I've just launched a new blog/guide with Chris Kirkland of Artweb and hoboceo.com about doing things cheaply in Tokyo entitled Tokyo Cheapo. 

It's a common perception that everything in Tokyo costs a fortune and that it's much more expensive than anywhere else.  Sure, some things can be really expensive in Tokyo, but they don't always have to be. In fact some things are much cheaper here than in other major cities.  How many places could you get lunch at a *top* restaurant (not just a dodgy tourist trap) for 1,500yen ($US20) including a salad, a main and coffee?

So the blog is about 'hacking' Tokyo as Tim Ferris would put it. It's not about reduced enjoyment or being a tightass - it's about not wasting your money and making it go further.

We're open to contributions and suggestions also.  Check out the site and tell your friends like in the Faberge Organics shampoo commercial.

http://tokyocheapo.com/

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I feel a little strange launching into a rant after such a long break from posting, but I felt the need to vent on this particular pet peeve of mine.

'San' or (さん) is an honorific in Japanese. I won't go into the complexities of when you should and shouldn't use it or when you should use 'chan', 'sama' or 'sensei'. The point I would like to make is that it isn't English. In multi-national companies in Japan it seems to be accepted practice to put 'San' after a person's name when emailing in English. Presumably this began as some kind of concession to the cultural norms in Japan without having to go to the effort of actually writing Japanese. Something else that is strange is that I can't think of any other situation in which you would use the local honorific when communicating in English. If you wrote to a German colleague in English would you begin with 'Hi Frau Helga'? Another reason this has probably perpetuated is simple because both sides misunderstand how and when to use the honorifics in the other language. On the flip side, I feel a little strange when a Japanese contact emails me (in Japanese) with just my name with no honorific - which is basically compulsory in Japanese business email. There's an easy solution for all this confusion - stick to the rules of the language. If a Japanese writer feels they need to use an honorific, how about 'Mr.' or 'Ms.'?

Before anyone comes down on me being a language pedant, I mean this only for written communication. If you start a spoken sentence with 'Dave san' who is to say if it's 'San' or 'さん'? It's spoken, and in spoken English the rules are made to be broken. However, use of 'san' in English communication is just perpetuating confusion and giving people a false sense that they are actually making an effort to understand Japanese.

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The Japanese Approach To Avoiding Hangovers

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Although day 28 is yet to appear (hopefully released very soon), here are some stats on my 30 days of blogging in June (not including the rogue post).

Total posts: 29
Posts in English: 27
Posts in Japanese: 2

Words: 15,672
Japanese characters: 1,675

Total views: 5,447
Average views per post: 188
Post with most views: 5 Cool Companies Run By Foreign Entrepreneurs In Japan 6/5 (480)
Post with least views: Mashable Social Media Day 2011 in Tokyo 6/30 (23)

Most comments: Solving Japanese Web Fonts 6/12 (8)
Most facebook likes: Top 5 Beer Gardens in Tokyo 6/25 (7 - this is posts liked from the blog, not from my news feed)
Most tweeted: 5 Cool Companies Run By Foreign Entrepreneurs In Japan 6/5 (15)

Overall I'm glad I did it,  although producing this volume of content consistently was quite a challenge to getting other work done and sufficient sleep.  Also, posts in the first 20 days were much more popular than those in the final 10.  I think this is mainly because I was running out of things to say!

Considerations of views and interaction aside, the writing itself has intrinsic value for me.  By putting things down in writing here, I'm helping to order my thoughts more coherently and to clearly express ideas that I've had for a number of years without putting them into an understandable, sharable form.  Quite often when starting to write, I instantly realised big holes in some of my ideas and theories which forced me to research further.

I don't think I'll try this experiment again, but I am aiming to post with some regularity from now on.

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To mark June 30th as Mashable's 'Social Media Day' an event was held in Ginza this evening featuring lightening talks from a whole lot of presenters - some in English, some in Japanese.

Something that is really apparent since last year is how boring social media itself has become - which is a really good thing.  Whereas in the past there was still a lot of get rich quick hype and general bullshit, people are now seeing past the shininess and exploiting it for what it does best - connecting people and communicating information in a one to many manner to get real world results.

The recent '3.11' earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown really threw up some interesting applications for online media that didn't just have an online effect but had a real impact on peoples' lives and the recovery.  A lot of them were completely informal groups - one group of mothers in one town posted that they needed diapers while mothers in less affected places like Tokyo arranged for the supplies to be delivered.

The presentations at today's event in Tokyo were a mix of people talking about social media marketing strategies, app. developers and activists.   For me, the activism applications were the most interesting.  Here is a quick run down of a few of the groups/projects.

NYN

i-kifu

Re:cycle Japan

Joseph used this contraption (photo at top of this post) to live stream the entire 42km of his run in the Tokyo Marathon held not long before the recent earthquake.

Together with Tokyo resident Mike Kato, Joseph will ride a shopping bicycle wearing i-Run for 1,400km from Tokyo to Aomori in the north.  On the way he will pass through some of the worst affected areas from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.  The objective is to highlight the cultures of the areas he passes through and also focus the attention of the world on an area that is still in need of help.

http://re-cyclejapan.com/

Thanks to Dean Fujii, Rob Van Nylen and all the other volunteers for bringing so many interesting people together in a single space.

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I don't regard coding for the web as a particularly unique or special skill.  The massive numbers of other people out there who can do it better, faster and cheaper attest to this.  What I really value about this skill however, is how it allows me to use my creativity - mash things up, build something that's useful to me and generally just make my ideas come to life.  You know that idea you've had for a web site or app but you don't know how to build it?  When it's my idea I just build it.  After the recent earthquake in Japan, everybody (including me) was worried about the radiation from the reactors in Fukushima.  Watching the TV, scouring the net and watching facebook and twitter, there were so many figures being bandied about - microsieverts, millsieverts, CPM, grays - it was all too confusing.  To try and put things into perspective, I built a radiation units calculator which, although extremely basic, was an instant hit getting about 17,000 unique visitors in the day after I launched it.  With kind help from friends it quickly had Japanese and Chinese versions.  Even though it's extremely basic and I haven't made any improvements to it in 3 1/2 months, it's still accessed about 60 times a day (mainly on the Japanese site).

Anyway, I digress.  On to my journey to becoming a web coder and why you should care.  If you're already a web coder, maybe you can relate, but maybe your path was different.  If you aspire to write code, I don't know, maybe this will be encouraging!

As with so many in my generation, it all started with my Dad bringing home a hefty piece of digital hardware in the early 80s.  The computer was the BBC Model B with an incredible 32KB of RAM.  To play games (there was non-game software too but I have no recollection of what they were!) you had to hook up pretty much any old cassette deck, make sure the cassette tape with your software was fully rewound, enter the run command, then hit play on the cassette deck.  5 minutes later, if the game hadn't crashed while loading or the cassette player hadn't started munching the tape, you were ready to go.  Games were expensive and I didn't have a lot of funds, so instead I bought books from the bookshop that contained games written in BASIC and fantastic illustrations that were completely unrepresentative of the final product.  I would painstakingly enter the lines of code, then spend even longer trying to spot the one mistake that was stopping the entire game from working.  Most of them were crap, but it was so much fun making little alterations so that the games were mine.

After drifting away from programming as computers became more and more complex through the 80s and 90s, the opportunity was presented to me in the form of a summer internship in 1996 to build a web site for the Institute of Languages at the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen.  Although I had zero experience, I convinced the director Magnar Brekke that I would buy a book on HTML and make him the site.  My first ever site was in about 5 languages and was a glorious showcase of large type and bevels.  I was amazed with how so much code could be copied from the web and how I could finish the site within the first two weeks of my internship and spend the remaining 5 weeks surfing the web!  Unfortunately, after my departure, the site was promptly replaced by someone who had a clue about what they were doing.

After this, I built sites for friends and experimented with a site profiling local bands complete with MP3 downloads which took about the same time to download on the 56K dial-up connection as getting in your car, stopping for a coffee, buying the track at a record shop and then driving home.  Only the record shop was more reliable because it didn't rely on my mum not picking up the telephone half way through the download.

After a few more years and my move to Japan, I again got the chance to get into coding when I was given a job at a small Japanese IT company.  For what felt like the first month, I was just told to make as many web designs as I could - the weirder the better.  Gradually, I was allowed to work on projects using the Microsoft ASP coding language (basically server side VB script).  I really floundered and made just about every mistake that one could make - luckily I was allowed to make those mistakes and to learn from them.  Within a year, I had my first epiphany - Object Oriented Programming.  Once you start to make reusable objects and you realise the advantage, there is absolutely no going back - literally.  I just don't understand how anyone can write linear, function based, spaghetti like code.

After a couple of years at the company, it was time to move on.  I taught English and started to do freelance work at the same time.  I also decided to throw the ASP out the window and shift to PHP.  Ironically, it was the huge paradigm shift presented by ASP.NET that actually pushed me to PHP.  The thinking was, if I need to change from what I know, I might as well change to something that isn't proprietary and won't require clients to make big layouts on software licenses.

Since then, my experience as a coder has been stepped - periods of learning new things interspersed with periods of consolidating skills.  First it was MVC followed by version control, then the CodeIgniter frame work and more recently JQuery, HTML5 and CSS 3.  Perhaps it's just a function of growing older, but it seems like the gaps between the steps are getting shorter and shorter.

One thing I think has saved my sanity as a coder is not losing site of the joy of discovery, the fun and the inspiration of trying out something completely new.  When I've been at my most unsatisfied and least productive, it's been when I've lost sight of this.  The way I've done this is just by consciously working on my own projects - some as part of my work, some (like the radiation calculator) outside.  It's not practical or even a good idea to try every new and exciting thing on a client project - unless you are the client.

Going forward, I don't imagine, nor do I want coding to be my 'main' job.  But I'll only stop coding if I physically can't - or maybe I'll just take up a less anti-social pastime!

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In the last few years, I've had the chance to assist in the naming of a few businesses and websites.  Unfortunately in terms of the businesses, one no longer exists, one is dormant and the other is yet to be adopted by the company after more than a year - so the track record isn't the best!  Although I'd contend that in all cases there was absolutely no problem with the name.

If you were to go by the 37signals approach to naming, you would spend as little time as possible on the name and just get the product out.  The only thing is, 37signals seem to come up with awesome names for all of their products.

There's a lot to be said for this approach though - spending valuable time on coming up with the right name for a product or service at the start of a project is just a waste.  Your energy is better spent working on the product, concentrating on the benefits and talking with potential users.  Once the true benefits of the product are clear (they may be different to those at the inception of the project), and the marketing direction set, coming up with a name should be a lot easier.

In terms of basic criteria, I feel the following are most important.

1. Indicative of the features or benefits (eg. Dropbox, Rackspace, Kakaku.com, Mailchimp, Netflix)
2. Uniqueness (eg. Skype, Lenovo, Boxee, Spotify, Zynga)
3. Memorability (eg. Basecamp, Google, Apple)
4. Pronounceability (eg. Sony, Honda, BP, IBM)
5. Domain name availability (eg. delicio.us, bit.ly)

I'm right in 37 signals camp when it comes to how much importance to place on Domain names.  If the .com domain has gone, don't sweat it - just be creative and use an extra word in the domain or use a different top level domain.  If you are feeling pretty uncreative, a .co would probably be a pretty good choice.

In terms of the process for coming up with the name, there are plenty of other posts on teh internets that cover that.  Brain storming, thesauruses (thesauri?) and on line name generators are all good techniques.  If you're after something that sounds unidentifiably Latin without being Latin, I find the English to Maltese on-line translator at Google Translate particularly good.  Another alternative is to ask Kayac for 110 ideas for JPY11,000.  (It looks like they change their mind on names too - the service is called genkidama and the domain is 'sparkball.kayac.com'!)

The reason this is on my mind at present is because we have a service that is on the cusp of launching for which we have chosen the name 'Paperfrog'.  We think it's memorable, indicative of the features (it's about print management) and it's surprisingly unique.  Where it falls down somewhat is for a Japanese speaker 'Paperfrog' (ペーパーフロッグ) is quite difficult to pronounce and also to hear.  As with almost any combination of two English words, the .com domain is gone.  This isn't particularly worrying - we have the .jp domain and if we want a more 'global' sounding top level domain, we just have to be a little creative.

Ultimately the product will be aimed at an audience wider than just Japan so I don't think the pronounceability aspect is a make or break issue.  I'm sure the success or failure of the product will be related to whether it delivers real benefits to customers rather than the name.

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Is good web design universal? Or do you need to redesign or re-conceptualise a site for a Japanese audience? This is probably not something that Japanese web designers who design Japanese sites think about. However, for international companies who might have a main site in English or another European language and are looking to produce a Japanese version or even for Japanese designers redesigning a site in English, this is a question that inevitably comes up.

Simply related to the language and character sets there are some fundamental differences between English and Japanese web sites - Japanese takes up from about 30% to 50% less space than English so more can be expressed in fewer characters. A case in point is Twitter where 140 characters of Japanese is a LOT less restrictive than 140 English characters. So a site with exactly the same content will look comparatively empty in the Japanese version next to the English version.

An observation of a lot of westerners is that Japanese web design is very busy - why have white space when you can fill it with another banner or animated gif? Part of this is purely perception - Chinese characters just look more dense - especially if you can't read them. However, taking a look at virtually any shop on Rakuten and you will see densely packed information and graphics that wouldn't be acceptable in an English web site. Most of these sites make Myspace pages look restrained in comparison. However, it's difficult to define this as a universal Japanese aesthetic - minimalism and simplicity are a hallmark of Japanese design from Zen Gardens through to ceramics. Also the simple, clean design of Apple products is hugely popular in Japan. This dense web aesthetic does also surface in printed magazines, TV variety shows and even manga so it would seem that it is related specifically to the presentation and consumption of information.

One factor that I'm sure has had some impact is web infrastructure - whereas western designers were punished for content heavy web sites due to slow internet connections, Japan has had fast widespread broadband internet for close to 10 years so there is less pressure to be lean.

So the question is, what is the psychology or emotional response from this dense presentation of information and is this essential for the success of my site or business? As I haven't done any detailed research into this, I can only speculate, but I suspect it has something to with perceptions of scale. Japanese society is very much based around personal networks of trust, influence and patronage. Without these direct personal connections to a web site, my main measure of whether I can trust the site will likely be based on the perceived scale of the company behind it. Denseness and variety of information gives a feeling of scale which makes the content more believable and increases my feeling of trust. I'm sure this is only a small piece of the puzzle though.

Questions of the dense aesthetic aside, I'm a strong believer that a designer who designs in a foreign language needs to have an excellent grasp of that language. An English speaking designer who designs in Japanese but doesn't have a good understanding of Japanese or a Japanese designer who designs in English but doesn't understand English well will inevitably see the other language as 'icons' and be incapable of understanding the intrinsic meaning or be able to utilise appropriate typography. You need to look no further than 'Engrish' t-shirt designs worn by Japanese or those awful Chinese character tattoos in the west - neither group knows the meaning of these and neither particularly cares. So ideally, a Japanese designer should be given the freedom to re-interpret the international brand for a local audience. In practice, budgets and a desire to keep a cohesive global brand means that this isn't always possible.

These are just my interpretations. I would love to hear some insights from Japanese (or non Japanese) designers and web producers in the comments.

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Beer Gardens are a summer institution in Tokyo although to the uninitiated they're easy to miss as they are mainly located in slightly obscure locales or on the rooftops of buildings.  I haven't been to every single beer garden in Tokyo, but in organising Tokyo Garden Party I've got a fair bit of experience.  They also come and go pretty quickly so there is a good chance that the beer garden you went to last year has disappeared.

So what makes a good beer garden?  In terms of food and service, it's best to set the bar really low - at most places you'll be lucky to get what you ordered and the standard of food is basic at best.  As someone who doesn't eat meat, I often have to eat before hand or resort to a diet of edamame, chips and cabbage   What beer gardens are really about is cold beer and a laid back atmosphere.

As I said, there are lots of places I haven't been to but the following ones are in my humble opinion are the top 5 (in reverse order).

5. Shibuya Tokyu Honten Department Store Rooftop Beer Garden (Green Garden)

This is an institution in Shibuya and has the advantage of well, being in Shibuya.  When considering access and stumbling on to the train home, you can't get much more convenient than Shibuya.  Most beer gardens have a set course of all you can drink beer and a food course for around 4,000 to 5,000yen.  This beer garden however, is a lot more flexible - you can settle in for the evening or you can just pop-in on the way home for a couple of beers.

http://www.tokyu-dept.co.jp/honten/new/index.html/#10187 (link in Japanese - scroll way down)
Phone: 080-2396-0398

4. Takanawa Mizu no Fu Beer Court, Shinagawa

This is a relatively small rooftop beer garden opposite Shinagawa station seating only about 100 people.  Despite the proximity to the station, this place is beautifully calm and quiet and surrounded by green shrubbery. Of all the beer gardens on this list, it also has the best food - which basically just means it isn't greasy, plain or burnt.

http://r.gnavi.co.jp/a068866/ (Gurunavi site in Japanese)

3. YEBISU BAR the GARDEN, Toranomon

This tiny beer garden/terrace has an awesome location amongst the skyscrapers on the edge of Kasumigaseki.  The food is slightly better than average and they have a gimmick of self serve mini beer kegs placed on each table.  On closer inspection, the kegs turned out to be 'beer buckets' with taps on the bottom.  Despite this, and the most uptight manager seen at a beer garden in Tokyo, the setting overcomes all.

http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g008287/ (Gurunavi site in Japanese)

2. Mid Town Garden Cafe, Akasaka/Roppongi

Set amongst the trees in the park behind the Mid Town tower, this isn't strictly a beer garden.  The house specialty (at least last year) was mojitos.  The prices are on the high side and the food extremely basic, but the setting is amazing.  You can't book ahead, so best to turn up early to get a good table.  The good thing about no bookings is once you have your table, you can settle in until the place closes without getting kicked out.  If you're sensitive to mosquitos, take some bug repellent - with all the greenery they're particularly abundant- and vicious.  Also this place doesn't open until after rainy season has finished so I don't know if it will be back this year.  Also no web site as yet.

1. Mori No Beer Garden, Jingugaien

This is perhaps the most popular beer garden in Tokyo.  If you have a group, you may have to book weeks in advance just to get a table.  This place is a kids play park most of the year, but the kids are kicked out over summer so the place can be turned into a huge beer garden!  You pay a fixed amount (4,000 for men and 3,800 for women) at the door and then you have the run of the place - fill up your own beer pitchers as often as you like.  Food is oriented around lots of meat which you can barbecue at your table, so if that's not your thing then be prepared for lots of edamame, chips and cabbage.  The thing that makes this place a winner is the location - set amongst lots of trees and with not a single tall building visible it actually does feel like a beer garden in a forest.  When booking, request a table near the waterfall - the worst seats are under the tent.  You've got guaranteed rain protection but it's like being in a sauna.  If there is a baseball game on next door at Jingu Stadium, you'll have the added bonus of a fireworks show.

http://www.rkfs.co.jp/brand/beer_garden_detail.html

Beer Gardens No More

Sadly, some of the best (and more debaucherous) beer gardens are no longer with us.  One of the most infamous was 'Shiodome Garden' on the rooftop of a building next to Shimbashi Station.  Among the entertainment at Shiodome Garden was foreign strippers and an S&M show with more than a little audience participation.  Another interesting beer garden that may not return is the one on top of the Kudan Kaikan in Kudanshita.  The building - the former Imperial Japanese Army headquarters during World War II - has an amazing view of the sunset, part of the outer moat and the Budokan.  Despite surviving the war pretty much unscathed (it wasn't made of wood) it did suffer some damage in the recent earthquake although I'm not sure if this is the reason why it is closed.  The Kudan Kaikan also featured some of the cheesier entertainment - kimono dancers stripping to bikinis followed by a karaoke singalong/dance-along.

This post has been submitted as part of the July, 2011 Japan Blog Matsuri on the theme of Japanese drinks hosted by the NihongoUp Japanese Blog.

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To 95% of the people that I even occasionally associate with in Tokyo, the following events will be completely familiar.  But the thing that separates them from the plethora of other events in Tokyo is that they have cast aside the tyranny of distance that makes so much on this island nation unique and gone completely global.

PechaKucha Night

Started by Klein Dytham Architecture in 2003, PechaKucha night features speakers on broadly creative topics talk with the accompaniment of 20 slides, each of which is shown for exactly 20 seconds. As of writing, PKN has spread to 412 cities around the world, including 6 nights in my home town of Hamilton, New Zealand.  Beyond the event, it is now referred to as a presentation 'methodology' and has been notably copied by the O'Reilly publishing sponsored Ignite events - although these feature 20 slides at 15 seconds each.  Surprisingly - given the worldwide success - there haven't been too many events outside Tokyo in Japan.  This seems to be changing though.

Beers for Books (B4B)

Originally conceived as 'Beer for Books', the idea is simple - organise an event at a bar or restaurant and on that night, a proportion (100yen for Japan) of the sale of every beverage goes to support a charity.   Most events have been run in conjunction with Room to Read with a very simple formula - one beer = one book.  Gary Bremmerman - who conceived and still helps to organise many of the events - has built a community around the concept that drives huge numbers of patrons to participating establishments in exchange for the 1 book per drink contribution.  The events have evolved beyond simply 'Beers for Books' to encompass a range of themes and causes - from Bottles for Books (a wine themed evening) through to Beers for Bits (raising money for computer equipment).  With the recent disaster in northern Japan, a lot of money has been raised for this cause.

As of writing, Beers for Books has spread to 7 countries and many, many more cities and has led directly to the distribution of more than 110,000 books to kids in developing countries.

The interesting thing about both of these events is the focus on a simple theme or idea and the fact that they were both conceived by non-Japanese people living in Tokyo.  This doesn't mean non Japanese are better at running events, just that perhaps exploiting global networks is easier and that they are able to develop the appeal so it can captivate an international audience.   There's probably a marketing lesson in there somewhere.

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I used to be a big fan of the Tokyo2point0 events initiated by Andrew Shuttleworth.  They ran regularly for a couple of years until the end of 2009.  Tokyo2Point0 featured presentations in English and Japanese from a mix of Japanese and non-Japanese presenters.

It was a great chance to network with fellow web people and I learnt a whole lot of new stuff.  Tokyo2Point0 was the place that I first heard about things such as HTML 5, Amazon Web Services, Facebook Applications and CodeIgniter.  I also made some good friends, found people to collaborate with and even found a new client who we still work with.

However, since regular events ceased at the end of 2009, it feels like there is a hole not being filled.  For that reason, I'm constantly on the look out for events that can give me a similar fix - a mix of new ideas, inspiration, contacts and fun.  Here is a listing of events I've either been to or interested in checking out.

Bridge

Bridge is a regular event organised by Shuji Honjo, who is an entrepreneurial dynamo.  The focus is on entrepreneurship, web technology and building a community.  Events are held quite regularly with the last event held in April.  Attendees are predominantly Japanese and all presentations also are in Japanese.  I attended a joint event with OnLab (link in Japanese) in the offices of Digital Garage (the guys who among other things do Twitter in Japan) in Ebisu in February.  The long speeches in Japanese were something of a test on my concentration, but the speaker was really interesting and the networking was good also.

http://bridge.weblogs.jp/

CSS Nite

This event is huge and is held throughout Japan from Kyushu all the way up to Sapporo.  Despite the name, it is not just about CSS - depending on the event there is a different focus.  There is actually a free event on tomorrow (June 23rd) at the Apple Store in Ginza about Dreamweaver CS 5.5.  I code everything in plain text so that's not really my thing, but I'll be keeping an eye on future events.  This would also be a great way to connect with the web communities in provincial Japan if you can time a trip to coincide with an event in the regions.

http://cssnite.jp/ (funny though - for an organisation called 'CSS NIte' you'd think they might use a few cool CSS 3 tricks, but it's very conventional!)

Iniciador Tokyo

Initiated in Spain and brought to Tokyo, the focus of Iniciador Tokyo is on entrepreneurs and start-ups. Unlike the previous mentioned events, everything is (usually) in English.  The one I went to was pretty small but it was interesting, inspirational and fun with networking afterwards (which I didn't actually partake in).  Depending on who is presenting, there may or may not be a tech/web theme.

A quick glance at the site shows the next event is on the 28th of June and will be the first event in Japanese.  Hiro Maeda from Netprice.com and ONLab will be talking on the theme "Starting-up with a global mindset"  This should be an interesting topic as I think this is rarely the case with Japanese start-ups.

http://iniciador.com/tokio/

Mobile Monday

It seems like this event has been going for years and to my shame, I have yet to attend a single event.  Could be something to do with the fact that it's on a Monday.  Looks like things are on something of a hiatus since the earthquake but with mobile computing taking over the world, I'm sure they'll be back - and I might even attend an event!

http://www.mobilemonday.jp/

If anyone knows of any other interesting events - in English or Japanese, I'd love to know about them.

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この間、「会社ホームページの英語版が本当にいらない事」という記事を書いたんだがもっと役に立つ事はB2Bホームページの英語版からよく省いてしまうコンテンツだと思います。

下記のコンテンツを追加したほうがいいです。

自然状態の写真

よく日本のホームページに出るスタッフの写真など欧米人にとって真面目過ぎる。場合によって真面目な写真が必要(研究所など)ですが相手の 連絡を取りたい場合、フレンドリーで落ち着いたイメージのほうが受け入れるかもしれない。たとえば、真面目な会社のゴールドマン・サックスのホームページを見ても不自然なポーズの写真などありません。

ネイティブの英語

私は何となく日本語で言いたい事が表現できるけど会社ホームページの日本語版のコンテンツは絶対作らない！正しい、ネイティブの英語ではな いと品質管理が下手との印象をする。

"We Speak English"

という事を必ず追加したほうがいいです。電話でお問い合わせを受けている場合、これが大事です。ホームページのコンテンツが英語なのに英語圏の国ではないので英語が通じないと思ってしまう人が電話しない。はじめて、出身地のニュージーランドから日本の会社に電話した時、英和辞典を使って、言いたい事を文書にして、何回練習してから電話しました。電話に出たのは「なになに会社でございます」と挨拶した外国の方でしたが本物の日本語を知らず、用意したスピーチをそのまま読みつづけた！

更新したコンテンツ

最新のニュースが2007年の日付が付いたら、「この会社が真面目に海外の顧客を探していない」とのイメージになってしまう。更新しない予定だとニュースなど入れないほうがいい。よく更新している雰囲気を表現したい場合、簡単に更新できる英語版のツイッターフィードなど 載せたほうがいい。

外国人向けコンテンツ

「弊社が日本一番」だけで足りない。ビジネスマンの間でも日本市場についてなにも知らない人が多いです。アメリカやヨロッパの比較がないと重要さが理解できません。もう海外顧客があった場合、「こんなコンテンツはどうですか？」「もっと知りたいことがありますか？」など直接テス ティングしたほうがいいです。

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A few months ago I had the chance to hear a talk from the unassuming Daisuke Yanasawa - one of the founders of Kayac or "Omoshirohoujin Kayac" which literally means "Interesting/fun legal entity Kayak".  When asked what company Kayac most closely aligned to, Yanasawa was genuinely stumped - Kayac is actually really different.

It's a little difficult to classify Kayac.  Their core business is designing web sites for some of the biggest brands in Japan, building their own web services and launching a constant stream of smart phone applications -  but they also develop food items such as an improved hot dog called a 'smile dog'.  Kayac is also known for an interesting way for their staff to earn extra money each month - by rolling dice.  Employees can also set their own schedule and work on the company vegetable patch - being paid in vegetables for this work.

Unlike virtually every other company in their industry they have not moved into a flashy office in the middle of Tokyo.  Their base remains in the sleepy green oasis of Kamakura with a satellite office in Ebisu.

Creativity seems to be promoted to the point where they are basically mad.  Even the talk by the CEO didn't feature any of their successful projects - only the ones he thought were fun and all of which failed (one of the ideas revolved around poo, which seems to be a special obsession and considered cute among geeks in Japan).

However, here are just a few of their interesting sites and products. (except Reengo, sites are in Japanese)

Reengo - An iPhone and Android app that connects to facebook and allows you to make VOIP calls to friends.

Koebu - A community for people to share voice snippets, narrations, songs etc.  Currently with 345,000 members and 2.1 million recordings on it.

Genki Dama - If you need advice or ideas - say a name for your newborn child, you can submit them on this site.  On the standard plan, 11 different Kayac staff will give you one idea each.  You pay 100 yen for each idea.  If 11 isn't enough, you can get up to 110 - at 100yen per idea.

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Yahoo was probably the first major international internet brand - predating even Amazon and Ebay.  Sure Yahoo is still big - with their advertising business, Answers and Flickr, but they're not the force they were on the fledgling internet.  The biggest failing being the portal model of indexing internet content losing out to Google's simplicity and superior search algorithm.  However, Yahoo! Japan is (according to Alexa) the Number 1 site in Japan.  It has been in that position for more than 10 years now and it's far from fading into oblivion.

So why is Yahoo so huge in Japan?

The simple answer is because it's not controlled by Yahoo! Inc.  The largest shareholding is held by Masayoshi Son's Softbank.   I've been told that Yahoo is so big in Japan that it dwarfs its American counterpart, however reported sales don't exactly indicate this - unless the Yahoo! Japan sales are consolidated into Yahoo! Inc's.  Anyway, Softbank have proved themselves masters of spotting opportunities and exploiting them to the maximum - with pretty much everything they've touched from Yahoo! Japan, to Yahoo! BB (the reason why Japan went from having crap internet to leading the world within a couple of years) and more recently with the Softbank branded mobile phone service which took an ailing player (J-Phone/Vodafone) and grew it's subscriber base by 65% in a mature market. 

With Yahoo! Japan, they saw the opportunity in the brand as much as the service.  Son was able to leverage the Yahoo! brand to innovate and move into areas where there was no dominant player.  The most important initial play was Yahoo! Japan Auctions.  While Ebay quickly claimed this territory in the US and internationally, they were slow to get moving in Japan.  This gave Yahoo! Japan the opportunity to come up with a cleverly localised auction site (when Ebay came to Japan they required credit card sign up which was anathema to Japanese internet users at the time) which immediately became the dominant player and a huge money spinner for Yahoo! Japan.  When online mall operator Rakuten exploded onto the Japanese internet in the early 2000s, again Yahoo! Japan was able to leverage their brand to become a solid and sustainable number 2 in the market.

Portal vs. Search

Branding and hit services aside, the question remains, is there something fundamentally more appealing to Japanese web users about the Yahoo portal + search approach vs. straight search.  In the early days of the Japanese version of Google, the response was to actually offer a similar category based organisation of the internet (I was surprised to find that Google Directory still exists).  Yahoo! Japan themselves eventually abandoned their 'directory of the internet' approach in the late 2000s in favour of paid listings and their own content - but the curated (actually just pay to play) and categorised content model persists and is still popular.

So why is this still going strong while similar portal models have faded long ago in the west?  I don't know if I have the answer for this, but it's obviously cultural rather than some amazing benefit that Yahoo! Japan is offering that Yahoo! Inc hasn't worked out yet.  While the 'pay to display' listings approach just wouldn't work on a big scale in the west (ie. this company isn't the best they're just paying to be here), I suspect it actually works in Yahoo! Japan's favour.  There is no equivalent to the free listing sites like Craig's List in Japan for a reason.  If you're not prepared to pay and do it seriously, then maybe you're too small or just not worth considering - in my experience this is how people would react.  You could come up with the best job site ever, free listings and relying on ad revenue only, but you'd still get your ass handed to you by one of the countless Recruit (the dominant player in this sector) brand sites where everything is paid for.  Even selling on Yahoo! japan Auctions requires a 300yen/month premium membership.

Another factor that works in Yahoo! Japan's favour is the power of incumbent brands in Japan.  Once a brand has become pre-eminent in a particular segment, knocking it off can take a lot of work.  It's the same psychology as can be seen with the practice of 'Sakura' - where shills queue outside a shop for a product to give the impression of popularity.  Instead of discouraging people from lining up, it encourages even more people to line up.  In Yahoo! Japan or Recruit's case, part of the appeal is basking in the reflective glow of the Number 1 player.

Google has made organic and steady gains over the years to the point where it is not too far behind Yahoo! Japan.  However, don't expect Yahoo! Japan to fade away or to be complacent for too long.

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Recently, Apple announced that the version of their Safari browser that will ship with Lion - the latest version of OS X - will come with full web font support. While Safari has been able to load truetype fonts for a while, what this means is that all the major browsers (at least the newer versions) now support .woff - the web open font format.  If you're wondering why this is significant it's because .woff is by far the lightest of any of the font formats.  .woff is basically a compressed version of a truetype font with some extra webby meta stuff.  Of the conventional font types (truetype and opentype) truetype tends to be much lighter. In my testing of Japanese .woff fonts generated at the awesome fontsquirrel.com, the .woff is about half the filesize of the .ttf which is about half the size again of the .otf.  For Japanese fonts, this means sizes of 500 to 700Kb are possible for really light fonts even without subsetting. By subsetting the font by removing maths symbols, shapes and Latin characters, it may be possible to cut the weight down even more.  While font squirrel has excellent tools for subsetting Latin fonts (removing accented characters etc.) I don't know of an online tool for doing this for for Japanese.  I have found already reduced fonts available although the pricing model doesn't make any sense to me.

Thanks to Shawn Cooper for putting me on to the font shop piece about this.  Although, I swear I'd only seen their newsletter before coming up with my image that is almost identical to theirs.  I guess it was that obvious, although I decided to post mine anyway because mine is more cleverer.

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よく日本の企業が英語版のホームページを作る時、日本語版をベースとしてそのまま翻訳をします。でも英語圏や欧米の 人は日本人と違う期待と情報を探しています。英語版ホームページを作る時に．下記の事は要らない。

会社概要の表

 ほとんどの日本企業のホームページは資本金、事業内容、社員数、設立日などが入った会 社概要の表があります。英語のホームページではこんなデータ表みたいな表示しかたがあまり使われていない。英語のホームページの場合、こんな 情報を紹介文みたいな文書に入れる。目的としても違います。英語のホームページの場合、信頼さより考え方やコーポレートカルチャーを表現した いです。

社長からの挨拶

社長の性格が会社のイメージの一部だと（いわゆるカリスマ社長）こういう挨拶がいいですけど、普通に要りません。や り方が古いイメージがする。

事務所や工場の外面写真

建築が素晴らしい建物以外、トップページに事務所や工場の写真を載せないほうがいい。

和製英語

「TOPICS」,「PICK-UP」、「HOME PAGE」など、英語のホームページでほ使われていない。「HOME PAGE」は90年代で使われていたが現在「ホームページ」と言えば、趣味のイメージがする。「HOME PAGE」と言う言葉を使う方がインターネットの事があまり知らないイメージもするのでバカにされちゃうかもしれない。普通に「Website」と言いま す。

日本語の文字

英語版のホームページで日本語を使わない事が当たり前だけど、英語の経験がない日本人のウェブデザイナーがよくシン ボルを使ってしまう。日本語のフォントがインストールされていない場合「▲◆★〒●１２３４５６７８９」が文字化けになってしまう。

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Just so the concept is clear here, I'm not talking about searching for images using text - I'm talking about using images to query for other images. An example of this is Google Goggles which was released for mobile devices last year. Using Google Goggles, you take a photo using your mobile device and then Google looks for similar images. Now, based on the same technology, Google has introduced the ability to either upload or link to images from the desktop version of the Google search engine. As is the case with image based search, Google seems to be rolling out more and more new developments for it's Chrome browser first, before rolling out versions for the other browsers.

Despite the patchy results - a linked photo of an E5 Shinkansen returned photos of other (non-speedy) trains taken from a similar angle as well as a truck crashing into a car - this kind of search has huge potential. Not just in a search engine type context, but hidden away in the background of web apps. A company that actually beat Google to image based search was the Japanese company Gazopa. Gazopa.com was launched a couple of years ago and unusually for a Japan developed service, was aimed at a global audience from the very beginning. In fact, there wasn't even a Japanese version!

By 'hidden away', I mean integrated seamlessly. Imagine you are shopping on an online clothing store. You find a jacket that has a style that you like, but it only comes in two colours - neither of which you like. With image search integrated on the back-end, all you do is click an option that says "show me similar products", you select the colours that you want and then you get a listing of similar jackets in the colours that suit you. All this is possible without image based search, but it requires humans to go through and tag similar items or an algorithm that looks at other items purchased by people who also bought that item. Another very cool application could be say if you're watching a movie and you see a character whose clothes/costume you like - imagine pausing the film, right clicking on the actor and then selecting an option that says "add similar items to my cart". At the end of the film, you review the items and make your purchase. The potential for Halloween costumes alone is enormous.

Sadly, the public gazopa.com search engine has been stopped. It's likely that they saw the writing on the wall with Google introducing a similar service, and with the huge potential for integrating this technology on the back end of sites they are now only offering the technology B2B.

As this technology improves, I'm sure we'll see some really interesting and creative services based around it.

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This topic is especially relevant to me right now as I struggle to think of what to write on the 15th day of my challenge to write 30 articles on each of the 30 days of June.  So in some ways, this article is a cop-out as I de-construct the process rather than write an entirely new article!

How to spark the creative process has been a problem through the ages for writers, artists, musicians, ad people, politicians and just about everyone else.  An interesting and very short book on this very topic is A Technique For Producing Ideas by James Young.  In the 64 pages Young outlines a formalised technique that will be familiar to most people who work in idea driven industries - even if you haven't bothered to formalise it for yourself.

Here are some techniques I personally think are great for fueling ideas and creativity.  Most are related to the idea of cross-fertilisation - or perhaps just fertilisation.  New ideas just don't come along without some kind of stimulus.

Most of these aren't about how to apply creativity to think of a specific idea or to solve one creative problem, but how to constantly be in an enhanced creative state where ideas can more easily germinate.

Do you have any ideas for coming up with new ideas?

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CloudFlare makes some pretty incredible claims - either it's the best thing since the invention of the internet or perhaps it isn't quite as good as they claim.  Here are the claims.

1. Your site loads 30% faster
2. Uses 60% less bandwidth
3. Is much more secure
4. It's free

Well the basic plan is free.  There is also a pro account for $20/month for 1 site and $5/month for each additional site - although you can also add 'free' sites to your pro account.  The whole idea of Cloudflare is that they take over your DNS - so 'good' traffic is prioritised, while 'bad' traffic doesn't get through.  They also cache some of your (presumably static) content so that all the requests don't even need to go through to your server - hence the claim of lower bandwidth.

The reason I said "Kind of" in the title is because I'm only planning to investigate the first two claims.  I could try to hack my own site using a fuzzer, but presumably if it works, I'll end up blacklisting my own IP - so I'll take their word on this.  Some people who know a lot more about security than me have some very good things to say about it.  It takes an interesting approach to hardening security by using 'honey pots' - the more hacking attempts they receive, the better CloudFlare's security becomes.

For the loading speed test, I decided to test one of our own sites - gardenparties.jp which is used to host the Tokyo Garden Party website.  For testing, I used the page loading time test tool on http://tools.pingdom.com/  Their method basically loads the page into an iframe and returns the total page load time and the load time for each object - image, javascript includes, css files etc.  To make sure the results were more accurate than a single test, I tested the site loading time 7 times before switching to CloudFlare between 9:09pm and 9:16pm.  Because sometimes the internet has hiccups, I threw out the highest result (8.8 seconds) and took an average of the remaining ones.  The average load time was 5.46 seconds.  Then, about an hour later, after signing up for CloudFlare and setting up the dns, I put the same site through Pingdom.com 7 more times.  Removing the rogue loading time of 10.1 seconds and then averaging the remaining loading times, the figure came to 5.51 seconds.  So really, using my rather unscientific methodology, there was no significant speed advantage.  A more reliable way to do this would be to hit the same file on two different domains on the same server at the same time - one going through the local DNS, the other going through CloudFlare.  I suspect that there might be significant speed improvements on sites that actually have some decent traffic - the site I tested it on is a low traffic site.

In terms of bandwidth savings, of the 23 objects on the page, CloudFlare seems to be caching 4 of them as the logs show only 19 requests each time Pingdom.com hit the site.  I'm not sure if this is from some kind of browser caching though.

Overall, even if there isn't a speed improvement, it should be worthwhile for the security advantages alone.  There are disadvantages and an easy trip up if you want to try it out.  Here's the trip-up - I originally starting the load speed test with a different site - a print work-flow web application that we're working on that actually needs this kind of protection.  However, the site utilises SSL/TLS encryption (HTTPS) on the main 'www' domain which is not covered in the free plan.  If this is the case for your site, you'll need to go for the $US20/month plan +$US1/month for SSL.  Apparently if you have https on a subdomain (ie. secure.mydomain.com) it's still free - although I don't know about the $US1/month charge.  The $20/month is definitely something we'll consider when the site is launched because it's still as cheap as hell for this kind of protection.  One potential disadvantage is that your logs won't look the same - all traffic will come from CloudFlare's IP address.  It looks like they're developing ways around this (so you can access the source IP address) but at the very least, this will require some adjustments to your scripts if the source IP is something you're interested in.

So, in conclusion, it's free so probably worth taking it for a spin.

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Bitcoin is a system of virtual currency (most currencies are predominantly virtual as they are mostly not printed) that is not managed by any central authority, is untraceable and operates over P2P.  It's currently used around the world to buy and sell virtual as well as real world goods.  It can be exchanged for real world currencies and like all currencies, the rate of exchange varies. Something that has caught the attention of a few people is the fact that vs. the $US, bitcoins are worth about 200 times more than they were 6 months ago.

If you go to http://bitcoin.org/ and download the bitcoin software and then run it, it will generate a unique wallet ID.  You can now begin to receive bitcoins as payment.  You can (apparently) get a few free bitcoins to start with by going here although it is currently unavailable with a message saying that it is being fixed.

Even if you don't live in the bitcoin universe, this is an excellent way to transfer funds internationally as there are low or no handling fees (paying handling fees can apparently speed up transactions by encouraging nodes to process the transaction).  You will still incur handling fees in the conversion of the bitcoins from and to real world currencies, but they should be much lower than the fees charged by banks and services like Paypal.

It will be interesting seeing the response to bitcoins from the authorities.  Since transactions don't go through a central register, it will be impossible for governments to impose tax on the transactions until the bitcoins are converted into real world currency.  They've also attracted attention in the US Senate as they are apparently being used in the international illicit drug market.

I'm sure the banking industry as well is hardly going to be supportive of this given the huge fees they collect on international transfers for effectively doing nothing.

Despite the storm clouds ahead, due to the peer to peer nature of bitcoins it could actually be impossible for authorities to close it down.

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