Lohas is an English word. Do you know what it means?
More than one-third of Japanese under 35 consider Lohas an American word and a popular American lifestyle. There are magazines, products and ads with Lohas all over them everywhere in Tokyo.
You don't know what Lohas is? Two marketing research guys in Colorado came up with a market segment they call Lohas and they have put out some papers and a quarterly on the subject. The Lohas market segment eats organic, recycles and claims to be environmentally and health conscious.
Big deal. Ten years ago the same market research generated the magazine Real Simple. Ten years before that the same market research generated "voluntary simplicity."
The market research that led to Real Simple led a friend of mine to propose a calendar of simple living. You can find the twelve items I wrote at the time. We were completely off base, relative to the market, which was people working hard and feeling too busy.
Simple living has a few tens of thousands of participants and probably hasn't changed in the last few hundred years.
The Lohas people are just what they are: a consumer market segment much like the people who drive Saab's wear Prada and pay $35 for a bottle of wine. The Lohas people want hybrids, wear Patagonia and prefer free range chickens.