What message to you perceive when you see a person bowing at you?

The meaning of bowing is quite significant in eastern culture, and especially important in Japanese daily life. Depending on the context, bowing could mean apology (when you bump into someone), appreciation (after you made a purchase from a store), and greeting (equivalent to saying hello and good morning). In the company I work that, for example, we often have meetings with guests and clients. When the meeting is done, our team would walk the guests to the elevator door and wait for the elevator with them. Once they stepped into the elevator, all team members will make a bow at the guests until the door closed. That is to show deep appreciation and good business manner.

But here is a challenging scenario I encountered one day when having lunch in a Japanese beef bowl restaurant YOSHINOYA. Near the cash register, there was a sign with an illustration of a staff bowing with a smile, some Japanese text and then logos of two popular NFC payment card “WAON” and “Suica”. Let me explain why I think the signage design could be confusing, especially to foreigners who cannot understand Japanese:

Full Body Gesture — it is pretty clear that the illustrated character is doing a bow at person who’s reading the sign, there’s no ambiguity about it. However as mentioned before, bowing could mean appreciation or apology.

Facial Cue — this one is subtle to pick up but important nonetheless: on the face of the character we could easily identify the eyes in the upper part of the face; however what is that curved line below it? It is a smile, or is it a nose where the character is now bowing with his/her head down?
(a) If the line is a smile, then the character could be making a pleased facial expression, indicating that the the subject of sign is to thank you for using the indicated payment methods.
(b) If this line is the nose otherwise, then the character is making a large head dip which ressemble a deeper bow. That can be interpreted as a big apology and further understood as “we do not accept the payement methods”.

Japanese text — obviously, to those who cannot understand Japanese, this instruction would have no use in explaining the message.

Logos at the lower right corner of the sign there are two logos of the payment systems. The logos are neutral and don’t convey any information of the acceptance of the payment methods.

Answer: 「当店ではWAON、Suicaはご利用いただけません。ご了承こださい」(meaning: this store does not accept WAON and Suica cards. We appreciate your understanding.)

My Suggestion: stick to international standard to indicating “No”. It’s boring but it works.

A very efficient self service newspaper stand seen at a convenient store in Hong Kong. You can use the Octopus card to pay for and grab a newspaper without interacting with any staff. There is no locker or security device to keep the newspapers from being stolen. Everything is open and transparent. Perhaps newspaper is such a cheap commodity that nobody would even consider to steal one without paying.

Here is another self service newspaper stand seen at Munich, Germany. The fundamental idea is the same: newspaper put in an unlocked container and a self-service money collecting device by it, where user are trusted to perform the transaction and grab a newspaper all by oneself.

You can read my previous post about the Munich Newsstand and Honor System here.

Facebook has become the most popular social network in Hong Kong, so big that advertisement designers and marketing people are willing to put elements such as “Like” and “Facebook Search” into their ad designs.

On the other hand, Japan ad designs are dominated by a simple search box with the keywords and the 「検索」 button, which are commonly seen in mobile devices.

My thoughts:

Non English-speaking culture — both Japan and Hong Kong are not using English as the first language, so it is neither natural to use nor easy to recognize and remember English-character based domain names. However, it seems that people in Hong Kong, due to it’s colonial history and earlier English education, are relatively comfortable to deal with English domain names.

Ways of accessing the Internet — Japan has long been using mobile phone to access the Internet, while Hong Kong folks are more commonly using desktop computers to do so. In terms of context, it is faster for mobile phone users to use web search to figure out the URL of a site rather than entering the domain name with the keypad. More detail below.

Input method and efficiency — until the recent few years where QWERTY keyboard becomes popularized by iPhone and Blackberry, most older mobile phones were using keypad to enter English characters. It is very taxing to enter full URL into those phones. However, Japanese phones are generally equipped with “10-key” input method which most users can type Japanese extremely fast with. Therefore, instead of directly entering a full URL, search engine acts as a translation table between Japanese keywords and English URL addresses.

By the way, sites from Mainland China demonstrate another way to approach the English domain issue: generally, instead of using a domain name with English meaning (e.g. hotmail.com, gmail.com – both has the word “Mail”) they either use:

• numeric (with/without meaning): mail.163.com, mail.126.com
• full pinyin: www.tudou.com (土豆网) www.sohu.com (搜狐)
• first letter of pinyin: www.zndqw.com (智能大全网) www.592zn.com (吾就爱智能)

Social network — in terms of the popular social network in these regions, Hong Kong is pretty much all using the newer, more function-rich Facebook, while Japan started years earlier with Mixi. Facebook is very marketing friendly, where you can use tools like Pages, Apps, Banners, Groups, etc to channel your marketing efforts. Mixi on the other hand, is not very marketing friendly, or at least I

My recently tasks at work requires me to develop Facebook pages and apps, and I can tell that almost every bit of the platform and API feature is designed for self-serve, powerful marketing and profitability. I have no experience developing marketing campaigns with Mixi, but as a (casual) user of the platform I don’t see much ad tools except loads of beauty/hair removal/hair growth animated banners. Banners are leading to external sites instead of keeping you inside the Mixi platform as well. Sometimes they have bigger ad campaigns (e.g. http://mixi.jp/pr.pl?id=512) which seems to cost big money and exclusive development deals with the Mixi company.

GOPAN rice bread maker, initially researched and developed by Sanyo Electric, is an all-in-one automated bread maker that user just put rice grain, flour, water and other ingredients, which the machine will turn into a fresh chewy bread loaf.

Everybody who lived in Japan long enough should know that Rice is a staple in Japanese culinary culture. But with more and more western influence to Japan in recent years, younger generations are more receptive to eating bread as main meal instead of rice. Bread is becoming a hip, higher-class, international choice of diet.

GOPAN is a product that was designed with this setting in mind. However, traditional bread is made from wheat flour, which is not a native food supply of Japan and is mostly important from other countries. According to it’s developers, who were worrying about self-sustainability of food supply (食料自給率) in the nation, wanted to promote the use of domestic rice support. Making bread with pre-milled rice flour is neither economical or easy to do, so they decided to make a simple, automated, all-in-one solution for bread making.

To make a bread with this machine, you just add regular dry rice grain and some other ingredients depending on your recipe, then the machine will perform all the process including milling, mixing, kneading into dough, rising, baking…etc, with just a push of the button.

GOPAN or Gohan Pan is a Japanese made-up word combining GOHAN (ご飯: Rice) and PAN (パン: Bread).

Reference:

• SANYO GOPAN Rice Bread Maker: http://jp.sanyo.com/gopan
• Panasonic Bread Maker:  http://panasonic.jp/bakeryclub/products/

This blog is supported by the official JNTO Hong Kong Campaign 日本新発売
Website: www.enjoyjapan.jp

The train system in Japan is usually very punctual. If for some reason there is a delay for even 15 mins, the train station will take the responsibility and the manager will offer an official “Proof of Train Delay”, that you can use to justify your being late to the important morning project meeting.

Just a small item to show the sense of trust, guarantee, proof, and importance of authority to Japanese society.

This blog is supported by the official JNTO Hong Kong Campaign 日本新発売
Website: www.enjoyjapan.jp

「だれでもトイレ」literally translates as “Everybody’s Toilet”. The graphical sign is absolutely standard and unmistakably means “Men, Women and Disabled are okay”. In English it would be called “Universal Toilet”, but I’d feel something is lost in translation. Is “Everybody” equivalent to “Universal”? For some reason, だれでも makes it feel more human and approachable to me.

根據日本傳統，當家裏小孩滿7歲，5歲和3歲，便會於當年的11月15日，以傳統和服或禮服打扮，到特別的神社接受祝福，感謝小孩健康成長。此日稱為「七五三」（しちごさん）。

當日我便和朋友到明治神宮散步，看到很多非常可愛的小朋友隨家人到神社祈福，十分熱鬧。很多外國遊客都對此大感興趣，紛紛和這班小朋友拍照。小朋友又非常合作，乖乖站着給你拍個夠。

小孩又會在七五三吃千歳飴（ちとせあめ），是一種紅色和白色、細而長的傳統糖果，喻意健康長壽。

資料來源：http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/七五三

When using a fitting room, you are supposed to take off your shoes and leave it outside. This is the custom in Japan.

Such a rule is called「土足厳禁」(どそくげんきん), which the literal translation is “muddy feet prohibited”.

At a first glance you might think that such a rule is created to keep places clean and tiny. After all, Japanese is famous for their cleanness. When everybody leaves shoes outside of a fitting room, you don’t need to worry about making the new clothes dirty, nor bothering the customers after you.

But I read a pretty interesting post that talks about the deeper meaning of “muddy feet” in Japanese culture:

【日本人的厌土感】”Abomination to Soil in Japanese Culture”

The article basically points out that, while some cultures has Affection for Soil – see soil as the root of their home country and develop affection for it, Japanese culture associates mud with dirty, unclean matters and develops disgusting feeling to it. It is not nice to carry dirty mud inside a public or living spaces.

Such concept can also be observed in their architecture. A typical household is built on a base called 床 (ゆか) usually 20-40cm high, creating a height difference between the ground and the house. The area near the entrance is called 玄関 (げんかん) where you should leave your shoes at before entering the house.

As a matter of fact, “No Muddy Feet Inside” rule also applies to the following places:

• Temple
• 「銭湯」Public Bath
• Swimming pool
• People’s house and room

On a side note, please understand that I braved a great risk shooting these pictures for you, as photographing fitting room is socially and legally inappropriate, and could result in angry stares, kicking out by security, or even prosecution.

這個朋友幾年前曾經拿ワクホリ(Working Holiday Visa) 在大阪遊學生活了一年，算是對當地頗了解。今次他重遊舊地，當然順便探望日本的朋友們。他更邀請我出席他曾經參加過的「広東語喫茶」小組聚會，邊吃「焼売」邊教「広東語」。聚會中認識了ばんり、ヤマダ、阿基等朋友，從他們的經歷更深入了解在日香港人和愛廣東文化的日本人。

原來有頗多日本人對廣東話和廣東文化很有興趣，而這個交流小組便組織了一班日本的同好和廣東人在一間叫C Flat的茶店進行「広東語喫茶」，作語言和文化交流。

如果閣下會說廣東話，而又準備到大阪遊學的話，歡迎你參加！

「広東語喫茶」

email: cantongocafe@yahoo.co.jp
website: http://mixi.jp/view_community.pl?id=3727372 （需Mixi戶口）

以下是節錄自該小組的介紹文，方便沒有Mixi的朋友：

私達スタッフ（Banri,サラ,ヤマダ,ぎょろ）は ネイティブの先生と安価で
少人数の生徒で外国語を皆で楽しもうとボランティアで
外国語会話喫茶を運営しています。
まずはコミュニティに登録してね。
そして一緒に広東語会話を楽しみましょう！！
喫茶店ではありませんのでご了承ください。

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こちらから自己紹介をお願いします！
http://mixi.jp/view_bbs.pl?id=35708312&comm_id=3727372

７ヶ国語基本会話集をダウンロードしていただけます！
詳しい発音は、ネイティブに確認してくださいね！
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