Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan

alephnerd

This seems to be a submarine article - all the images and quotes seem to be directly sourced from Yakult Honsha's strategic comms department. Edit: yep, appears Yakult has just kicked off an ad campaign putting Yakult Ladies front and center [0] [0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8HNY7Ta4dA

haunter

This is an ad

_delirium

The article didn't answer my main question, which is how the economics work. How does it add up to have high-touch home delivery of $5 yogurt packages?

tokyobreakfast

Japanese have lactose intolerance, almost universally. They don't eat yogurt or dairy in general.

Aaargh20318

Every time I read an article about people trying to solve the 'loneliness epidemic' I can't help but wonder if we're not trying to solve the wrong problem. Maybe the solution should not be sought in trying to increase social connections but in eliminating our need for social contact. This dependence on other humans has always felt like a flaw to me. Note that I'm not saying that human contact is bad, just that our pathological dependency on it is.

ValentineC

We used to have Yakult Ladies in Singapore too — I remember my parents buying from them to please their kids (me) decades ago. Surprisingly enough, I just looked the scheme up for this comment, and it's still active: - https://yakult.com.sg/yakult-lady-agent/ - https://sg.news.yahoo.com/memory-makers-singapores-first-yak... The Yahoo article could help explain some of the economics behind it.

ekianjo

Is this a PR piece, with product placement clearly front and center?

jokoon

English is not my main language but this title confuses me

qingcharles

Yakult is a Japanese company? I always assumed from the name it came from mainland Europe somewhere. They did a Häagen-Dazs on me. Especially as the Japanese often come up with Western names like this that aren't even spellable in kana.

chuckadams

I wonder how many suburban housewives in the 60's combated loneliness through TupperWare® Parties?

no_time

How neat. I'd buy some Actimel too if a sharply dressed lady would show up at my door instead of a suicidal looking grocery delivery guy who carves the local word for "tip" in the elevator every time he doesn't get any.

pipeline_peak

“The yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Minnesota” HN’s interest in this article is so “thing vs Japanese thing”

paganel

Sometimes news like this is upvoted, because it involves Japan, towards each a lot of Western techies have an unhealthy obsession on, but the moment when those techies are advised to not use the self-service thing at the super-market they start going bananas.

fidicen

With the automation of some customer service labor in japan, maybe this shows people value at least a bit of customer service interaction as a customer

keyringlight

Another variation on this is La Poste in France have a paid service "Watch over my parents" where you can get the postie to do a short regular visit to them (presumably alongside any deliveries) for distant children who can't. https://www.laposte.fr/services-seniors/visites-du-facteur

hamasho

I grew up on a small village in a small island. The yogurt lady was an essential part of the community. Many stay-at-home moms (including my mom) seemed to enjoy her visit. She and my mom talked a lot, sometimes for hours (I still can't figure out how she completed her job when she spent so much time with one person). They chatted about recent events, like the daughter of the fisherman gave birth, the great-grandpa of the liquor shop died of cancer, a newly opened restaurant in the nearest town sucked, and sometimes shared even personal struggles or family matters. It really helped a lot of people combat mental struggles caused by the isolation of being traditional stay-at-home wives in a super rural area. The only downside was anything you shared with her would be spread in the entire village before dawn.

Rendello

There are also some 'mobile supermarkets' run to help the elderly in some rural villages, as seen at 11 minutes in here: https://youtu.be/IiU3Nk16BLQ?t=664 I know my neck of the woods has a not-for-profit called Meals on Wheels that does something similar.

GarnetFloride

If I remember right in many of the outlying areas of England the post people would serve the same purpose, though recently there have been cutbacks so they can't spend time. I also saw an estimate that people are giving $7 Trillion in unpaid caregiving services to family and friends. I'm sure the capitalists would love to be able to tap into that, but they have always been anti-civilization that way.