A recent internet poll by the Goo search engine (link in Japanese) has rated the top 10 things that Japanese men feel show their status.
- Car
- Job
- Educational Background
- Watch
- Qualifications and Licenses
- Suit
- Where they shop or eat
- Where they live
- Beautiful wife or girlfriend
- Shoes
Number five is probably unique to Japanese because of all the testing here. There is a test or qualification that people must pass in order to claim proficiency in something. There are tests for language proficiency (and one for non-Japanese to prove proficiency in Japanese called the Japanese Language Proficiency Test). There are also tests to show proficiency in various computer programs, word processing, Excel, and others. Basically a Japanese resume lists these qualifications and the levels achieved, for example Level 2 of the German Proficiency exam and Level 3 of French.
Hang on… effeminate haircut and Louis Vuitton manbag/clutch is not in there? Shurely shome mishtake?!
I think that’s a part of the suit…
There was a poll around the same time as this done on Goo in which most women in Japan claimed they wouldn’t date a guy who drove a “Kei” type light body car. I think that poll only shows that most people answer polls with wishful thinking because there’s a lot of Kei-car couples driving around (with fur and stuffed animals covering the air bag to ensure a “snow globe effect” during the crash).