One hassle for mom with kids is to go to a toilet while you are out. In facilities like department stores and museums, you are most likely to find multipurpose toilets which allows entry with wheelchairs and baby carts.
If I were to choose three things I missed when living away from Japan, they were the food, having four real seasons (spring, summer, winter, and fall each lasting around three months), and an efficient and inexpensive delivery system.
Major delivery service companies in Japan deliver packages in convenient time slots that can be chosen by the sender (see Table 1). The system is very reliable and flexible. Delivery hours can be set within relatively small windows of time, so people don't have to spend a lot of time waiting at home for deliveries. Even in Japan, delivery was not always this easy. In past years people could only choose from a few broad time periods, such as morning, afternoon, or evening). In those days, people waiting for a delivery were required to stay at home, waiting for a package which might arrive at any time during a four to five hour period. At that time, receiving a package was a special event which had to be prepared for. (It was a bit like waiting for a phone call before mobile phones became generally available).
Table 1. Sample delivery times offered by delivery service companies.
While things are a lot better than the bad old days, can further improvement be made. Is current delivery scheduling flexible enough to meet the demand's of today's Japanese lifestyle? As you can see from Table 1, the latest delivery time each day finishes at 9pm and the person receiving the package needs to be home by 8pm in case the delivery arrives at the start of the allotted time. How many working people in Japan can guarantee to be home by 8pm?
Statistical data from the Japanese government is available about living hours in Japan (e-Stat, Portal Site of Official Statistics of Japan, URL is below). According to that data, the average time of coming home from work is 6:58pm nationwide (N=38,950), and 7:19pm in the Tokyo metropolitan area (N=5,008). For the people who are employed in companies their average time of returning home each day is 7:44pm (N=18,678) and again the time for Tokyo residents is likely to be somewhat later. The people who came back home at the latest times were single men in their early 20s (N=774), and the average time for them to come back home is 8:39pm.
Thus coming back home to get packages delivered remains as a different problem for large groups of people within Japanese society.
So, given this unmet need, how will people adjust to the challenge? Online shops are starting to offer an alternative method of receiving products at a nearby convenience store which is typically opened 24 hours a day and seven days a week. In addition, some (mostly high-class) condominiums have so-called Delivery Boxes where courier can leave a package inside (Figure 1 and 2). As proof of delivery, these Delivery boxes can print out a proof of delivery as the door is closed, and this slip can then be placed in the receiver's post box.
Figure 1. Examples of the Delivery box.
Figure 2. Control panel of the Delivery box (the one in the right of Figure 1).
This sophisticated delivery system seems currently unique to Japan. We will continue to track this issue in future. Japan, land of convenient deliveries!
URLs
e-Stat
http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?bid=000001008023&cycode=0
Yamato Transport
http://www.kuronekoyamato.co.jp/english/index.html
Nippon Express (Nittsu)
http://www.nipponexpress.com/
http://www.nittsu.co.jp/ (Japanese)
Sagawa Express
http://www.sagawa-exp.co.jp/english/main.html
Japan Post
http://www.japanpost.jp/en/
The product reminds me of how recent touch technologies are developing to convey emotions online. But this one is much much simpler, you squeeze a silicon tube with a face carved; put some ink on and you'll be able to stamp a smiley with your emotion attached.
Although phones and computers became wireless, they are still pretty much wired as long as it requires electricity. So while at home or in the office, phones are often placed near the electric sockets, or in their perimeter. Unfortunately, they often get messy. And sockets are hardly positioned ergonomically. Considering how often we need to use chargers, it seems like we could pay a little more attention to this state.
It used to be so that when you buy mobile phones in Japan, you were most likely to get a charger and a matching cradle. The cradle allowed chargers to be plugged in all the time, providing a 'home' position for the phone.
But such thing as a matching accessory is gone. Recent trend of ecology has removed all the redundant accessories to be included in the sales package. Cradles are around 300 to 500 yen.
The company called Driinn in Italy had invented a simple phone holder you can hook when charger is plugged in. The unused cables can also be wrapped around it. Idea is simple but the execution is elegant.
One problem I see is that the solution is quite static. If you are short of electricity sockets and if you need to plug the charger too often, this might only annoy you.
(image from Plus Stationary)
It was only 2005 when personal information protection act came into full action in Japan. And although people are concerned of their privacy, I find that both the industry and the consumer are relaxed about exchanging the information. From massage salons to fashion boutiques, they ask you to write your home address, name, and occupation in return of point cards and after sales services.
But there is a moment when people get nervous: That is when all those printed matters are thrown away as rubbish. In most communities in Japan, you are supposed to throw away papers as recyclable materials by bundling them with packing strings so the content remains fairly intact. Second, unless you live in a modern apartment buildings, there is no dedicated community bins: you need to place your rubbish in a certified plastic bags or bind in a certain form and put it on the street on the very day the rubbish is collected.
As a result, a product like this is sold in Japan: Keshi-Pon, which means to stamp to erase, basically creates a dense textual pattern as you stamp it over your names and addresses on printed matters.
Whether the solution is perfect or not, I do not know. But certainly, it's a lot easier than cutting the paper into pieces.
Product Name: Keshipon
Manufactured by: Plus Stationary
Price: 980 yen
URL (in Japanese but with descriptive images and movie clips): http://bungu.plus.co.jp/sta/product/office/keshipon/
Recently, Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO) released an interesting survey about Japanese consumers' mindset on design. One of the questions was "Upon purchase, for which product do you consider design as the most important decision factor? Choose three."
Which products do you think ranked high? From top, they were:
Enlarge and see details from the charts below:
While bags were skewed to women and cars to men, mobile phones had quite a consistent ratio across gender. As for the age, younger generation considered phone design more important, but still, apart from people over 50s, figures were higher than any other products they surveyed.
This came to our surprise, as we have been thinking how wrist watches lost its original purpose and became a fashion product. Looking at the data, it seems that that is more of the case for mobile, especially for the young. Why is that?
Our assumptions: Subtle design queues? Although many Japanese phones embodies similar spec like fold, large quality displays, and large keypads which make them look alike, perhaps there are design elements that make people choose one phone from the other. Or, perhaps it's a reverse way of saying what products offer do not matter much because operator always drove new services and multiple manufacturers provide phones enabling them at the same time. In addition, many services are provided by provided by third parties via mobile Internet.
In any case, an interesting result from JIPDO.
Source: JIDPO (in Japanese)
Smileys are everywhere in our digital world, and perhaps their users are starting to miss them in the real world as well.
A Japanese stamp company has come up with a memo pad that comes with ready made trims of three smileys facing the other side. The idea is that when you write a message, you can trim one out to emphasize your emotions.
Emotions on each face is neutral and perhaps only work for softening the message rather than emphasizing it. There may be some reasons why they have designed this way, as the website describes the product idea came from Japanese office ladies who probably use the notepad in work environment rather than at home or at school.
One major downside of the product is that it's not sticky. With that face popping out like a sail, there is a risk of losing the message altogether.
Product name: kimochi memo
Manufactured by: Shachihata
Price: 315 yen
