Top 10 Status Symbols for Japanese Men

Byjay

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.

  1. Car
  2. Job
  3. Educational Background
  4. Watch
  5. Qualifications and Licenses
  6. Suit
  7. Where they shop or eat
  8. Where they live
  9. Beautiful wife or girlfriend
  10. 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.

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2 Comments

  2. 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).

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