built.
Early, non-Japanese descriptions of the herbivore put them in the category of freaky Japanese cultural sideshows. From the folks who brought you robot dogs and huge-bosomed manga heroines came a large group of men in their mid-twenties to early thirties who rejected the ?carnivorous? ways of older Japanese men. Bravo Japan. Challenged by a low birth rate, rising suicide numbers and an economy shrinking at the fastest rate in 60 years it had produced a generation of neutered geeks.
But go deeper and you find that these ?girlie men? represent something different: a quiet, social revolution for which many in Japan have been clamouring for years.
Change in Japan is glacial. But the recent general election swept away the dominant Liberal Democratic Party, which had ruled Japan almost without interruption since the Second World War, and put in power the more liberal Democratic Party of Japan. The conservatism of the country, both political and social, is under threat. And the herbivores, reckoned to make up 30 to 40 per cent of men aged between 21 and 34, are staging a social revolt in which the sexes become more equal, the workplace less spiritually crushing and broken family ties are remade.
Two years ago, Megumi Ushikubo, the head of a market research firm in Tokyo, began receiving calls from panic-strickenclients in the beer and car industries. They were struggling to sell cars and beers to men in their twenties and thirties. It had once been so easy. Pitch them as a means to social status and the bars and showrooms were overrun. Not any more.
?In the 1980s, boys had to buy a car, otherwise girls would not look up to them,? says Ushikubo. ?We were leaders in consumption. Suddenly companies were asking why are guys no longer interested in cars? And why are girls telling us they aren?t interested in boys who waste their money on cars?? The trauma of Japan?s bursting economic bubble, Ushikubo found, had created a generation suspicious of the cavalier spending habits of those a few years older. They were also less willing to endure the humiliations an older generation had tolerated both at work and in relationships.
?In my generation, we had a show called 101st Proposal, in which a man proposed to 100 women and was eventually accepted the 101st time,? says Ushikubo, who was born in 1962. ?The important thing was that you tried and tried and showed endurance. Guys these days don?t want to go through that rejection. Instead they want to be acknowledged as people by girls. Being popular is a much lower priority.?
Yasuo Takeuchi epitomised the phenomenon. He grew up in Chiba, a dormitory town just outside Tokyo. All the fathers in town were salarymen, who took the train into Tokyo early in the morning and came home late. But his father never pressured his son to do as he did. ?All the fathers in town were quite radical like this. They let the children do what they wanted with their lives. In fact, they encouraged it.? Takeuchi went to Tokyo University to study physics, where he found friends who, like him, did not accept that their fate was to suffer silently in Japan?s vast corporations and bureaucracies. They envisioned work occupying a discreet rather than overwhelming place in their lives. And they believed that family friends mattered far more than shopping or travel.
It was a change from the generations that preceded them. The Japanese who survived the Second World War were stoic in turning their bombed-out country into the second greatest economic power in the world. Next were the baby boomers and then the ?bubble generation?, who came of age in the 1980s, when it seemed the Japanese were poised to take over the world. It was a time when the Japanese thronged Bond Street and bought the Rockefeller Centre and Van Gogh?s Irises for mind-blowing sums. There followed the lost decade when Japan entered a long slump and global attention shifted to growth economies such as China and India.
Takeuchi would hear constantly from older people how great Japan had been and how deprived he was to grow up in such austere times. The factors once seen as crucial to Japan?s success were now seen as failures: a rigid educational system that had produced generations of highly intelligent employees was now thwarting the individuality and creativity needed to rebuild the country; big corporations that had propelled Japanese industry to the top of the world were now ugly bureaucracies that suffocated their employees and stifled entrepreneurship; an ethnically homogenous people who had worked with a common purpose and set of values to build modern Japan were now insular and xenophobic.
?But I never bought that,? Takeuchi says. ?I never felt deprived.? Nor did he feel any obligation to be a corporate samurai, battling for Japan?s economic supremacy. At work he refused to dress or behave like older employees. He was considered sloppy, and his bosses thought he did not care for work. ?I just believed that at work and in life, doing OK is OK. There?s no need to show everyone how much effort you?re making.? He had no veneration for conventional models of success. ?All we want to feel is that our work has a sense of purpose.?
To hear Takeuchi talk is to hear echoes of what Westerners call Generation Y, a generation in their twenties and thirties who mystify older managers. They do not believe companies will look after them. They do not respect job titles or hierarchies, only those who control resources and produce obvious outputs. They abhor office politics and do not respond to traditional motivational tools such as promotion, pay rises and the promise of job security.
The herbivores? revolution may be one of shrugs and quiet refusals, but to take on Japan?s managerial hierarchy takes chutzpah. ?People often tell me, ?oh, you must be really confident to behave this way?,? Takeuchi says. ?But I never think of myself that way. Making a big effort to be something I?m not just isn?t me. I want to be natural, just to be myself.?
This desire to be individual may seem unremarkable in San Francisco or London but was novel enough in Japan to catch the eye of Maki Fukasawa, a marketing writer who shared an office with Takeuchi. When she talked about him with friends and older managers, she found that they were horrified, that here was the future of Japan.
The herbivores, managers complained, did not regard work as the centre of their lives. When it came to the drinking sessions essential to Japanese corporate culture, the herbivores passed. They refused to debase themselves to please a boss.
?Once I recognised the phenomenon, I noticed it everywhere,? says Fukasawa. ?Looking at the IT CEOS in Japan, I realised that they didn?t seem competitive in the same way as an older generation of Japanese CEOs. They didn?t need some trophy wife standing beside them or the expensive car or watch. They weren?t desperate to spend time in New York, London or Paris. Instead they wanted to be at home. They had lived their entire lives in an era when Japan was an established economic power, despite its troubles. They felt completely confident being Japanese.?
Fukasawa dubbed this new generation ?herbivores?, a term she says has been poorly understood in the West. ?I keep being asked if they are like the the nerdy computer game fans, or the men who buy girls? high school costumes. They?re not. We are Buddhists and the idea of being ?grass eating? is that you?re more spiritual. It?s not just the opposite of carnivorous. It means they aren?t so interested in physical things or physical relationships.?
?The more you study them, the more you think that they?re actually the ones who are consistent with traditional, pre-war Japan,? says Fukasawa. ?It was the generation of the rising economy who were ultra-competitive who were maybe the strange ones.?
In every Japanese convenience store are special sections devoted to men?s cosmetics, eyebrow shapers, packets of disposable wipes for dealing with sweat and body odor, skin whitener. The herbivores may not buy beer and cars but they spend on keeping themselves odourless, hairless and pale. Their clothes come from cheap, fashionable chains such as Uniqlo. This week, Shinya Yamaguchi, 23, a fashion designer, launches his latest collection of skirts and lacy tops ? all aimed at men. Many of Japan?s younger male celebrities, bands such as Arashi and actors like Eita, Teppei Koike and Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, project an effeminate, herbivorous look.
?It?s non-man, non-woman at the same time,? says Fukasawa. ?Sexually neutral.? This neutrality, both Fukasawa and Ushikubo believe, is a response to the changing nature of Japanese marriage. During the 30 years up to 2005, the percentage of unmarried men between 30 and 34 rose from 14 per cent to 47 per cent and the number of unmarried women from 8 to 32 per cent.
Financial insecurity among men and the social expectations imposed on married women, to have children and forego work, have made marriage less attractive. Traditional matchmaking by families and employers has also dwindled. The hunt for partners became less aggressive on both sides, to the point where businesses saw an opportunity in organising ?konkatsu? or marriage activity, social activities designed to bring singles together.
When herbivores do marry, it is with little hoopla and low expectations. Yasuo Takeuchi recently married in a small, private ceremony, and he is saving for a honeymoon in the future.
The herbivores? views, style and choices can be seen as a very positive story, about a generation of young Japanese discovering their individuality. But they also say a lot about the tensions within Japan.
?After the Second World War, we were all told that Western education was best and that Asian culture and philosophy was bad,? says Fukasawa. ?The herbivores are finding their own solution to the problem of resolving Western and Confucian values. They are a function of their time. They are dealing with the change in the economy and I think they are closer to the original Japanese character of being non-competitive, of not trying to win other people over. And as a silent majority, they have the power to change the culture.?
Young Japanese Man
Philip Delves Broughton
Yasuo Takeuchi makes an improbable radical. Skinny, wearing jeans, a striped sports shirt and a baby blue cardigan, he is fidgety and talks in a near whisper. He is 33, works for a major publisher in Tokyo and inspired a label now applied to a new generation of Japanese men. He is the archetypal soshokukei danshi, ?herbivorous male? or Ojo-man ?girlie man?.
Herbivores are shy and quiet. They seek the friendship of women and spurn aggressive dating. They are thrifty and abhor consumerism. They like quiet evenings in with friends rather than drinking till they vomit in the izakaya bars of Tokyo. They are the antithesis of the macho Japanese salarymen, on whose long-suffering shoulders modern Japan was built.
Early, non-Japanese descriptions of the herbivore put them in the category of freaky Japanese cultural sideshows. From the folks who brought you robot dogs and huge-bosomed manga heroines came a large group of men in their mid-twenties to early thirties who rejected the ?carnivorous? ways of older Japanese men. Bravo Japan. Challenged by a low birth rate, rising suicide numbers and an economy shrinking at the fastest rate in 60 years it had produced a generation of neutered geeks.
But go deeper and you find that these ?girlie men? represent something different: a quiet, social revolution for which many in Japan have been clamouring for years.
Change in Japan is glacial. But the recent general election swept away the dominant Liberal Democratic Party, which had ruled Japan almost without interruption since the Second World War, and put in power the more liberal Democratic Party of Japan. The conservatism of the country, both political and social, is under threat. And the herbivores, reckoned to make up 30 to 40 per cent of men aged between 21 and 34, are staging a social revolt in which the sexes become more equal, the workplace less spiritually crushing and broken family ties are remade.
Two years ago, Megumi Ushikubo, the head of a market research firm in Tokyo, began receiving calls from panic-strickenclients in the beer and car industries. They were struggling to sell cars and beers to men in their twenties and thirties. It had once been so easy. Pitch them as a means to social status and the bars and showrooms were overrun. Not any more.
?In the 1980s, boys had to buy a car, otherwise girls would not look up to them,? says Ushikubo. ?We were leaders in consumption. Suddenly companies were asking why are guys no longer interested in cars? And why are girls telling us they aren?t interested in boys who waste their money on cars?? The trauma of Japan?s bursting economic bubble, Ushikubo found, had created a generation suspicious of the cavalier spending habits of those a few years older. They were also less willing to endure the humiliations an older generation had tolerated both at work and in relationships.
?In my generation, we had a show called 101st Proposal, in which a man proposed to 100 women and was eventually accepted the 101st time,? says Ushikubo, who was born in 1962. ?The important thing was that you tried and tried and showed endurance. Guys these days don?t want to go through that rejection. Instead they want to be acknowledged as people by girls. Being popular is a much lower priority.?
Yasuo Takeuchi epitomised the phenomenon. He grew up in Chiba, a dormitory town just outside Tokyo. All the fathers in town were salarymen, who took the train into Tokyo early in the morning and came home late. But his father never pressured his son to do as he did. ?All the fathers in town were quite radical like this. They let the children do what they wanted with their lives. In fact, they encouraged it.? Takeuchi went to Tokyo University to study physics, where he found friends who, like him, did not accept that their fate was to suffer silently in Japan?s vast corporations and bureaucracies. They envisioned work occupying a discreet rather than overwhelming place in their lives. And they believed that family friends mattered far more than shopping or travel.
It was a change from the generations that preceded them. The Japanese who survived the Second World War were stoic in turning their bombed-out country into the second greatest economic power in the world. Next were the baby boomers and then the ?bubble generation?, who came of age in the 1980s, when it seemed the Japanese were poised to take over the world. It was a time when the Japanese thronged Bond Street and bought the Rockefeller Centre and Van Gogh?s Irises for mind-blowing sums. There followed the lost decade when Japan entered a long slump and global attention shifted to growth economies such as China and India.
Takeuchi would hear constantly from older people how great Japan had been and how deprived he was to grow up in such austere times. The factors once seen as crucial to Japan?s success were now seen as failures: a rigid educational system that had produced generations of highly intelligent employees was now thwarting the individuality and creativity needed to rebuild the country; big corporations that had propelled Japanese industry to the top of the world were now ugly bureaucracies that suffocated their employees and stifled entrepreneurship; an ethnically homogenous people who had worked with a common purpose and set of values to build modern Japan were now insular and xenophobic.
?But I never bought that,? Takeuchi says. ?I never felt deprived.? Nor did he feel any obligation to be a corporate samurai, battling for Japan?s economic supremacy. At work he refused to dress or behave like older employees. He was considered sloppy, and his bosses thought he did not care for work. ?I just believed that at work and in life, doing OK is OK. There?s no need to show everyone how much effort you?re making.? He had no veneration for conventional models of success. ?All we want to feel is that our work has a sense of purpose.?
To hear Takeuchi talk is to hear echoes of what Westerners call Generation Y, a generation in their twenties and thirties who mystify older managers. They do not believe companies will look after them. They do not respect job titles or hierarchies, only those who control resources and produce obvious outputs. They abhor office politics and do not respond to traditional motivational tools such as promotion, pay rises and the promise of job security.
The herbivores? revolution may be one of shrugs and quiet refusals, but to take on Japan?s managerial hierarchy takes chutzpah. ?People often tell me, ?oh, you must be really confident to behave this way?,? Takeuchi says. ?But I never think of myself that way. Making a big effort to be something I?m not just isn?t me. I want to be natural, just to be myself.?
This desire to be individual may seem unremarkable in San Francisco or London but was novel enough in Japan to catch the eye of Maki Fukasawa, a marketing writer who shared an office with Takeuchi. When she talked about him with friends and older managers, she found that they were horrified, that here was the future of Japan.
The herbivores, managers complained, did not regard work as the centre of their lives. When it came to the drinking sessions essential to Japanese corporate culture, the herbivores passed. They refused to debase themselves to please a boss.
?Once I recognised the phenomenon, I noticed it everywhere,? says Fukasawa. ?Looking at the IT CEOS in Japan, I realised that they didn?t seem competitive in the same way as an older generation of Japanese CEOs. They didn?t need some trophy wife standing beside them or the expensive car or watch. They weren?t desperate to spend time in New York, London or Paris. Instead they wanted to be at home. They had lived their entire lives in an era when Japan was an established economic power, despite its troubles. They felt completely confident being Japanese.?
Fukasawa dubbed this new generation ?herbivores?, a term she says has been poorly understood in the West. ?I keep being asked if they are like the the nerdy computer game fans, or the men who buy girls? high school costumes. They?re not. We are Buddhists and the idea of being ?grass eating? is that you?re more spiritual. It?s not just the opposite of carnivorous. It means they aren?t so interested in physical things or physical relationships.?
?The more you study them, the more you think that they?re actually the ones who are consistent with traditional, pre-war Japan,? says Fukasawa. ?It was the generation of the rising economy who were ultra-competitive who were maybe the strange ones.?
In every Japanese convenience store are special sections devoted to men?s cosmetics, eyebrow shapers, packets of disposable wipes for dealing with sweat and body odor, skin whitener. The herbivores may not buy beer and cars but they spend on keeping themselves odourless, hairless and pale. Their clothes come from cheap, fashionable chains such as Uniqlo. This week, Shinya Yamaguchi, 23, a fashion designer, launches his latest collection of skirts and lacy tops ? all aimed at men. Many of Japan?s younger male celebrities, bands such as Arashi and actors like Eita, Teppei Koike and Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, project an effeminate, herbivorous look.
?It?s non-man, non-woman at the same time,? says Fukasawa. ?Sexually neutral.? This neutrality, both Fukasawa and Ushikubo believe, is a response to the changing nature of Japanese marriage. During the 30 years up to 2005, the percentage of unmarried men between 30 and 34 rose from 14 per cent to 47 per cent and the number of unmarried women from 8 to 32 per cent.
Financial insecurity among men and the social expectations imposed on married women, to have children and forego work, have made marriage less attractive. Traditional matchmaking by families and employers has also dwindled. The hunt for partners became less aggressive on both sides, to the point where businesses saw an opportunity in organising ?konkatsu? or marriage activity, social activities designed to bring singles together.
When herbivores do marry, it is with little hoopla and low expectations. Yasuo Takeuchi recently married in a small, private ceremony, and he is saving for a honeymoon in the future.
The herbivores? views, style and choices can be seen as a very positive story, about a generation of young Japanese discovering their individuality. But they also say a lot about the tensions within Japan.
?After the Second World War, we were all told that Western education was best and that Asian culture and philosophy was bad,? says Fukasawa. ?The herbivores are finding their own solution to the problem of resolving Western and Confucian values. They are a function of their time. They are dealing with the change in the economy and I think they are closer to the original Japanese character of being non-competitive, of not trying to win other people over. And as a silent majority, they have the power to change the culture.?
japan_now: Japanese Children's depression&suicide a worsening problem
japan_now: Japanese Children's depression&suicide a worsening problem
Here is an excerpt, presented by Shukan Asahi (Nov 27), from the suicide note left by an 11-year-old boy: “All I can think of is death. I realize that once you die it’s all over; still, if there is a next life I’d like to come back as an animal like [my pet dog], who doesn’t cause anyone any trouble and even when he does weird things, nobody pays any attention. I’m sorry I couldn’t be better than I was. Goodbye.”
Here is an excerpt, presented by Shukan Asahi (Nov 27), from the suicide note left by an 11-year-old boy: “All I can think of is death. I realize that once you die it’s all over; still, if there is a next life I’d like to come back as an animal like [my pet dog], who doesn’t cause anyone any trouble and even when he does weird things, nobody pays any attention. I’m sorry I couldn’t be better than I was. Goodbye.”
Japan’s suicide rate is notoriously high. For the past decade it’s been above 30,000 a year. Overwhelmingly, suicide is an adult phenomenon—but not exclusively, and the clinical depression that generally underlies it, Shukan Asahi finds, is steadily trickling down the age scale. Hokkaido University professor Kenzo Denda, author of a book on children’s depression, has published research showing that one elementary school child in 12 suffers from the condition. Among junior high school students the rate is one in four.
To psychologist Rie Ueki, that sounds like an understatement. The problem is worse, she says, than a standardized survey can show.
Ueki had treated “A-kun,” the 11-year-old suicide, and knew his family. Both his parents were lawyers, the very personifications of success. Dinner-table talk was of “winners” and “losers.” A-kun, listening quietly, knew what was expected of him. Measured against such standards, how could he help doubting himself? He feigned strength and happiness, but often his defenses broke down. Trivial slights would overwhelm him. A friend refusing to share his gum with him could plunge him into a sulk that lasted a day and a half.
The parents at last sought medical help, and Ueki diagnosed clinical depression. To her, A-kun would confess the inner turmoil he tried to keep hidden from his parents. “I’ve been suffering since grade one,” he said. “Why was I born?”
National Police Agency statistics cited by Shukan Asahi show nine children committed suicide in Japan last year. It’s not a shockingly high number, but, says Ueki, “I meet children in hospitals who, even if they haven’t actually killed themselves, seem on the very brink of it—if they kill themselves tomorrow, it wouldn’t surprise me. A-kun was not a special case.”
The obvious question is, what drives such young children to such extremes of despair? There’s no easy answer, Shukan Asahi hears from specialists. Children, unlike adults, can’t articulate their deeper feelings. Sometimes they express themselves through violence, deviant sexual behavior, shoplifting—but these acts don’t “look like” depression, and even doctors don’t always get the message.
Ueki’s hypothesis is that a child’s depression invariably indicates something seriously off kilter in the family. There are various signs—the obsession with “winning” and “losing” in the case of A-kun’s family, for instance. Children aware of parents’ extramarital affairs are also at risk, as are, of course, children of parents suffering from depression and stress themselves.“
What children need above all,” says Ueki, “is their parents’ unconditional love. A child who is loved does not become depressed. But nowadays many parents complain of being unable to love their children, to take pleasure in them. These days, it seems more difficult than ever to give children a normal upbringing.”
source; japantoday
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
ever wonder what people do during earthquake evacuation?
precious one on the ground?
pass on cigarettes
Blackberry messenger...
presenting or impressing? 
say cheese-ing
bonding with client
continue presentation to client on the sidewalk
say cheese-ing with the boss and his bodyguard
never ending say cheese!
checking out cute girls you've never seen before and ever existed in the building!!
heaven and hell
traffic today looks beautiful from the 13th floor..just like christmas lights.
but imagine being in one of the cars down there, scary!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
i have loved.
If tonight I would lose you
I wont forget because
I still love you
After the short kisses
feeling the soft moonlight
the feelings spill
I've seen so many laughter or sad faces
and the first time i saw them
i was confused
I locked up in my heart
Even "thank you's"and was never received to your heart
In the endless road
what would you wish/think
Don't forget that feeling
And let me be next to you
The sad emotions hiding in the dark
the days we played around
the plans were to bea dull adult but
Open the locked heart softly
the words "thank you"would be received to your heart now
In the endless road
what would you wish/think
Don't forget that feeling
And let me be next to you
Looking back at the distance between you and me
you taught me that
i am not alone
When you are feeling sad i decided to be right behind you
so don't forget that i love you
If tonight
I would lose you
I wont forget because I still love you
So dont forget that I still love you
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