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You could distinguish people who are married or are parents (with false negatives) by recording people who are at the till with their spouse or children. (Send out demographic-research cards once, to a few of the same stores you've collected this info from, to derive a normalization factor that will make such collected observations useful from then on.)

You could make a note of a person's seeming affect—positive/negative/neutral emotion.

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I'm asking historically what was actually done, not what could be done. (For, "what could be done" you could ask if the cashier had seen this person before? Are they a regular shopper here, as far as the cashier notices?) I am asking what information cashiers in Japan actually in fact recorded by hand. What did these cards look like for each customer. Etc.

Generally what has been "accepted" as done is age and male/female. I'm sure some places have done more but that's all I've heard of (lived in Japan for about 6 years now).

Image of actual buttons used added to the original post.

Keep in mind this has to be done while doing usual cashier things, so not much attention can be taken up by it.

Thanks!

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