Archive for the tag 'shopping'

The only Japanese word you need to know (except all the rest)

Posted September 6, 2008 * Comments(0)

I found this advertisement on the back of the latest issue of the free monthly Japanese magazine Gekkan NZ, which is aimed at the expatriate Japanese community within New Zealand. Unfortunately, I think someone in Marketing for Kikkoman Australia didn’t quite think it through as well as they should have… Please excuse the cameraphone shot.

I can sort of see the thought process that leads to this. “There aren’t many Japanese people in Australia and NZ, we need to target non-Asians in our advertising to increase soy sauce consumption!” -> “Japanese people use a lot of soy sauce, we should target them directly by placing an ad in a Japanese magazine” -> “Let’s translate one of our other ads into Japanese!”. Which leads to… *facepalm*

Nice soy sauce though. For my Japanese marketing/advertising and consumer information needs, I usually browse Japan Marketing News and JapanConsuming. On a more lighthearted note, Konbini Life is fun – microreviews of various sweets bought at convenience stores in Japan. Lisa at TokyoMango also has the occasional entry about (generally non-edible) interesting Japanese products.

And I’ll return to more regular blogging… some day. Maybe not right now, but I just had to share this.

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Review: Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo

Posted April 19, 2008 * Comments(3)

It’s been a while since I’ve written this review – two years ago to be precise. Taro Aso became foreign minister and started pushing anime tourism so there’s a hell of a lot more information available now. When I first started seriously buying up on anime stuff in Tokyo, there was only really the Cheap Bastard’s Tokyo Anime Shopping Guide. I knew nothing of Patrick Macias before writing this review, though I’m a bit more knowledgeable about the scene and the fandom and so on now (admittedly one of the things that makes Randall appropriate as a host is his slight Macias aversion).

I’ve updated and rewritten this review as appropriate – some of the links were dead, for starters. I’m planning to start offering shopping tips in future entries, so don’t fret that this entry doesn’t give you any help – the idea is that it will be forthcoming.

Anyway, here it goes.

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