- Most likely they're doing specific financing: whenever you pay with a card (or with your cell phone) in Japan, they ask you how many monthly payments you would like to pay over. There's also a general aversion to going into debt - cash and debit cards are generally preferred over credit cards in Japan.
- I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the right 'fake beer', but marketing of food products in Japan has lately been heavily skewed toward 0 calorie food and drinks. I'm not sure this is entirely fueled by reduced purchasing power.
- The internet in Japan is still very much limited by the fact that it's still primarily browsed via low resolution cell phones. It's getting better, but a fair amount of sites were written for C-HTML/i-mode-HTML, and laptop browsing experience suffered as a result.
- The effect of fringe groups on trends plays out differently in different industries. For Anime, shows with more mainstream appeal are actually hard to find now. On the other hand, in Japan, Anime has always been less mainstream than Manga - people who read a series as a comic book often find the TV shows to be watered-down, or don't find the voice acting to their liking. So, it's more just that a medium that's always had fringe appeal is doubling-down on it. That is, it likely would have happened even without reduced mainstream purchasing power - otaku, who actually buy merchandise, are just a more profitable group to market to.
With fashion and music, it's more that the fringe groups have bought the power to influence mainstream habits - plenty of people who aren't otaku but enjoy AKB48 and Perfume. Many shop at d.i.a. but aren't gyaru (at least not to the extreme the author portrays them as) - just trying to be fashionable, particularly in the short period of time between being in school (with black hair, uniform, and no piercings) and working (with black hair, uniform/suit, and no piercings). The increased availability of foreign brands also has an effect - by moving toward more extreme domestic trends, brands can better distinguish themselves from foreign competitors: with the surge in popularity of K-Pop, it doesn't make sense to try to compete with more of the same style of music.
I don't disagree with the general premise of the article, but I think its tone comes off as a little extreme at times - things aren't so bad there that mainstream purchasing has disappeared, it's just shifted toward some very distinctly Japanese trends, which were popularized at least in part due to the disproportionate spending by those groups.
- I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the right 'fake beer', but marketing of food products in Japan has lately been heavily skewed toward 0 calorie food and drinks. I'm not sure this is entirely fueled by reduced purchasing power.
- The internet in Japan is still very much limited by the fact that it's still primarily browsed via low resolution cell phones. It's getting better, but a fair amount of sites were written for C-HTML/i-mode-HTML, and laptop browsing experience suffered as a result.
- The effect of fringe groups on trends plays out differently in different industries. For Anime, shows with more mainstream appeal are actually hard to find now. On the other hand, in Japan, Anime has always been less mainstream than Manga - people who read a series as a comic book often find the TV shows to be watered-down, or don't find the voice acting to their liking. So, it's more just that a medium that's always had fringe appeal is doubling-down on it. That is, it likely would have happened even without reduced mainstream purchasing power - otaku, who actually buy merchandise, are just a more profitable group to market to.
With fashion and music, it's more that the fringe groups have bought the power to influence mainstream habits - plenty of people who aren't otaku but enjoy AKB48 and Perfume. Many shop at d.i.a. but aren't gyaru (at least not to the extreme the author portrays them as) - just trying to be fashionable, particularly in the short period of time between being in school (with black hair, uniform, and no piercings) and working (with black hair, uniform/suit, and no piercings). The increased availability of foreign brands also has an effect - by moving toward more extreme domestic trends, brands can better distinguish themselves from foreign competitors: with the surge in popularity of K-Pop, it doesn't make sense to try to compete with more of the same style of music.
I don't disagree with the general premise of the article, but I think its tone comes off as a little extreme at times - things aren't so bad there that mainstream purchasing has disappeared, it's just shifted toward some very distinctly Japanese trends, which were popularized at least in part due to the disproportionate spending by those groups.