TOKYO LIFESTYLE SAFARI

Truly understanding how Japanese people live is quite a challenge. The idea of sitting amongst a group of strangers and expressing intimate details about their private lives is quite foreign to Japanese people. This very much follows the Japanese cultural concept of uchi / soto or insiders (family and friends) and outsiders (acquaintances and strangers) where true feelings are hidden from those on the outside. This has several implications for the running of focus groups especially with the one-way mirror.

One way to break down these cultural barriers is to come down to street level, hang-out with respondents, and observe how they really live. A coffee together in the morning with a warm smile can go a long way to generating some free and open discussion before you start your 'day in the life of' tour.

Our client's objective was simple: Understanding how Japanese youth interact with technology in their everyday lives. From turning on the PC in the morning and reading emails, to looking up train times on their mobile phone, to reading blogs or playing games on their mobile phone - our client wanted to observe everything.

After hanging out with several respondents both in friendship pairs and also singles, the client was able to develop a comprehensive understanding of their interactions with technology. And as expected there were numerous surprises along the way - behavior that only real-time observation could uncover.