Life as an afterthought

Chapter 5, page 8.

“It is; you get to learn how to appeal to the public. It’s difficult to try to control or manipulate a certain person’s opinion or behavior, but when you have a group of people, there are things you can do to influence what they think about a certain product, or how they behave when they are out for shopping.”

              “Sounds like human manipulation to me.”

              A slight trace of a frown appeared between his eyebrows. He looked over her shoulder and tried to construct his answer. Junko felt relieved ready to allow herself to let her guard down a little, seeing the way he looked at that moment. Apparently he’s got some brain; quite reassuring.

              “In a way, marketing is about manipulation. I’d call it influencing people, ‘cause I don’t believe you can make people do what they don’t want to. But studying how it works also has the benefit of knowing their tricks, you know? So you can protect yourself against being manipulated.”

              David raised his eyebrows as if asking her, how’s that?

              “But you’re not studying that in Japan?”

              David laughed, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.

              “Oh no. I can’t even if I wanted to. Japanese language is taking up all my time. It’s quite a challenge to learn it from the scratch.”

              “Will you be using Japanese in your future job?”

              “I hope so.”

              “Do you know what you want to do in your future?”

“No, not really. But knowledge of a foreign language certainly won’t hurt in any field. At least, that’s what I’m thinking.”