One thing I like about the Japanese is their interesting way of looking at things, which is often very creative. There’s a fun new show called Generation Tengoku (Generation Heaven) which divides people into three groups, the Banana, Kiwi Fruit and Mango Eras. This is based on what fruits were rare and exotic in Japan at the time, with Banana Era being people currently aged 60 and above, Kiwi Fruit Era being in their 40s and Mango Era being the current generation of people in their 20s. Each episode presents nostalgic facts about the three groups which are interesting to compare and contrast. For example, people in the Banana Era grew up seeing images of spacious American homes on TV in the 1960s, spent the current equivalent of $40,000 to visit Hawaii for a week and were greatly influenced by English news and music broadcasts on the Far East Network, the radio station of the U.S. military in Yokosuka. People in the Kiwi Fruit group played “Invader Game” (what Space Invaders is called here), imitated the fashions and hair styles of Bobby Brown and MC Hammer at discos, and took part in the great “wine boom” of the early 90s, when everyone pretended to know about wine. The Mango Era has been defined by the rise of smartphones, flamboyant singers like Lady Gaga and of course the runaway popularity of hanryu, the “Korean wave” of dramas and KPOP singers, which caused a generation of women to start using random Korean slang despite puzzled looks from everyone around them. The best thing about the show is how accurately they recreate each era — the ridiculously colored suits and overly-permed hair from the 1990s, the old timey tatami rooms of the Showa Period, and so on.
A new way of thinking about generations.
