

Big in Japan: Why it's Worth Entering the World’s #3 Market - robert_mygengo
http://mygengo.com/talk/blog/big-in-japan-enter-the-worlds-3-market-for-cheap/

======
emanuer
We are a German-Japanese company offering our website in English, German and
Japan. We have been testing the different markets over the last year. What we
have learned so far is:

1\. Japanese have an extreme affection for foreign products

2\. There is considerably less competition for online services than in the USA

3\. SEO is comparably easy

1\. # The iPhone was predicted to fail miserably in Japan. Well as it turns
out Japanese are buying them like crazy. # Japan is one of the biggest markets
for Twitter. # When I talk to other people about Facebook, they have never
tried it, but most have heard of it. It is perceived as "this cool new thing
from the USA". # When I listen to conversations between Japanese I often hear
"It is from America" to impress the other person. # More than 90% of all
Japanese women poses a Louis Vuitton product
[http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/164421461....](http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/164421461.html)

2\. As the Author pointed out, the desktop market is considerably smaller than
the Ketai market. I believe this explains why Japanese websites are from
comparably lower quality. Not just from a technology standpoint, but also from
the content perspective. There are just not as much people fighting for
customers, hence the standards are about 4-7 years behind what one sees in the
US web-market.

3\. Until now, we did not dedicate any serious efforts to SEO. So far, for
every visitor Google sends us from the USA, we get 10 from Japan. My
explanation for this is again, low competition.

The hardest part is actually getting someone to write in Japanese. The
language is really difficult and most Japanese don't think their commandment
of the language is good enough to be published. (I guess this might serve as
one of the explanations why there is not as much competition in the Japanese
online market)

~~~
w1ntermute
> The language is really difficult and most Japanese don't think their
> commandment of the language is good enough to be published.

The key to communicating is that it doesn't have to be perfect. Most Americans
don't have a good enough command of English to write publishable material, but
that doesn't stop them. In fact, in areas like politics, we glorify those who
talk like an uneducated person by saying they "understand the common man"
better.

~~~
emanuer
I absolutely agree with you. Personally, I think mistakes are acceptable as
long as the work is valuable.

I am not not a native English speaker and to make matters worse dyslexic, yet
write.

For Japanese it is a "culture thing". Japan is a shame-based society and in
their minds, mistakes have to be avoided at all costs. They rather do the save
thing and avoid writing publicly altogether.

------
danac
I think Japan's general economic malaise over the past few decades have been
off-putting for investors and entrepreneurs that do not look for only a
sizable market, but the promise of a GROWING sizable market. With an aging
population, general economic slowdown, rigid labour market and social
contracts that are very specific within the Japanese context, this is not all
too encouraging for outsiders.

Although I would think that for businesses operating in the seniors' product
and services sector, robotics, or artificial intelligence, to name a few,
Japan would be the frontier and would be much more attractive to explore. So
it would depend very much on the product, the team behind the product, status
quo in the domestic market, etc.

But the discussion over whether it's worthwhile to tame the Japanese market
reminds me of this article
([http://potlatch.typepad.com/weblog/2011/02/whatever-
happened...](http://potlatch.typepad.com/weblog/2011/02/whatever-happened-to-
japan.html)) that asks why the world's collective attention has shifted away
from Japan in recent years.

------
scrrr
I've spent some time in Japan and from what I remember it must be the toughest
place for a foreigner to start a business on the planet.

You have to have Japanese people acting on your behalf and then still 1000
things can go wrong.

~~~
jrockway
But of course, credit card networks are international, and there are plenty of
people you can pay in the US to write your website's copy in Japanese.

------
kondro
An interesting article. I am definitely guilty of ignoring all the non-English
speaking countries, not just because of the language barrier, but because I'm
fearful that I just won't be able to fit in well with the culture.

------
danteembermage
"Sticking with the same world, KFC managed to convince an entire nation that
fried chicken is what Christmas is ‘really’ about :)"

I had no idea this was true, fascinating.

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb2dafc6-0ba4-11e0-a313-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb2dafc6-0ba4-11e0-a313-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1FRMVVZZ7)

------
nopassrecover
I get the impression Japan has a high rate of early adopters, which is
something for tech people. Having said that, Facebook has trouble in Japan.

~~~
electromagnetic
Facebook thrives in much of the western world because it's key feature is
over-simplicity. Computer illiterate people feel well at home using facebook.

In a country with a high number of early adopters, they're likely more
interested in useful apps over simple apps.

~~~
kamechan
my wife is from tokyo and hasn't been in the US for long. she still doesn't
consider this her home, and we live in tokyo for 3 months of the year.

anyway, i mention this because i think she's a fairly good representative of
the upper-middle class segment in japan, as are her friends. they have almost
no interest in facebook. part of that is due to the fact the japanese have
ameba.jp and mixi, which have been around for a while and seem to be the
social networking sites of choice in japan.

also, when i've asked my wife why she dislikes facebook so much, it usually
comes down to privacy concerns. she's got her account locked down, but she's
annoyed she even has to do this (and continually check it to make sure things
haven't changed). she also doesn't like having to grant applications the
ability to access her account in order to use them.

