On my way to work, just outside my office building, there is a used car lot that looks pretty shady.
I should say there WAS a used car lot, because on Monday this week, that car lot went out of business, and they started pulling things down and clearing things out. However, for the past five years I had the chance to walk by this place on my way to work and make some observations.
I’m not sure why in particular this used car lot looked any more shady than any other used car lot. Used car places as a rule tend to have a melancholy feel to them – saying goodbye to your old car is kind of depressing, and so a collection of old cars in one place has a vibe something like an animal shelter. This place was an independent used car lot, which is a little more rare in Japan. Most used car places are subsidiaries of major dealers – usually right next to the new car lot.
On a big board above this old used car place there used to be a big sign advertising all the reasons why you should stop in. I remember one of the selling points of shopping there was that they offered five year loans on every car. Most of these cars were pretty cheap to begin with – only one had a price sticker over $2000 based on my extensive research (walking by every day). So even the most expensive one split into 60 payments – well, they probably made their money on interest from the loan.
But the part of the big sign board that really got my attention was written in big Japanese characters on the bottom right of the sign:
“Women Welcome”
It took a while to get my mind around the cultural implications of these two simple words.
Sure, American car dealers have a reputation for high pressure sales tactics by salespeople working on commission, so maybe the sign could be partly to allay fears in single Japanese women that they would get forced into buying something that they didn’t really want. However, if they felt the need to write “Women Welcome” that kind of implies that in some places, women are in fact not welcome, and so I spent a lot of time wondering why that would be.
Your guess is probably as good as mine, and as it is clear now, their welcoming women policy didn’t really help their economic condition very much anyway, but these are the things that bounce around in my head while walking to and from work.
