Plush Machines

These machines are everywhere. It is what we qualified in France “Attrape-Nigauds”; that is to say something that takes your money but you do not gain anything. Or you can gain something but it is rare. It scams your money. This is the way of getting rich. The products are mostly plush; cute plush in order to attract young girls. Generally, products are inspired by famous manga, series, dramas or movies. These machines are placed in front of the stores with numerous lights in order to attract customers’ attention. And sometimes, we have a man who shouts for promoting the game center. These types of machines, we do not see it frequently in France, because there are these machines only during fairgrounds.

The main customers of these machines are young people. For example, when they want to have fun somewhere, it can be in game centers. Since after work, Japanese people like to walk through the town in order to decompress. It is about products that are qualified of “kawaii” product by some of customers. But there are also adults who play with that in order to try their luck.

Convenience stores - コンビニ

Combinis or convenience stores are small stores like groceries. That is to say it sells food, drinks, newspapers, household products and so on. There also provide some necessities as photocopies, fax, sending letters or boxes. These convenience stores are there in order to help people who have urgency. The particularity is the fact that it open 24/24 all the days. This is very convenient due to the fact that sometimes, we can need something very late at night. Even if, normally, people at this moment are sleeping, there are also some people that do not sleep. This concern persons who work during the night as night workers (on the road), as persons who play online games or hikikomori, or “nolife” and whose life cycle is disrupted. Sometimes, they have to go out in order to buy foods and so on (but this is an extreme situation that we can have even if that exists).

These stores are everywhere; we can find it every 500 meters! This concept of convenience stores open 24/24 7/7 does not exist in France. This idea of convenience store comes from United States. Japanese people go to combini around 2 or 3 times a day because of the proximity. When I want to buy some foods for cooking, I do not find supermarkets. There are not a lot of supermarkets in Japan. Maybe Japanese people prefer to go buy foods in combinis.

Cycling

In Asia, it is the most popular and used transport way (not ATVs). As everyone knows, it is very useful and that respects the environment. There only in Asia that we can see a lot of people that use their bicycle. In China, for example, the main transport way is the bicycle, streets are filled with it. But this is because; each Chinese people do not have enough money to buy a car. And the transport network is not developed everywhere in China, so the main transport way is China.

In Japan, the use of bicycles is probably not the same reason as in China. That is to say, in Japan, there is also a lot of people that use bicycles for working, for walking and so on. They use bicycles because of the lack of place for parking cars because Japan territory is not big, there is no place; and moreover, 67% of Japanese territory is forests, so there are not many place to live (source: www.wikipedia.fr). And the population density in Japan is 340/km² (872.8/sq mi); but only a small part of the Japanese territory is lived, so the population density is more important than these figures. It is one of the reasons why Japanese people use bicycles. Japanese people develop and invest a lot for cars and bicycles parking but there are no a lot of places. And sometimes, we can see that there is a lot when we see a place where there are bicycles park there.

Japanese people do not put lock in order to prevent theft, this is surprising. But, if someone steals a bicycle and this person is controlled by polices, this person will have problems; because in Japan, there is a system of yellow label on bicycles for indicating the owner.

Mac Donald’s - 日本マクドナルド

Mac Donald’s is in Japan, this is not wonder! This international brand settled in Japan for the first time at the beginning of the 70’s. It is the fast food chain the most famous around the world. However, in Japan especially, there are other fast food chains which are non negligible competitors, as Freshness Burger, Mos Burger, Wendy’s, Quick, KFC and so on. In France, there are only Mac Donald’s, Quick and KFC that are the main Fast Food Chains.

But there is a small difference between some of them. Id est, it is a different approach of “fast food”. When we go to Mac Donald’s, it is because it is fast and we do not waste time (in fact, Mac Donald’s warms its food before serving you). While in Freshness Burger and Mos Burger, we order, then we seat and we wait the service (In fact, they cook directly the food for the order).

There are some things that surprise me when I went to Mac Donald’s and others fast food places. For example, there are no mayonnaise and we have to ask the ketchup sauce when we want because it is not automatically distributed. When we compared to western countries, in Japan, portions served are smaller than what we are used to eat. In fact, maybe Japanese people do not each much, or maybe, we eat too much.

Mac Donald’s, as other foreign brand companies, have to adapt their product to the Asia market. For example, in Japan, there are some sandwiches that are curious:

- As the Sandwich Teriyaki (the specificity is that Teriyaki is a method of cooking foods/meats but nowadays, we most put Teriyaki like sauce).

- The sandwich EBI Filet-O, which looks like the Filet-O-fish because it is sea food. Maybe Mac Donald’s has developed this kind of sandwich because Japan is seen as the “country of fishes” (just a little obviously). And if the company develops a new taste, it is for adapting their product to the local people tastes.

- And then, the third particular sandwich in Japan is the Juicy Chicken. What is surprising is the spicy side of the sandwich. It seems that Japanese people like spicy foods, especially if it is carry food (since there are a lot of carry food restaurant). But there is not only carry food which is spicy, there are also spicy chips.

Except the adaptation of the sandwiches in Japan, there are other specificities to the country; as the bag Hello Kitty that we can obtain by buying some menus. Given we know that Hello Kitty is very famous and appreciated by Japanese girls. So this is for attract more customers.

The second point is the concept of “open 24/24”, which is specific to Japan due to the famous convenience store (known as Combini). Some Mac Donald’s really open days and nights. In France, this concept exists but the restaurants close between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. (fake open 24/24). And the final point is the recycling of the products. In Japan, the recycling is very very important for the country and its inhabitants which have a feeling of contributing a lot for the nation (collectivism power). The recycling is present in Mac Donald’s too.

If Mac Donald’s brand adapts a lot its restaurant and its products, it is for attracting more customers and because the competition is rude and Mac Donald’s in Japan has to be competitive.