I wrote an article covering some of the options available to those hoping to set up an online store or web shop here in Japan. Comments/feedback welcome. Setting Up an Online Store in Japan: Some Options
Here we go again. Just when I thought I was enjoying affordable, high-speed Internet access, along comes yet another new technology that makes my once-fat data pipe look like a swizzle stick. I’m talking fiber. Fiber-optic Internet access (known as Fiber-to-the-Home, or FTTH) has been around since early 2001, when Usen Broad Networks launched its [...]
Like me, you may have noticed a recent noisy addition to Tokyo’s otherwise drab urban landscape. Clad in garish red or brilliant white, teams of Yahoo BB “parasol troopers” have suddenly landed everywhere, and trying to locate a station exit or street corner free of their hawking antics is like trying to find a product [...]
It’s been just over a year since my personal e-mail account started getting upwards of 20 junk mails a day and I ditched it for a new, spam-free one. I created another — simple enough when you have your own domain — but found in mere months that I was right back where I started. [...]
I’m sitting with my ThinkPad in a Starbucks near Akasaka. The cafe isn’t advertised as a WLAN hot spot, so I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying high-speed Internet access courtesy of some nearby wireless network. I open up the WLAN properties on my XP-equipped notebook and have a look. The network name that appears [...]
After enjoying the speed and always-on convenience of broadband Internet for about a year, I was surprised one afternoon to feel an odd pang of disconnectedness when staying at a friend’s cottage in Izu. With nary a phone line or fiber-optic cable for miles around, I briefly found myself wishing my friend had instead revealed [...]
Just a few years ago, I was certain I could never get by without Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary and the venerable Nelson close at hand. Today, however, these and other weighty tomes gather dust on a nearby bookshelf, banished to obsolescence by my favorite desktop reference, the Web. In this column I’m going to introduce [...]
It’s a simple matter these days to build and host a Web site. What’s less simple is getting others — potential customers, readers and other users — to find your site among the millions of others already out there. In this column I’ll discuss Japanese search engines, particularly how best to use Japanese and other [...]