Date: January2015

A collection of news and articles about doing business in Japan

Japanese Business Timeline

Foreign firms dealing with Japanese companies for the first time are often surprised by the time it takes to make decisions in Japan. Japanese interlocutors considering a partnership or even a simple transaction will bombard the potential supplier or partner with a surprising number of questions and will even ask the same questions a few times. One […]

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Do you speak Japanese?

Do you speak Japanese?

Trying to do business in Japan without speaking Japanese is not impossible, but it greatly limits the type of activities you can engage in. Unfortunately, learning Japanese is not an easy undertaking.  The Japanese language integrates three different alphabets, two parallel phonetic ones the hiragana and katakana, featuring 46 corresponding characters, and the kanji, or Chinese characters, […]

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Why are Japanese sites so cluttered?

Why are Japanese sites so cluttered?

There are many theories as to why many Japanese websites are cluttered. Most revolve around some cultural notions of how information is processed and space is commoditized. However, it can also be attributed to the process behind how most sites are built than any cultural preference. Websites, or rather those that commission them, often find themselves […]

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