Appliance and electronics retail chain Yamada Denki has begun selling an electric car at some of its retail stores. Yamada has partnered with Mitsubishi Motors to sell the Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric vehicle. Yamada is the first household appliances store in Japan to sell an electric car. The i-MiEV electric vehicle is on sale at
After 20 years, Japan Airlines has stopped publication of it’s calendars that feature pictures of cabin attendants. The wall and desktops calendars were first offered in 1989 and have been sold in bookstores, on the internet, and in JAL catalogs. Demand peaked in 1993, with about 100,000 copies printed. For 2009, JAL printed 50,000 of the
More Barack Obama tee shirts available from ClubT, a design-your-own tee shirt and goods website in Japan. Obama City, Japan: website; news and photo. Obama impersonator. Also see Obama Instant Tee Shirts.
Bye Buy Butter Thirty-five years ago, it was toilet paper. Now, consumers and bakeries are hunting butter as Japan is suffering a butter shortage. Supermarkets are limiting butter to one per customer. At OK Mart, Hokkaido butter brand was available, up 100 yen from it’s previous price of 199 yen. Buyers were allowed only one
Opposite Directions Decreasing auto sales in Japan, combined with new laws targeting elderly drivers and other efforts to prevent pensioners from driving, are making it more difficult for auto manufacturers facing a different demographic future. Newsweek reports automobile sales in Japan have been declining steadily over time. It says aside from minicars and luxury foreign
