WEDNESDAY 12 NOVEMBER 2014 •
[email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside Docs should ask CAMPUS heart patients • Bangladesh School organises Cultural about secondhand Excellence Felicitation smoke: Study P | 5 P | 11 MARKETPLACE • Bang & Olufsen launches BeoPlay A2 in Qatar P | 6 ARCHAEOLOGY • Discoveries from Hafeet Mountain P | 7 Japan’s independent, old- FILM OLD CAFES fashioned little • Darker Hunger Games coffee shops are won’t lose viewers, still thriving despite says star Lawrence the huge popularity LIVE ON IN P 8-9 of big chains like | Starbucks, which pulls in a steady stream of hip, young TECHNOLOGY Japanese. • Which is the JAPAN best tablet for gift-giving? P | 12 LEARN ARABIC • Learn commonly used Arabic words and their meanings P | 13 2 PLUS | WEDNESDAY 12 NOVEMBER 2014 COVER STORY By Katie Forster bove the converging crowds at the famous Shibuya scramble cross- Aing in Tokyo glows the unmissable bright green sign of Starbucks, a magnet that pulls in a steady stream of hip, young Japanese. The American coffee company is so popular in Japan that it recently announced plans to buy out its Japanese partner for $900m and take full control of operations in its second largest market. However, not everyone is a fan of the customisable drinks and free wifi on offer at over 1,000 Japanese branches of the global chain, which will soon be found in every prefec- ture, including the remote, rural Tottori region. “The way they make (coffee) is totally wrong, it's not tasty,” rails Ichiro Sekiguchi, the 100-year-old owner of long-established inde- pendent Tokyo coffee shop Cafe de L'Ambre.