Marketing
	Japan's Me Generation
	By Hannah Beech

Posted Monday, August 22, 2005; 20:00 HKT
After toiling away as an accountant for 20 years, Junko Abe wanted to treat herself to something that was "a little bit gorgeous." A designer bag, spa session or hot-spring retreat with her girlfriends? Been there, done that. Looking for something new, the 34-year-old Tokyo resident plunked down $240,000 in 2003 to buy an apartment in a "female-friendly" building where 90% of the flat-owners are women. "My male friends who buy apartments are waiting for a wife to show up and start cooking for them," says Abe, who is single. "But I wanted this apartment to enjoy for myself."

Japan's new Me Generation—single, independent women—might seem selfish, but the nation's economy is coming to depend on their spendthrift ways. In its financial outlook for 2005, Mizuho Securities singled out the fat wallets of unmarried females as one of Japan's few positive economic trends. Unlike men, who often squirrel their money away for a future family, most single women feel no remorse in splurging on, say, Louis Vuitton handbags—more than half of Japanese women in their 20s own one, says a survey by Saison Research Institute. With the ranks of unmarried women increasing, Japanese companies are nosing in on this consumer group. Maeda Development, a Tokyo property developer, started selling "female-friendly" flats in 2003. What was a side experiment quickly turned into a core business. While other Maeda apartments tend to languish on the market for around a year, their 200-plus female-targeted flats sold out, on average, within six months each. Features that lure women include air-conditioning that can be switched on via cell phone before the resident returns home, bathrooms that double as saunas and—of course!—enormous closets, at least by Japanese standards. "We had no idea this market was so big," says Maeda's apartment section chief Hisayuki Sawamura, who notes that young, single women were the largest group buying new apartments in Japan last year. "People think women have no money or they aren't willing to make major investments, but they're completely wrong."

Female singletons love travel, too. Tokyo's venerable Imperial Hotel, which had never before targeted lone female customers, is now promoting a "For Myself" package for women that gets up to a dozen bookings a day. Last September, one of Japan's oldest travel companies, Kinki Nippon Tourist Co., put together a team of 18 female agents to design dream tours for Japanese women. The result was A Table (pronounced in a French accent, bien sur), which now ranks as one of the travel firm's hottest programs. Tours include the Journey for Beautiful Skin (a six-day tour of Rome and Florence that includes a stop at a spa in northern Italy to "reward your hardworking self") and the Casual Celeb Hawaii itinerary (for women aged 20-34 who want to hang out with other "sparkly" women in a tropical setting). "Women like to save money so they can treat themselves," says Noriko Abe, spokesperson for Kinki Nippon. "Their priorities are to be beautiful, healthy and happy."

Certainly, accountant Abe likes to wine and dine with other sparkly women. Every few weeks, she holds chardonnay-enhanced pajama parties for her female friends in her tidy apartment in southern Tokyo. The flat is stuffed with golf clubs and memorabilia from vacations to places like Beijing, Seattle and Germany. Her parents don't mind her globetrotting ways, but they were upset, says Abe, when she bought her apartment. They felt she was giving up on marriage. "There's a feeling that if you buy your own place you'll never find a husband because you're too independent," says Abe. "But I love my apartment. It's a symbol of who I am and I'm proud that I own it."

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