If Japan is still a style trendsetter...

(I have a cold, two major projects due this week, and an exam on Monday, so I won't be blogging as much...)

The Wall Street Journal reports, in "Japan's Young Won't Rally Round the Car: As Youths Forsake Wheels, Designers Try to Make Vehicles Less Stressful, More Convivial," that only 25% of Japanese men in their 20s want to own a car.

From the article:

A survey last year of 1,700 Japanese in their 20s and 30s by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's biggest business newspaper, discovered that only 25% of Japanese men in their 20s wanted a car, down from 48% in 2000. The manufacturers' association found that men 29 years old and younger made up 11% of Japanese drivers in 2005, roughly half the size of that group in 1993.

The streets of Harajuku are filled with consumers like 20-year-old Kazuto Matsui. "Young people can borrow their parents' car, and I think they'd rather spend money on PCs or iPods than cars," says the student with shaggy hair who is in no rush to get a driver's license. While Mr. Matsui says he may want a car some day, "trains will do" for now.

Nissan designers interviewed 16-to-20-year-olds four years ago in Japan, the U.S., Europe and China to grasp how cars fit into their lives. They were surprised to find that many youths world-wide felt cars were unnecessary and even uncool because they pollute and cause congestion, Mr. Bancon says. The feeling was particularly strong in Tokyo, where computers and Internet access are widely available and where mass transit is inexpensive and reliable -- making the car makers' predicament worse here than in many other parts of the world.