Word: yen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lure of the yen is irresistible for English clubs under financial pressure from rising player salaries and keen to take their brands and their merchandise outside their saturated home market. The Premier League estimates that of the 440 million people globally who have access to televised fixtures, more than one-third are in the Asia-Pacific region. Some clubs already have established followings in Asia. Liverpool and Manchester United both have played friendly matches in the region this month...
...around what Tokyo girls say is kawaii. Every month, high schoolers in the capital spend roughly $275 each on gear and clothes?three times more than the average Japanese high schooler. (As a group, high-school girls in the country spend around $2.5 billion annually.) Most of that discretionary yen goes to the brand name with the newest, hottest, coolest style. And for those brands that capture that essence of kawaii, the potential markets stretch from Tokyo to Tashkent. Call it the Greater East Asia Ko-Kawaii Sphere. "Japan is the only country in Asia right now that...
...keep up with kawaii, Japanese firms chasing youthful yen hire high schoolers as salesgirls, stylists and marketers. That's a necessity in a business where there are no seasons, only tsunami-size fashion trends that breeze through in weeks, months or, like, whenever. And when it comes to knowing exactly which shade of beige Tokyo's trendsetters want to wear and how low-slung they want their jeans, those teen-targeted labels recruit heavily from among the karisuma tenin (charismatic salesgirls) of the Shibuya 109 building. "They started hiring us because we wore different, interesting clothes and the magazines were...
...providing economic padding--and a political bulwark--for the inevitable layoffs and business collapses. Koizumi and Takenaka also need to go into sales mode, a Japanese version of the Bush road show on taxes. And, on a technical note, Japan needs to let its currency slide. A weaker yen--say, 135 to the dollar--would strengthen corporate profits. The danger is that a sliding yen could set off a round of devaluations, as neighboring economies rush to slash their exchange rates. Here is where the U.S. can, finally, help Japan. By nodding support to a slow devaluation and not screaming...
...From the wooden boxes of the 1920s to the hulking contraptions of today, Japan's basic vending business has long been the same: someone had a yen (and some coins) and someone else had to drive around and restock those hungry machines with bottles, underwear or dried squid. Now, the paradigm-busting idea is that a growing number of vending machines are beginning to dispense digital data, altering the economics of a business once largely dependent upon a complex system of resale and deliveries. As vending machines lumber into the information age, future purchases will just as likely come...