In the domestic milk tea trend has passed the top now, in order to leverage the status of the milk tea brand that has been stable in the market, it is far from enough to rely on pearls, such as Boba, Cold Day, Brown Sugar Diamond, Taro Balls, Pudding... A variety of milk tea accessories plus a variety of milk tea fruit tea, only to form today's domestic milk tea market.
And in Japan, next door to us, the simplest bubble tea has become one of their current vanes leading the development of popular culture, yes, a cup of less complicated bubble tea, and to be more precise, the soul of the trend is not even milk tea, but the ingredient "pearl".
The name of the year is "Bubble Tea"
If I were to use an example to show how fanatical The Japanese are about bubble tea, I would like to use the Japanese New Year number vote to illustrate this.
In April this year, Japan announced their New Year's name, "Reiwa", and the year number has unfolded a lot of interesting things, including the "bubble tea" year number.
During the Japanese year number voting, a Japanese market research agency conducted a questionnaire survey of 300 female high school students in the Shibuya area of Tokyo. In this survey, the "bubble tea" year number ranked 11th, and after the results of the survey were announced, it attracted a lot of ridicule and attention on the Japanese Internet.
After the New Year number was set as "Reiwa", some netizens forcibly twisted Reiwa into タピオカ (bubble tea), and their enthusiasm for bubble tea can be seen.
In the variety show related to the Japanese idol group Beechsaka 46, there is also a skill that members who drink milk tea have drunk milk tea to the point where they can tell which milk tea shop they come from just by eating pearls.
In today's Japan, various derivatives of bubble tea or single pearls are endless. From pearl ice cream to pearl toast, to pearl wonton and bubble tea nail art and bubble tea earrings, it can be said that only you can't think of it, no Japanese can't do it.
Pearl toast
Pearl wonton
Bubble tea nail art
The same Japanese love of bubble tea makes Japan's milk tea shops line up long, there are popular milk tea shops when they open, there will even be a long queue of more than 500 meters, in the country basically do not need to queue up coco milk tea shops to Japan also quickly became popular, becoming a long queue of internet red milk tea shops.
"Please recommend a local hidden shop where only Japanese locals go to the queue, and tourists will never go to the queue."
Do you think it will be the kind of shop that opens in the streets and alleys, like in "The Lonely Foodie"? No, it could also be Buckhorn Lane or Tribute Tea.
Japanese people who love to line up
The Japanese people's dedication to queuing has impressed many of the People who have been in Japan, and even the Japanese themselves are delicate in their own country's strong queuing atmosphere. Japanese people who like to queue up for everything have a small unit story in the autumn 2008 special chapter of "World's Wonderful Story", called "The Criminal Police Who Can Make People Queue", which mocks Japan's ubiquitous queuing ethos and the congruence that comes according to queuing.
And the Japanese also have a very interesting idea of queuing, and the Japanese like to be proud of the fact that a lot of time and energy is spent. In the eyes of many Japanese people, if an item needs to go through the early queue to buy, it must be a good thing.
The mysterious Earl D in the anime "Horror Pet Shop" can't resist the temptation of queuing
For example, in China, if you have a friend who goes to the queue for 4 hours to buy a cup of milk tea, your first reaction will be difficult to understand, and then ask whether it is good or not, is it worth it. Most Japanese people's reaction may be: "Waiting in line for 4 hours to buy, this cup of milk tea must be delicious." ”
In fact, at this time, whether milk tea is good or not is no longer the focus, and the focus of the Japanese has shifted to the time spent in line for 4 hours.
Behind the bubble tea sweeping Japan, many long queues of bubble tea bought, after experiencing such a display of taking pictures and tweeting, the result is often lost on the side of the road, leaving half of the milk tea and sunken pearls piled up on the street unorganized.
Bubble tea abandoned on the side of the road
So you want to say that so many Japanese people really like bubble tea, that is actually not scientific, to know that milk tea is not the first time in Japan to fire up, carefully calculated, this year's Japanese milk tea is hot, in fact, it is the third time. After the taste improvement, the milk tea after adding pearls must be there because of its unique taste, but it is not something that everyone loves, and some people will buy it because they like it, but a considerable number of Japanese people who love bubble tea may just enjoy the fun of queuing.
Even playing games, Japanese people will also love the habit of queuing in, in the Japanese popular online game "Dragon Quest X", when encountering many people in popular activities, Japanese players will spontaneously line up to carry out the task process, so as not to cause unnecessary trouble to other players (such as robbing monsters), when the game NPC can only be a single person dialogue, once there are more Japanese players will even repair equipment will line up.
However, compared with the real queuing atmosphere, the queuing in the game is not so complicated, and the queuing in the game is more for the sake of order and the Japanese people's unwillingness to cause trouble.
But this is not to say that the concept of "long queue = goods value for money" can not be applied to the game, for a game, the word queue is also a manifestation of the high popularity of the game to a certain extent, "open service queue XX million people" will even be used as a means of publicity by the game, representing the game fun and popularity, enough to see that the word "queue" For the crowd, the attraction of the word "queue" to the crowd is not limited to reality.
When liking to queue up becomes a habit
Today's "queuing" is gradually becoming a precursor to habituation, not only in Japan, but also in China.
"The higher the value of the service, the longer people are willing to wait" This is the queuing effect in the normal balance state, such as the long queue of new IPhone models and the long queue of limited luxury handmade models.
However, the queuing of the net red dot punch card and the queue of the milk tea shop for 4 hours is obviously not in line with the queuing effect of the balanced state. That's when people are willing to wait in long lines becomes complicated. The combination of factors such as comparison, curiosity, and the desire to have a common topic with friends has become a psychological weight; commercial market factors such as merchant guidance and hunger marketing have become another weight. These weight changes and additions affect the balance of the scale rod of the queuing effect at all times. When the scale rod is completely out of balance, the meaning of queuing changes - the time of queuing is not equal to the value of goods, and the original intention of people queuing is not for services and goods themselves.
Similarly, the game queuing publicity method mentioned above also uses the weighted weight of the player's psychology, in order to allow more people to "queue" and experience the game. It can even be deliberately publicized, resulting in the interesting result of "not a large number of people queuing, but queuing up to lead to more people".
"Full-time Master" web series's understanding of game queuing
Just as "Japanese people don't necessarily like bubble tea, they just like to queue up", a game with high popularity is not necessarily how fun the game is, it may just be that players need a game that is popular enough and crowded to meet their sense of social participation.
And this "unthinkable" atmosphere is sweeping through the lives of contemporary young people from games to reality, and gradually has the tendency to become the next habit...