We were a bit bemused at first by the Willer Express Executive Seat service available on a bus route between Osaka and Tokyo. Travelers are treated to reclining seats, curtains for each seat, private TV screens, and even internet access. There is even a woman-only service. However, this ain’t cheap: a one-way ticket costs 9,800 JPY ($108), nearly twice as much as a regular night bus seat.

It might sound a bit much for a night bus, since consumers usually ride them precisely because they are cheap. However, this service is filling a niche for people who don’t want to take normal buses but can’t quite afford shinkansen (the Willer Express Executive Seat ticket is still twenty to thirty percent cheaper than the bullet train).

It’s not just a demand for premium facilities that has produced these services, but also the desire to stay connected. The wifi will be a big draw for many mobile consumers who don’t want to be stuck on a bus with nothing to look at except the back of the seat in front. Keio has also run experiments on two night bus lines this winter offering passengers full wifi connections.

To foreign eyes, Japanese trains represent an ideal in convenient transportation. However, often it is much better to take night buses to rural areas and resorts (e.g. going skiing in Nagano, as in the Keio service). There is plenty of need for buses, and clearly the passenger demographic goes beyond stereotypically “poor” travelers to mobile consumers who demand better services.

The last couple of years has seen a boom in “factory love” (工場萌え, koujou-moe), manifesting in numerous night-time cruises around industrial areas, photography books, blogs and mixi communities — all spreading the word that processing plants, manufacturing facilities, chimneys…yes, these can be beautiful! Even the current TV commercials and posters for Suntory’s Boss Black canned coffee tap into this surging interest, with imagery of stylishly lit black-and-white industrial landscapes.

Of course Japan famously already has three particularly beautiful sights (日本三景, Nihon Sankei): Matsushima in Miyagi, Amanodate in Kyoto, and Itsukushima in Hiroshima. Should we also add Mitsubishi, Toyota and Panasonic factories to this list?

[Image via tabism.com]

The cruises (known as “factory night view jungle cruises”) are particularly popular, with boats full even in the winter. Kawasaki and Yokohama, Chiba and the Hanshin area all have cruise services leaving just as the sun goes down, costing around 4,500 JPY ($50) per person for ninety minute tours.

What kind of people are these factory freaks? Photography enthusiasts, of course, and older husbands and wives. However, surprisingly, also groups of females and young couples. Although bay cruises have always been a good place for a date, factory-spotting doesn’t on paper sound like the kind of weekend activity likely to attract that demographic. Many of the boat trips include drinks, though, and on-board guidance, which would make it more of an “experience” and enjoyable for all.

When looking into this we were also reminded of the abandoned former coal mining hub that was Hashima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture, re-opened to tourists last year. Domestic sightseeing might just be going industrial…

Auctions are familiar to Japanese users through already popular ones like Yahoo! but this represents a new kind of service for the market. Through brands4friends consumers can get their hands not on cheap used goods (which consumers here are traditionally suspicious of anyway), but brand and outlet fashion products that can sell for up to seventy percent off. Auctions are organized by brand and the duration of each one is fixed (75 hours), along with the number of items, thus making each sale a kind of event in which consumers are encouraged to enter quickly.

The company has promised some four hundred brands — clothes, of course, but also household goods, appliances and accessories. Already a hit in its native Germany, the service hopes to have a quarter of a million registered users in two years’ time, and annual sales of 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion).

To register you require an invitation from a current member, though it is open to any user to join until March 11. This slight sense of exclusivity, coupled with the temporariness of the auctions (once over apparently you cannot search for sold items or prices), should build buzz for the site.

We have already seen how this real-time got-to-get-it-now kind of retail experience has been a hit for Tokyo Girls Collection, where consumers are able to purchase clothes through their phones as they watch them being worn by popular models. If brands4friends succeeds, it will be another milestone in the trend towards democratic and cheap fast fashion.

I think that this will be roundly ridiculed throughout the Japan-centric blogostweetsphere, so let’s leave it up to them to dissect how this terrible video panders to the lowest common pop denominator.

As our own Will Andrews said to me, “This is like me walking down the street in Paris wearing garlic and a black beret while clutching a baguette”. In other words, it’s ok when Toast Girl does it because she’s pretty much being herself the whole time.

Seriously….McG?!

For anyone remotely interesting in contemporary architecture in Japan, the collection of interviews in 20 Japanese Architects will have you salivating. As the title suggests, there are twenty creators interviewed in the book, alongside photos and essays. Hagenberg met with all the major players in the industry, including Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma (pictured above, right, with Hagenberg), Hara Hiroshi and Toyo Ito.

The book was published last year but was unavailable internationally — until now! You can get your copy through our friends at the Japan Trend Shop for $31.