Its all doom and gloom in the world of Honda at the moment. First Honda announced that they are pulling out of Formula 1. For years F1 has been trying to break into the North American market – the worlds largest car market – with little success. Due to the demands of the commercial side of the F1 management there is now no US Grand Prix and the Canadian GP won’t be happening next year.

Most manufacturer backed teams – like BMW and Mercedes McLaren – can’t be happy with this situation and I assume that this was one of the reason why Honda pulled out.

Secondly Honda has announced that it’s canceling the next generation NSX

http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle.aspx?AR=236594

Not good.

Next Honda is scrapping plans to introduce the Acura brand to Japan. That means that I very much doubt that Acura is comming to Europe any time soon.

This bloomberg (or is that gloomberg) page summaries the finacial situation:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=asDCdNdT2a2E&refer=japan

To top it all I’ve managed to add some scratches my new Accord!

I find Japan and its culture fascinating. Unless you are Japanese or have spent time growing up in Japan its culture is something you will never fully understand.

The links below are to the online “clocks” by the Japanese retail company UNIQLO. I find these clocks very memorizing and I keep visiting now and again to refresh my memory of them. I can’t describe what makes them especially Japanese (apart from the cute Japanese woman and the fact that it’s a Japanese website).

The best I can describe them as is relentless – which is very Japanese. Often when the Japanese put their mind to something, they will eventually achieve their goal regardless of how long it takes and what setbacks they have.

Of course the Japanese do get things wrong – like the asset inflated economy of the early 1990s that lead to their property crash. We in the UK have never had to worry about such issues where a significant part of the economy is based on property prices – oh wait – it turns out the UK does have a significant part of its economy that relies on the housing sector and we have just hit a credit crunch – ah well never mind.

UNIQLO has been in the UK for a while but they did overreach themselves and opened too many shops. They opened a shop in Uxbridge but now that’s closed and they seem to only have shops in the centre of London and some of the more upmarket suburbs.

One problem that had was with staff training. For example in Japan when a UNIQLO shop runs out of a particular item then the staff reorder that item. The Japanese management didn’t understand that in the UK staff had to be trained before they understood this simple fact.

Anyhow enough of the politics enjoy the clocks!

http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/season2/index.html

http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/season1/index.html