Bakugai! Japan’s new term for ‘explosive’ Chinese shoppers
Cosmetics and perfume, spirits and cigarettes, medicine and toiletries are top on Chinese tourists’ bulk-buying list
China’s voracious consumers have helped to create a new buzzword in Japan, with the term “bakugai” – which translates as “explosive buying” – selected as one of top additions to the Japanese language this year.
Fifty candidates were short-listed by publishing company Jiyu Kokumin Sha for the most popular word of 2015, ranging from new terms from pop culture, anime, politics and sport.
That list was whittled down to two winners, “bakugai” and the new baseball term “triple three”, ,to describe a .300 batting average with 30 stolen bases and 30 home runs achieved by two players this season.
The baseball phrase will have passed many Japanese by, but the influx of Chinese tourists are unmissable. And their spending sprees are fast becoming legendary among Japanese retailers.
During the Golden Week holidays in early October, around 400,000 tourists from mainland China descended on Japanese destinations, spending an estimated ¥100 billion (HK$6.3 billion) in the space of seven days.
Encouraged by the weaker yen and easier visa requirements, Chinese tourists accounted for fully 27.5 per cent of the total consumption by overseas visitors in 2014, according to the Japanese government’s white paper on tourism. And that percentage is likely to increase when the figures for 2015 are released.
And once they are here, they have a clear of idea what they want to spend their yen on.