Flying High with the Market Wisdom from the Toilet Designer

Having recently taken an internal flight in Japan, I can confirm the following:

- It is very clean (of course) - the airport, plane, everything

- There is business and first class, even on a one hour flight

- The stewardesses won't tell you off for misbehaving. I forgot to put my seat back into the upright position for landing, but due to a strong allergy to the English language (I was reading a Japanese newspaper at the time, but they must have thought I was studying the pictures), they studiously ignored my breaking the Wa (Japanese harmony/group-psychology/social obligation thing).

The other important thing to note is that Tokyo airport has a giant Onigiri outside it: 　

　 OK, so how about JAL's in-flight magazine, Skyward?

This edition reviews Paris ("Pali" in Japanese) - "Paris, the city that goes well with Champagne".

Now, the first thing to note is this advert:








That is because this is more or less how you feel when you encounter the level of sophistication that Japanese aviation has reached.

No paper tickets, not even printouts, not even crappy codes that you write down, put in your passport and then lose.

Japan has evolved to the highest level of airline-ticketing technology, via the two-dimensional barcode.

I got sent something like this on my mobile:

And there is a special scanner onto which you hold the mobile face-down. My fat, crudely-formed foreign hands were not delicate enough for the operation, but thankfully, teams of enthusiastic bowing staff were on hand to supervise. This is, actually, one of the great mysteries of Japan - the country with the best technology and highest efficiency in most things generally overemploys people where lots of bowing is necessary.

So, we browse through the magazine a bit and come to an article about....

Yamamoto Kansai, the designer of the famous Japanese electronic toilet!

　 Now, for those people who don't understand the importance of the contribution of this man to society, I will explain what is a Japanese toilet in the following post.

However, in the meantime, I can tell you that Toto (the dude's company) is going to revolutionise the way we experience toilets .... AGAIN !

This time, however, it is going to do this via the medium of colour:


　The new NEOREST Collection comes in six colours, together with matching slippers and rug:

- Gurei

- Buru

- Orenji

- Gureeen

- Uaito (for those who haven't grasped the concept)

- Buraku

You can check the link here. The text says:

"Make your own rules"

"A place where the new everyday is born"

You can also click on coloured boxes to see different coloured toilet lids.

Now, the interview was two pages of textbook sycophancy, with questions such as "how did you come to think up such an exciting project!". However, in response to the last question, which was:

"Would you say that with this new collaboration, you have created a new toilet culture?"

Answer:

"The future always involves progress. The toilet space is no different. Since there is no precedence for the future, we can only continue to meet the challenges that are ahead of us."

This is highly applicable to the stock market. Clearly, Yamamoto san is not only a design genius, but a source of market wisdom.