When Sanae Nakano pulled into her usual gas station the other day, she was handed a leaflet explaining the ABCs of filling the tank, starting with "Park the car in an open space."
Nakano wasn't pleased to learn that her neighborhood General Oil station in Yokohama had become one of Japan's self-serve-gas guinea pigs."I'm afraid I'll set the place on fire," Nakano confided, as an attendant coaching virgin gas-pumpers held the nozzle while she and her two young children huddled around the pump. "It's a lot of trouble. You didn't have to get out of the car before."
Though self-serve stations have been part of the U.S. landscape for two decades - and most Americans now fill their own tanks - Japanese drivers could do so only beginning April 1.
Despite a lot of hoopla in Japan, however, self-serve appears to be off to a slow start. Daunted by the high cost of equipment conversion, extensive safety requirements and thin profit-margin forecasts, only a handful of stations nationwide have gone the do-it-yourself route.
And those that have made the switch are counting on a rather curious draw to lure new customers: shame. Most customers feel too embarrassed to order anything less than a full tank in return for full service. In Japan, where gas sells for double what it costs in the United States, that can be a pricey proposition.
So far, there's been little monetary incentive to entice drivers to prime the pumps themselves. At least not while full-service coddling is available down the street for, at most, dimes more per tank. Such a small premium is hardly an indulgence in an expensive country with an excellent public transit system, where cars are more ornament than utility.
"They just make my windshield squeaky clean and wash my tires so they look brand new," gushed Rei Yaegashi, 25, as three attendants yelling "Irashaimase!" - "Welcome!" - ushered him into a full-service station in Tokyo, filled his tank, washed his windows, dumped his ashtray and checked his oil, transmission fluid and battery. "I don't think most Japanese will want to do it themselves, especially girls," he said.
As Yaegashi pulled away, an attendant jumped into a busy street to halt oncoming traffic and directed him out of the lot - all part of the full-serve routine here. Explained station manager Yasunori Kikuchi, "I don't think consumers can pull in, pump gas and leave the station without bumping into each other or making a mess in a small place like this."
Indeed, even the oil companies that have ventured into the self-serve business are skeptical of its viability. Cosmo Oil, the third-largest gas station operator in Japan with 6,573 stations, has opened just one self-serve stand and plans only a dozen in the next year. Nippon Oil, the largest with 9,700 stations, has launched just two, in-clud-ing one joint venture with a McDonald's restaurant in Kobe. (The idea is to entice customers pulling out of the station to drive directly into the adjacent hamburger stand.)
General Oil, a joint venture between Exxon Corp. and several Japanese companies that has 2,400 stations, initially planned 20 self-serve stations but cut back to four.
"We didn't think the returns would be so quick," said Hidenobu Fujiyama, General Oil's managing director, who was on hand during the launch of the self-serve station in Yokohama.