MONTH

2022年4月

April 26, 2022
October 13, 2022

Marketing Tips: How to Handle Customer Complaints to Enhance Loyalty

Customer complaints are going to sell Why is there no lamp in the freezer compartment of a fridge? Suitcase wheels should be replaceable! I believe you have this kind of small complaints a lot in your daily life. Most of them are too small to express, but they will corrode you inside little by little. In Japan, there’s a good service to recommend you. It’s a “complaint buying service center.” You can put complaints in writing and send them to the center. The AI rates the complaints in 50 points, and you can get Amazon gift cards according to the points. This is totally due to the technological advancement of AI, from character recognition to sentence recognition. If it were not for AI, the service couldn’t match financially. Positive small complaints move society forward If complaints are big enough, people would talk directly to commodity or service suppliers. On the […]

Japanese culture

April 19, 2022
October 13, 2022

Marketing Tips: Eco-Friendly Can Be the True Trend of the New Rich?

The rich-poor gap is seen even in trash In 2019, a book became a big hit in Japan. The author is an unpopular comedian working as a trash collector on the side. He wrote it was easy to find out wealthy residential areas once he sees trash. He went on “Wealthy residential areas can be divided into three classes based on their trash.” Let’s say the three classes here: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. According to him, it’s not the contents of trash that make them greatly different from other areas. Of course, there’re some differences in trash contents, but what features the wealthy residential areas is the amount of trash. It is generally smaller. Furthermore, in case of the Platinum areas, it is much smaller even than that of the Gold and Silver areas. Rich people are humble, different from what we imagine It’s completely different from what we generally […]

Marketing tips

April 12, 2022
October 13, 2022

Marketing Tips on Product Naming: How to Name a Product

Once Google translation was just funny… I remove two eyes. No worries. I still keep them. The first sentence is one of the popular funny translation by Google for “I remove the second one” in Japanese. Seriously, it’s not only funny but also really good translation. I never imagined that before, but the translation made me realize the Japanese sentence could be understood that way by intonation. To tell the truth, I like to check such funny translation by Google because I can confirm the superiority of my translation skills over Google. However, I may not be able to keep chuckling to myself soon. The AI of the Google translation improves day by day at a terrific speed, and has already corrected most of the funny mistakes unfortunately. Phonetic effects are important for product naming AI progress is not limited to translation skills. I learn that AI can now develop […]

Hokkaido food

April 8, 2022
October 13, 2022

Japan Travel in the Know: A Hokkaido Restaurant (Soba Noodle)

Do you know Japanese buckwheat noodles “Soba?” I think there are so many kinds of wheat-based foods across the world. What about buckwheat? The most famous food may be gallette originated in Bretagne, France. In Japan, we call buckwheat noodles “Soba,” and it’s very popular. Ramen, Udon, and Soba are the three major Japanese noodles. For your information, Hokkaido is the kindgom of ramen as I wrote before. The former two are made from wheat. The difference between the two is if alkaline brine solution is included or not when noodles are kneaded. Based on my understanding, many Japanese people see Soba noodles more elegant than Ramen and Udon noodles. Yes, that’s true. If you take someone to a Ramen or Udon restaurant for a first date, your date will doubt your nerves. If it’s a Soba restaurant, your date will think you have good taste on the contrary. It’s […]

Knowledge bragging

April 5, 2022
December 15, 2022

Logistics Tips: Why Are Shipping Costs So High Now?

The record high freight is a new normal in logistics I swim in a gym pool every weekend. What always irritates me is a notice on the shower-room wall. It says “We stop providing shampoo to avoid infection.” Anybody, tell me how shampoo sharing is causally related to infection. I think it’s a stealth cost-cutting move. Don’t you think the COVID is sometimes used as a good excuse for cost cut or price increase like this? Having said that, I know the COVID has a huge effect on cost structure. The biggest factor would be logistics costs. Yesterday, one of our freight forwarders came to me to talk about an increase in freight rates. He apologetically told me “Freight rates become more than double from this month.” The forwarder seemed to be no match for shipping companies who are now at the height of their prosperity. The COVID, a good […]

Japanese culture

April 1, 2022
October 12, 2022

Japanese Culture and Traditions: Company Entrance Ceremony by Japanese Companies

Japanese-style job hunting: New graduates start all together All the schools start from April to next-year March in Japan. March is the season of graduation. As this may sound strange to people outside Japan, all the high school and university graduates join companies and start working in April, all at once. For one year before graduation, many companies throw recruiting sessions, and final-year university students spend most of their time in those sessions. I remember the days of my senior year. I didn’t see classmates much in the university campus. Even if I did, they just made me feel sad by their neat and tidy look for recruiting sessions. Anyway, job hunting and employment are huge for both new graduates and companies because the idea of lifetime employment remains strong in our minds. In April, almost all the companies hold their entrance ceremonies. Company entrance ceremonies are for awareness-raising I […]