The line for the introduction of the Quarter Pounder at a Midosuji area store in Osaka (link)says that over 1000 people waiting in line were hired from a temp agency, and that if you even subtract ONLY the burgers purchased by the “temps” there would not have been a record made. Not to mention the likely vast numbers of people who waited in the line due to the psychological joining effect of seeing 1000 people already waiting in line for something that simply must be AWESOME.

I wonder if the 右 and the 左 got mixed up there….

It also strikes me as interesting how Japanese consumers will tolerate a certain amount of BS with lines and “kohyo hatsubaichu” and stuff like that but support a media frenzy as soon as a certain line is crossed (recent case of a company putting fake photos of “farmers” in with vegetables). In addition, a few food safety issues have popped up back home in the last few months but they elicit neither the outrage, nor the saturation coverage that they do in Japan. The Japanese media / consumer activists are clearly on guard for some things but not others. The difference may be “big corporate” (let’s not bring D####U in this time) but it may also have to do with something that we discussed in a very different context – ghettoized media environments. The media sleeps on young people (who take to the net) but panders to housewives who take any affront to their domestic fortresses of food as a personal attack.

In Japan, I end up watching a whole lot more daytime TV than anything else so I feel constantly bombarded by the fruits of consumer activism and media support of it. Rarely see this after 5pm, however, unless the food problems are criminal. In a similar sense, I almost never see this type of thing in what I read – Bungei, Shukan Asahi, Sekai, etc. – but it is all over the place in the “housewife” magazines that my wife buys and I occasionally browse.

自分もある意味においてその一員であるという自覚はある？
自国に対する見解だけを抜き出してみれば立派な｢右翼による弁明｣だよ｡

No, I agree with you here. There’s always a lot of crazy in with the good.

Of course, isn’t it often the same people who end up writing online about McScams and “how the Asahi is brainwashing us” and things like that? Can we really praise the liberating power of the net without looking at how dirty the other side of the coin is?

都合の良い｢絶対的基準｣を設けて､｢お前はケチだがオレは倹約家だ｣といっているようなもの｡

If anything, Global Voices Online kind of nips that in the bud: *surprise* Japanese consumers don’t like being lied to.