We didn’t get a chance to talk about it here, but we want to say a big thanks to Aquent for inviting us to speak at their Q’s Club event at the Design Hub in Tokyo Midtown on December 5th.
We covered a lot of ground and ran out of our 90 minutes rather quickly, so I hope that we got our points across in the midst of our code-switching, culture jumping presentation. The goal was to lighten the burden that “Cool Japan” is carrying, while still showing the relevance of many of the seemingly wacky/absurd offerings of the Japanese market as seen by our foreign clients. More importantly, we wanted to show the down-to-earth segments of the Japanese market that don’t get as much press coverage.
To sum up:
– Foreigners see Japan as some strange and innovative otherworld (but we already knew that)
– In many ways, this is true (see above)
– Japanese men do NOT wear bras (why does this keep coming up?!)
– While weird products, fashions, and subcultures aren’t necessarily “trends” in their own right, they aren’t irrelevant either.
– We showed a LOT of photos we’ve taken.
Many thanks to everyone who came as well! There was great attendance, no shortage of questions, and we enjoyed meeting everyone afterwards.
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