Jack of all trades…

Tomorrow I’ll be traveling to Kyoto, and Osaka, Nara, Kobe, etc (follow me on dopplr.com) and yet I have gazillions of photos to edit and post on my flickr.com page. But in the meanwhile I’d like to share some pics with you. Tokyo can be a skyscrapers crowded metropolis or a tranquil kids-playing-on-the-street neighbourhood. These are an example of the former.

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Tokyo is full of micro-marketing initiatives and one of the first that caught my attention is the distribution of sponsored paper tissue packs on the street.

Only few times have I seen leaflets being given away, which in most crowded cities is a major source of urban waste (especially around the area in which they are distributed). I am not sure if this behavior is spontaneous creativity or due to some kind of law (Tokyo is full of them, regulating almost every aspect of society). It does seem logic that prohibiting leaflets on the streets works towards keeping the city cleaner but I don’t know if such a law exists and if giving away some kind of “gift” is a way of walking around it.

For example, in Japan playing games for money is prohibited so Pachinko slot machines, a VERY popular activity here,  work like this: 1) you play pachinko and you can win metal balls, 2) you exchange the metal spheres for some kind of prize like a giant teddy bear or other thing, 3) you go to a shop near to the pachinko parlor and exchange that prize for money. So by playing you win prizes which you can then exchange for money. Authorities of course know about this escamotage but they allow it (someone says that’s so because pachinko is controlled by the Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza).

Another common “gadget” are plastic fans, very useful during the summer.

Back to the tissues, these are some of the pros and cons that I have identified:

1) Benefits for the end user

• tissues are a useful product
• you save some money (you won’t need to buy tissues anymore, or maybe just in an emergency)
• during summer days are warm and humid (Tokyo is like an open oven in these days) so they are an useful to wash away your sweat. In winter for blowing your nose (but never do it in public as it is considered very rude!)

2) Benefits for the sponsor

• not seen as waste/spam by the end user but as an useful thing
• people take it voluntarily. Japanese people distributing them are seldom invasive nor aggressive as in other countries
• higher retention of the object which generates multiple exposures to it by the user
• in the case of fans, they are highly visible when used thus propagating the brand’s exposure/visibility

2) Benefits for the city

• being tissues a useful product they are less likely to end up as waste on the street, something very common with leaflets

General cons

• producing a pack of tissues or a fan is much more expensive than a leaflet
• if you already have one you might not take a second one until you need it
• less units are distributed. I don’t know if this is compensated by the higher retention rate of each single product

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As Amelie Poulain, who collected discarded or abandoned passport-type photos in an automatic photo machine, I have found several photos in Tokyo (see my previous post). The last 3 ones were in a printing machine in Yodobashi Camera, in Shinjuku.

I Like to fantasize about the stories they might tell, who the owner of the camera was, who the people captured in the images.

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It has been long since I last had a good airport experience, apart from the shiatsu massage (I paid for) in JFK last January.

Airports in western countries have become hostile territory for travelers. I can understand strict rules and thorough controls due to a tense international situation (although I think they wouldn’t be too useful in preventing an “intelligent” terrorist attack) but impoliteness, lack of courtesy and even some abuses are not justified by this!

My worst experiences have been in several US airports…

Japan has been telling me a different story so far: Arrive to Narita International Airport and you’ll be received with a smile and a warm “welcome!”. What about Haneda, Tokyo’s main international airport until Narita opened in 1978 and now dedicated mostly to domestic flights, charters and routes to China, handling about 60 million passengers per year?

I had bought my ticket online (actually the transaction was concluded on the phone as I couldn’t fully understand the payment instructions… in Japanese!) from Tokyo Haneda to Sapporo’s New Chitose Airport (JAL 533). I had a numeric code that had to be used on the automatic check-in machines and well… these had only Lapanese language menus (which is strange here). After randomly playing with the touchscreen for a while, I asked for help to a JAL (Japan Air Lines) employee that was passing by (the word “sumimasen“, meaning “excuse me” can work miracles in Japan). She smiled and I inquired in my rudimentary Japanese if the machine had an English language option. The answer was negative and she got interested about my needs (always in Japanese). I said: “I have a reception number” while showing her the code on my phone. She graciously dialed on the screen and my boarding pass and receipt were printed in a few seconds. I then asked what should I do with my luggage and was sent to counter number 72, which I missed by taking the wrong way. A security guy gently indicated me the right place, always with a smile.

Check-in was fast, no dangerous substances packed. Then came security, where they invited me to the control area and, always with extreme courtesy, made me take my laptop out of the backpack and deposit it on the x-ray belt. Zooooom through the metal detector and my stuff was given back… actually I was thanked by the security officer for having controlled my things.

6 people were involved in all my check-in/security experience. They spoke almost no English, nor did the machine. All of them smiled at me and treated me like a human being and thanked me for being at their service… It seems to be it was quite the opposite!!

No English, a lot of smiles and courtesy. Fast, good, by humans to humans. Oh, btw I was flying economic class.

When was the last time you were treated like this in an airport?

Another lovely shocking experience? I was waiting to embark in my flight while another one landed. All passengers came out and then did the captain and his crew. At least 7 kids with their parents were waiting for him to take some photos. He posed with each of them, even offered his hat to the kids, and after the pic he have them a card, I guess it was his business card or something like it. I would also call this “from humans to humans” and a great fidelity marketing campaign!

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Today (and for all the event) I will be the “official” live blogger for the iSummit 2008, organized by iCommons in Sapporo, Japan.

After the success of previous editions in Harvard ‘05, Rio de Janeiro ‘06 and Dubrovnik ‘07, the iSummit comes to Sapporo, one of the most innovation-oriented cities in Japan.

I’ll be using Cover it Live for the live blogging and you can follow the keynotes on the iSummit Blog.

PS: I will be updating this post later with links to concluded keynotes.

This is the opening keynote session with Heather Ford, Jimmy Wales, Joi Ito and Mohamed Nanabhay.

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