Souvenir Shops in Akihabara

Akihabara is one of the most famous tourist spots in Japan that visitors from overseas cannot miss. Akihabara, commonly known as “Akiba” is not far away from JPC’s office (20 minutes from the door of the office by train) and people who visit our office drop in to Akiba after meeting us.

The other day, one of my Japanese friends came to Tokyo. He was going to Akiba and asked me to tell him what would be the best souvenir. Thinking about it, I only knew Akiba as a town famous for its electronics quarter and maid cafes. However, something for a souvenir? I could not think of anything.

So I searched on the internet and found some shops which sell figurines, T-shirts, cartoon character goods, canned Oden, etc., a bit of nerdy stuff.

Among them were, maybe mirroring the present society, things like biscuits in the shape of Japan’s politicians such as Prime Minister Mr Aso and US President Barrack Obama.
http://www.omiyage-daito.com/online.html

Also suitable for the town, when you step in, a girl dressed in a maid costume comes and says “Welcome home my lord” and offers some maid biscuits to you; seems fun!
http://www.maidclub.net/products/list.php?category_id=13

These things might be fun but they are not something especially from the area and I am not sure people would appreciate them as souvenirs.

Well, most readers of this mail magazine are not Japanese, so I checked souvenirs for them. But you may not have the same culture as Japan and may not buy presents for family and friends. I could not find many souvenirs designed for foreigners in Akiba. Although there are plans such as “Harakiri Manju”, (inside comes out if you eat it) and “Ninja Biscuit” (shaped like throwing stars), no one could see a high demand for these, so none of these went on the market.

According to JPC’s non- Japanese staff, people do not normally buy biscuits as a present, but they buy practical electrical appliances such as computers and digital cameras. If you go into the narrow lanes in Akiba, Pakistani and Chinese shop owners are selling used computers and digital cameras; you will see people from overseas checking them. I guess, Akiba is still the world number one electronics quarter for visitors from foreign countries.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

Diesel is getting more expensive than petrol?!!

In the last issue, I talked about diesel engines but this time it is about diesel itself. When we drive past gas stations in Japan, we used to see diesel sold JPY10～JPY20/L cheaper than petrol. But now a big change is happening in the prices.

“Petrol: JPY97/L, Diesel: JPY98/L”: while driving in the Tokyo area we have started seeing signs like this since the end of last year. It was usual that diesel was cheaper than petrol per litre but now this is not the case any longer and this is a headache for diesel car users.

It was around last summer in the Northern Hemisphere when the situation changed. According to the Oil Information Centre, there used to be JPY20～JPY25 yen difference between the prices of petrol and diesel per litre but since September last year the difference has been getting smaller & smaller and at the end of last year it was only JPY4. This information from the Centre is based on average prices, so depending on gas stations, some were selling petrol and diesel at same prices or some were selling petrol cheaper than diesel.

However, this “cheap petrol & expensive diesel” tendency seems to be happening worldwide. In Europe where a large number of people use diesel cars anyway, more and more people have switched to diesel cars after last year’s high petrol prices. This is because diesel is 20～30% more effective in mileage, and the demand for diesel got higher relatively. As a result, the prices of petrol and diesel swapped places in many countries. According to AA, a traffic information company in the UK, at last December, in 10 countries out of 18, the price of diesel was higher than that of petrol.

In Japan, thinking about the difference in the tax rates, it seems a crazy phenomenon. The tax rate on petrol is JPY53.8 per litre compared to the light oil delivery tax of JPY32.10 and the difference is JPY21.70. At the wholesale Spot Market in Japan diesel is sold at JPY40 before tax whereas petrol at JPY34. Based on this, diesel should be sold about JPY15 per litre cheaper than petrol.

The reason lies on the escalation of petrol prices. A lot of gas station owners say the same thing: “We did not have any choice but to drop petrol prices because of the large decrease in its sales”. In the middle of a sudden drop in the demand, they are trying to attract drivers by dropping petrol prices. Unfortunately it is only in petrol prices where competition exists: at an average gas station, the volume of diesel sales takes up only a few percent. Even if they drop diesel prices, they cannot attract many customers, so they have to exclude diesel from the price war.

Most logistic companies who use large amount of diesel have their own supply or are using petrol cards, they can purchase diesel at lower prices. So, non-commercial drivers who use diesel have to pay a high price because they are small in number.

Checking carefully, you might find some gas stations who sell diesel JPY10 cheaper than petrol, faithfully following the difference in the original prices but they are the minority. The business of gas stations is a hard one in which culling out and closing down happens very often. The situation could change dramatically for a long time to come.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

Diesel Engines: are they really bad for the environment?

That thick black smoke coming from the heavy truck in front of me: aren’t diesel exhaust fumes bad for the environment?

Speaking of exhaust fumes, thanks to the highly publicized event of Shintaro Ishihara, Governor of Tokyo, when he held up a bottle of diesel soot before cameras and reporters, “Diesel engines” have a negative image in Japan. But in Europe, half of new vehicles produced have diesel engines. Don’t you wonder why?

Actually, the development of clean diesel engines is making striking progress and nowadays there are less and less vehicles which produce black smoke. Diesel engines are more economical than petrol ones and emit less CO2 which is required to be reduced at the Kyoto conference. On the other hand, compared to petrol engines there was an issue of more oxides of nitrogen and particulate substance that can cause acid rain. However, this time, Honda has developed a new diesel engine with low emissions of oxides of nitrogen, at the same level as petrol ones. If this is installed in a car, diesel engines will be far better for the environment than petrol engines.

At the moment, it is only old type diesel vehicles which are the subject of regulation in the Tokyo area. Diesel engines, which were supposed to be bad for the environment, are evolving gradually, aren’t they? But I heard that in the EU emission control is getting tighter and now the USA & Japan will follow this and tighten emission control on diesel engines in the near future. Along with this movement, many car manufacturers are now using a function called “Turbo chargers” to soup up car engines. How do they work?

Turbo chargers improve heat efficiency by raising combustion efficiency, using energy from emitted gas which used to be just waste. Used especially on motorways at steady engine revs, it improves the efficiency even more. In Europe, where more and more diesel vehicles with low CO2 emission are produced, people care not only about the environment but the efficiency of diesel engines using turbo chargers.

On top of that, there is an engine called “the Stirling engine” which has now captured attention. However, this is not a new type of engine but was developed 2 centuries ago. Have you heard about it? What kind of an engine is it?

The structure is quite simple: by heating and cooling a gas at different temperatures, it is an external-combustion engine which gets power by inflating and deflating the gas inside (petrol and diesel engines are internal-combustion types). Because we can re-use waste energy effectively, this engine has now come under the spotlight again all over the world. For example, a venture capitalist and a marine company jointly started development of a Stirling engine for marine vessels in Tokyo Bay. One of the developers said, “Until now, gas emission from boats and ships at berth at Tokyo Bay was the biggest cause of air pollution. So if they can use the waste heat of the emissions to make power even just while they are there, we can get rid of a large portion of the air pollution”.

It does not sound like something they can use straight away and they will have to spend more time in developing it to improve the engine’s performance. As for diesel engines, checking old technology can be the first step towards an “Eco-friendly” society.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

Latest Japanese car market situation

Last year, for the first time in 72 years since they started operating, Toyota became the world number one in car sales beating US’s General Motors. However, on the other hand, because of the downturn in the world economy, their business plunged into the red for the first time after WWⅡ and their position is unstable. This is not only a problem of the company: it also means that the whole nation is “sinking” when the biggest and the strongest company is going into a stall.

For Japan’s economy, the thing which is detrimental is Toyota’s large-scale decreases in production. As it has been reported, Toyota is planning to cut their domestic production to half from the previous year between February and April. It will be 9000 cars per day, way below 11,000, which is the breaking even point. This is the same level as it was 30 years ago after the second oil shock.

Toyota’s 4 automobile assembly plants are also included in this plan, so the damage it is going to bring will be immeasurable in Aichi Prefecture where most affiliated business are situated. It is said “If Toyota coughs, the whole prefecture gets a cold”, in reality, it will not stop at a general cold but will be pneumonia. The data a Japanese think tank announced is more shocking: “If Toyota’s production cutback lasts for a year, the actual rate of growth of Aichi Prefecture will be -20%, which means that out of 36,500,000 million yen of the prefecture’s gross production, 7,000,000 million yen will be gone. The numbers of unemployed might reach 500,000 at worst. When the US economy was at its worst because of the previous world depression, their actual rate of growth was -13%. This means an even worse situation might be waiting to hit the prefecture.”

After hitting hard on Aichi Prefecture, it will quickly chill the economy of the whole country. An economist of another think tank calculated that Japan’s GDP had dropped by 2,000,000 million yen and 120,000 more people had lost their jobs within the last 3 months.

Unfortunately, the situation is more likely to be as predicted. The December 2008’s foreign trade statistics, quickly reported on the 22nd, was that car exports to the USA dropped by 52% and to the EU by 63% and it is strongly predicted that it will drop even further during the first half of this year.
Each car manufacturer, who export almost 60% of their domestic output, is expected to cut even more production and some think tanks are saying: “In Japan, car industry makes 3.2% of the country’s GDP whereas it is 0.8% in the USA, so the impact will be catastrophic. It is also going to widely affect other industries such as iron and steel, plastic, electric parts, machinery, etc. If we lose 1,000,000 million yen in car production, it is said that affiliated businesses are going to lose 3,100,000 million yen altogether. If this situation continues at Toyota for a year, the amount it is going to affect the country’s economy will be 2 to 3 times worse than Aich Prefecture’s and up to 20,000,000 million yen could disappear from our GDP. Actually, Bank of Japan lowered their provision of this year’s GDP to -2% and if you add this to last year’s -1.8%, the loss will be 20,000,000 million yen”.

Depending on what Toyota is going to decide, the loss to Japan’s economy could be bigger. Although the Aso government is going to inject 12,000,000 million yen as a part of some economic packages, it will only be a drop in the ocean. Mr Aso does not seem to have much knowledge in literacy and numeracy, but he needs to re-think about this fiscal action. Car manufacturers, who were standing independently without the government’s help until recently, cannot even think how they are going to survive through this business depression; which tells how serious the situation is.

By the way, Britney Spears, the US singer has changed her car to a Japanese car manufacturer Mitsubishi’s Eclipse. This is the 4th generation model, it first went on the market in 2005 and it is not an expensive car. Average people can afford it easily. It has a V6, 3.8L engine, 260 horse power, and costs US$28,500 for a new one. Britney has purchased a Toyota Prius before. Her father was said to have a big say when it comes to buying a new vehicle. I hope, the fact a celebrity like her using a Japanese car is going to bring a little bit of sales recovery in our industry.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

Lunch Box

The other day, I picked up a free newspaper at a train station. Scanning through it, I found an interesting article in there. It said that recently the “lunch time situation” in Japan has changed a bit. According to the newspaper, more and more single males bring their own packed lunch to their offices. We assume that only females and married males would bring their “Bento boxes” but now young single males have started to bring them to work too. I am going to tell you about males who eat in their lunch room in their office buildings (“Bento-ha”, a subculture of Bento people).

First of all, a Japanese Bento needs a special box. Lately there is a bit of change in sales: a sales assistant of a large department store said “Recently more males come & buy them”. When I went to a nearby super market, they were selling these boxes as “Buy 2 and get 10% off”. The boxes come in a lot of different shapes and sizes: for females, there were some that come with special bags for each and they were around US$45, which was a big difference in prices when compared to the US$9 males’ simple 1 layer job. The same assistant said “Definitely certain types of the boxes are more popular than others among single males and they tend to just put cooked rice in there or with 1 simple dish. They do not need boxes with different layers, not like females. Men usually choose the most simple ones.”

So men are happy even when their lunch comes in plastic tupperware as they are after practical things. But then why now are they buying these boxes?

To this question, the assistant concluded her own analysis like this: “Surely they are affected by the recent recession and also last year’s Eco boom has played a part.” It may not be so unfashionable to carry your own packed lunch any more.

Looking around, half of JPC’s staff is Bento-ha and so am I. (Mine is a simple 1 layer box.) The reason why I bring my own lunch is that I live close from home so it is easy to bring one and that I do not have enough time to go out at lunch time. Because I can keep working while eating lunch, I always take my lunch box to work. However, the biggest reason will be that my two children both have to take their own lunch to school, so my wife can make my one without much extra work. (It might have been a different story if I was the only one.)

Being asked, one of the male staff who recently turned to Bento-ha said, “Oh, I want to save money and I am also watching my health. If you eat the same thing everyday, it cannot be good. ” Modern man tends to save where he can and spend heaps on his hobbies. They do not buy cars if it is going to cost them heaps but it seems they have the same attitude in their lunch situation.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955