E-Commerce in Japan is a growing trend - and becoming accessible in English too

This increase in attention of online retail is happening for a number of reasons. Firstly, it (actually the internet in general) is a growth industry. People are moving online to shop at a rapid rate, and in the midst of the global recession, traditional concerns regarding security and privacy are taking a back-seat to convenience and price. In addition to this, the turmoil that has been brought about by the recession has brought strong attention to old and antiquated business models that are no longer going to work. Online retail offers cheaper overheads, cheaper marketing costs, and a growing global customer base, and therefore is emerging as one of the new beacons of hope in an otherwise fairly depressing global economy.

Online shopping has been firmly established in Japan thanks to the likes of early adopters such as Yahoo Japan and Rakuten, and also equally in part to the development of Japan’s lightning fast internet and amazingly reliable logistics industry (think Sagawa and Kuroneko Takkubin etc). It always amazes me how quickly these guys can get things to your door, even in the pouring rain! In fact, this infrastructure has allowed Amazon Japan to offer same-day delivery for some items ordered online over the Christmas season. Considering the actual time it takes to take an item from a shelf, throw it in a truck, and actually drive it to your door, there must be almost zero down-time, especially if you live in the sticks! Again, pretty amazing. Walmart in the US is offered a new drive-through service during Christmas, where shoppers could buy products online, and they were ready at the next drive-through window for shoppers to pick up. Close, but no cigar compared to Amazon Japan. Another area which has contributed to establishing online retail in Japan is Japanese companies’ focus on creating a reliable site and credibility with their customers, making the experience as safe and anshin (安心) as possible.

As global online retail sales increase, there are a growing number of small and innovative companies to carve out a piece for themselves and take on the likes of Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo Japan. However, while the barriers of entry are low, the costs of running an online retail business relatively low, and marketing costs (email and viral etc) can also be very low, the profit margins can also be low and therefore require a high turnover to stay in the game. It’s a typical snowball pattern, where it’s very difficult at the beginning, but if you can start gathering some pace, then the company can grow fast and it can be difficult to take down. First-mover advantage is also vital, especially in Japan. Due to these factors, it is hard to imagine anyone replacing Yahoo Japan or Rakuten in Japan in the near future.

However, giving the potential prize for the biggest snowball, and the global nature of the business, there are some fascinating innovations in the industry at the moment, providing ways to market more items to more people.

Recently many English Language sites are emerging - they offer the latest in Japanese fashion to the world, a market that more traditional Japanese language sites have so far failed to exploit

We also think that the market for supplying Japanese products to the rest of the world is increasing, and there are a bunch of new sites doing so in both English and Chinese.

Over 6 years old, Rinkya.com is possibly the oldest (and largest) company in this market, and has built a nice niche for itself. Rinkya is an English language online auction and shopping site based in Tokyo, which allows foreigners to bid for and buy items in English from Japan’s e-commerce sites such as Yahoo Japan and Rakuten. Rinkya layers a translation engine on top of the sites, so users can browse and buy in English. As this can be used on any online retail site in Japan, it gives users access to a huge selection of Japan’s products sold online. While those naysayers in the translation industry or those who have been in Japan for a while will say that machine translations are still too primitive and will never be perfect, Rinkya has proved that they are in fact sufficient for an effective level of interaction, and that form indeed follows function. Interestingly, Rakuten, Nissen (through jshoppers.com) and others are now trying to do the same thing with limited success. We put this down to their lack of understanding of how to market to and how to handle a foreign client base.

Following Rinkya’s lead, the number of companies trying to bridge the gap between Japan and overseas, is growing. Netprice (again), began last year providing a Japanese language service Tenso.com to post items from Japan overseas for Japanese who had bought things online from Yahoo or Rakuten, who didn’t post directly at that time. Based on this success, they then took the next step and early in 2009, launched into China, through cooperation with Alibaba, to sell their wealth of Japanese goods into China in Chinese through Alibaba’s online retail site Taobao.com.

In addition, sites such as HanbuyJapan.com, Flutterscape.com, and Japantrendshop.com care of trend consultants CScout, are trying various approaches to promote Japanese good overseas. Despite the state of the economy, the mind-set of Japanese is likely to remain the same in terms of a focus on making quality products. And with the growth rates of global online retail and the further expansion of the internet itself, we expect to see more innovative sites and ideas in the near future. Take a look at a few of the sites above, they offer an excellent range of quality Japanese goods, at competitive prices, and best of all – in English!

Nova Sagi? Bleak skies ahead for Japan’s Nova Usagi

Japan’s largest English Language conversation school, Nova is the second largest employer of foreigners in Japan (the first being the Japanese government, bless them) employing over 4,500 teachers nationwide. The company name NOVA, originates from the English word for a star that suddenly becomes thousands of times brighter and then gradually fades to its original intensity (or to nothing in this case!). It has however, been made into a now familiar acronym by its eikaiwa (英会話) senseis, who proclaim to be heavily overworked, and given little or next to NO VAcation.

Last Friday (26th October 2007), Nova filed for court protection from creditors, and also temporarily closed all of its 1000+ English conversation schools. It is hard to imagine any other event which could cause as much disrupt to the “Eigoken” foreign population in Japan, short of war or Government meltdown. On Thursday 25th, a finance deal with two foreign funds to save the company in its current form fell through, and in the wee hours of the 26th, the three remaining board members fired the founder and CEO Nozomu Sahashi (猿橋 望), who was absent from the meeting and did not even have the offer of a chance to put in a word of defense for himself.

It has been a rocket ride for Sahashi. He studied aboard in both France and Denmark when he was young, but was overcome by the sadness he felt about not being able to communicate with the locals. Upon returning to Japan, he decided that he didn’t want foreigners to have the same feelings of solitude in Japan, and so in 1990, with two Canadian and Swedish friends he created Nova. 17 years later, as of March 2007, Nova boasted over 1000 schools nationwide and over 500,000 students, which is more than half the entire English teaching market in Japan. In 1995, Nova’s sales were as high as 75 billion yen. CEO Sahashi had changed his name from Saruhashi thanks to the ribbing from diligent kanji studying foreign teachers who relentlessly called him Monkey-Bridge, or just MB. However the company had listed in 1996, he made Japan’s top 100 tax-payers list in 1997 paying over 900 million yen in tax, and Japan’s population was becoming more adept (theoretically at least) at the English language. Not bad for a shy young lad from Kishiwada, the heart of Osaka’s underworld.

Sahashi (MB) Nozomu, The (ex)CEO of Nova
at a June press conference

However at the beginning of 2007, it all started to come crashing down. The company’s business model had relied on selling bulk lessons to students up front, which they could then attend over time. This meant that they had lots of cash coming in, and could finance its rapid expansion, which meant opening almost one school a day during 2005 and 2006. The catalyst for the down spiral however, was a lawsuit from a student who claimed that Nova refused to refund prepayments for lessons that he no longer wanted to take. After a court battle, the Supreme court threw out an appeal by Nova, demanding the repayments to be made. After this began and in early 2007, the media was all over Nova, for all the wrong reasons. First, in January, seven Nova teachers were caught in possession of cocaine. In February, Nova was raided by METI and the police over the refund issue. And then in late March, one of their teachers, a cute Brit was murdered.

With the Japanese school year beginning in April, the first 3 months are vital to Nova sales. However with all the bad PR and the ongoing lawsuits, the number of new contracts dropped and cancellations increased dramatically. With less prepayments for lessons coming in, and more prepayment refunds going out, the cash stopped flowing in, and Nova started to become late on payments. Then in June, METI (経済産業省, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) banned the company from selling any contracts longer than a one year term. After Nova became officially guilty of illegal business practices, Sahashi held a press conference and apologized, but didn’t take responsibility and resign. Also bowing in apology next to Sahashi was his Assistant CEO Shouichi Watanabe.

Here is the NHK news clip (Japanese) in full for some (mi-ni-yo-ku-tsku) revision:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article 24 of the Labor Standards Law (労働基準法２４条) stipulates that companies must pay wages to employees at least once a month, on a fixed date. In July however, Nova began delaying (by weeks, and in some cases months) payments of salaries and stopped paying office rents. Since September, many schools have been shut down because the firm was unable to secure native English-language teachers, all of which lead to the events of last week.

This business and social disaster has been coming for months, and Sahashi and his aides have been courting potential suitors to takeover the company (and all its problems), but to no avail. The most speculation was around a potential takeover by HIS (Japan’s largest travel agency). Rumour has it that Sahashi pushed too hard of a bargain, and HIS gave up in disgust.

In the end, the building list of creditors, the unknown total liability of the prepayments, and the possibility of underworld connections to the business all contributed to the result of not being able to seduce a suitor. However, with still over 50% of the English language market, some superb school locations, and the mass of students, Nova still has many attractive points. Therefore, now that the company has filed for protection from creditors, the race is on for potential acquirers . Names thrown about so far have included Rakuten, Aeon, and of course now that Sahashi is gone, HIS has come back on the scene. All will likely be revealed in the next few days.

Nova teachers rally outside the Osaka labor standards office
last Tuesday – The signs read, “Sahashi, pay us our money!”

Despite Nova’s largest office being in Tokyo (Shinjuku), the 55 year old, single Sahashi has always spent most of his time in Osaka (Shinsaibashi), where its modest headquarters are located. In past months, he has been said to have been passing the lonely evenings in the local izakayas, slowly drinking his favourite shochus, and desperate for a compassionate ear and new ideas on how he could save his crumbling empire. There have been concerns voiced as to his will to save the company as he has remained mostly hidden from the public and many of his aides, communicating with the staff only through intermittent faxes. That this culminated with him not even attending his own board meeting where he was fired may not come as a surprise to some. However Sahashi has always been said to have a very good heart, and we believe that he has been doing his utmost right up until the end.

The potential fallout from Nova’s implosion cannot yet to be gauged. However it has already begun to cause huge unrest in the foreign community. Nova teachers are represented by a labor union called the General Union, whose homepage is covered with articles and “emergency advice” for its distraught members. It is not only the senseis who should be worried though, 4,500 foreigners suddenly appearing on the local job markets may have repercussions for many people already working here. As well as that for many of the teachers who are in Japan on working holidays straight out of school, without pay checks, how will they survive? The Australian and British Embassies have already begun to offer assistance to teachers who have not received salaries, but there are limits on what they can do, as it is a domestic employment issue.

QANTAS is offering discounted airfares to sacked Nova teachers for the next few days if they want to go home to Australia, as 20% of Nova teachers are Aussies. The Australian Embassy’s website posts detailed info for Nova refugees as follows:

Following discussions with the Australian Government, Qantas has advised that for a limited period it will be offering a reduced air-fare rate for Australian NOVA employees who wish to return to Australia. Enquiries (including about conditions and availability) should be directed to the Qantas Tokyo office on (03) 3593 7000.

For further ongoing information on the demise of Nova, stick with us here at Stippy. There are also a number of other sites providing ongoing coverage of this, including:

Let’s Japan, Japan Today, Japan Economy News, and of course Metropolis.

It has been almost two weeks since Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suddenly resigned from office. A press conference was called suddenly, and everyone left the room more confused than when they went in. Abe was silent for over a week, and has only just come out earlier this week, saying effectively that his timing to step down was rubbish, and he for the first time apologised deeply to the nation. In the week after he quit, Abe admitted to hospital for extreme stress and fatigue. But what were the real reasons for his sudden and irresponsible departure, and what happened over his last couple of weeks?

Abe was known is Japanese political circles to be a good guy, with good intentions and a pure heart, the type who will always look after his friends. Coming from a well-known political family, hopes for Abe, the youngest PM for over 60 years, were high when he started the job just over a year ago. However in swift fashion his popularity sunk to (almost) Bush-esque lows, at just 29% the day before he resigned, and he was facing calls from his peers of being immature and incapable of leading the country. Unfortunately it is both Abe’s family history, and his misdemeanours from the past which appear to have come back to haunt him and contributed to his demise.

The first scandal to come to light were reports of a 20 year long relationship the married Abe had with a women in Fukuoka. Abe’s wife read scathing reports about his unfaithfulness, and Abe’s child to this woman through the media, which deepened the rift between a marriage already gone cold. Similarly, this news broke after one of Abe’s most trusted aides drank too much and was showing off to a hostess in a Ginza club, giving away all of Abe’s personal secrets. Even before this however, the Abe family marriage was already in difficult times, and husband and wife would go through long periods of complete silence, having to put in special effort to hold hands for the cameras when getting off the Prime Ministerial jet.

It is also now being reported that Abe was facing severe issues with the Japanese tax office over tax evasion. This is a complicated and dark tale around the whereabouts of assets which Abe inherited from father Shintaro Abe totalling over $100 million in cash and long-term bonds. This is wrapped into a complicated historical story where in the late 1950′s, large pools of money were grouped for political purposes exploiting loopholes around declaration, leading to confusion as to exactly where the funds and the responsibility for them now lies. Shintaro Abe’s long-term friend and closest political ally Shin Kanemaru, known at the time as “the Don of Japanese politics”, was arrested in 1993 for not declaring a large number of long-term bonds he held. The police subsequently raided his house, and found $10s of millions of further assets, including blocks of pure gold believed to have been a gift from Kim Il-Sung, the last dictator of North Korea. Kanemaru stated that these funds were to create a new political party, no doubt with his mate Shintaro Abe. The rumour-mill says that PM Abe had been sent a list of specific questions regarding these funds, and that if he did not answer them before 2pm on September 12, he would face the consequences. Abe resigned at that time.

A week before he resigned, Abe attended the APEC conference in Sydney. According to his aides, Abe was also having various health issues and had difficulties on the trip. Around this time, Abe’s mother Yoko Kishi, who was the daughter of Nobusuke Kishi, PM of Japan from 1957 to 1960, was also admitted into hospital. This increased Abe’s despair, and he was hardly eating by this stage. After returning to Japan, he was taking various medicines, and despite taking sleeping pills, was not able to sleep at all. He would be seen pacing around the PM’s residence at all hours of the night. In the ensuing session in the Diet on the Anti-Terrorism bill, he was said to look “like a dead fish”, and to his opponents long speeches, he would only reply lifelessly for around 15 seconds before sitting down again. His remaining supporters were by this time very worried, and said that he looked even worse than after he took the recent beating from DPJ. The leader of the DPJ Ozawa commented, “I have been in the political world for almost 40 years, and I’ve never seen a politician who has resigned like this.”

His personal, health, and possible tax problems were surely hurting him, his counterparts in the Diet, such as Aso and Mori, were gathering troops and support away from the “Abe-Family”, which Aso himself had helped to create near the beginning of Abe’s reign. Unfortunately by this stage, Abe’s aides were extremely concerned as he just didn’t seem to care about his increasing irrelevance. Not only after he announced his surprise resignation.

What really happened with Abe? Did he really just suffer from 機能性胃腸症、or was it in fact 気のせい胃腸症? And is Japan better off with Fukuda in charge? (There is a great overview on Fukuda’s positions courtesy of Japan Inc here.)

Kyoto is famous in Japan for many things, in the past for classic temples like Kinkakuji and Kiyomizu-dera and for being the capital of Japan from 794 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. It is well-known more recently for things such as the Kyoto Protocol and Kyoto University. This week, Kyoto University became the first University in Japan to introduce a so-called “University Environment Tax”, sort of an emissions tax to attempt to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases within the University.

The idea is that the amount of energy used by each department is calculated and taxed at a flat rate by the University. The gathered taxes are then reinvested back into the University’s environmental efforts. On top of being taxed, those departments, offices or labs whose usage is above the average will be required to establish some form of system of method to decrease their output. On top of this, they are planning to create an inter-University market for the trading of “carbon credits”. This means that for example if one department is putting out extremely low emissions, they can trade their remaining capacity to a more heavy usage department, maximizing the use of the quotas, and creating new income for the more efficient department.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is required to reduce its CO2 emissions by 6% by 2012, and the Government has been active in offering up ideas of how this could be realized. One of these includes a national Environment Tax, of which various proposals have been submitted to the Environment Ministry with limited success. This new University Tax by Kyoto University represents a miniature version of that proposed inside the Government. The Kyoto Protocol seems to be a positive initiative against climate change, and indeed since it first came into effect in 1990, Japan has reduced its emissions by 3.5%. Japan is of course one of the majority of developed countries that have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, the only backwards countries that refuse to ratify, are the red ones below (USA and Australia):

I was lucky enough to be able to attend Kyoto University for a couple of years, and from my recollection, they may have some difficulties in cutting their energy costs. Coming from a modern Western University, I was shocked at the lecture halls, which were spartan concrete buildings, with 100 year old wooden benches. The wind and noise would seep in from the outside, and at times it was difficult to tell whether you were actually inside a hall or outside in the elements. These lecture halls were very modest compared to the plush carpeted lecture halls back home, or for that matter the private Universities up the road.

Kyoto University Law Department: Today

The obvious answer would be to renovate these halls, and surely they would be able to cut down on heating and cooling costs in Japan’s more extreme seasons? Well no, there were no heaters or air conditioners in any of the lecture halls. My most vivid memory of this time was cycling into exams in February through the snow, wrapped up in layers upon layers of sweaters and coats, with gloves, scarf, beanie etc. And sitting down to sit final exams, not being able to take any off as it was so cold! It was as if we were taking exams outside, my fingers were completely frozen. Mid-terms in August/September were just as bad, 35+ degrees, and no air conditioner. It may have been a pleasant place to take an exam, if I wasn’t dripping sweat all over the table and exam paper, and taking 2 liters of Pocari Sweat to each exam! I remember thinking how could they possibly decide to have exams right in the middle of summer and winter, as opposed to the wonderful seasons of spring and autumn. And also, with Kyoto University being the largest recipient of research funds of any University in Japan, why don’t they buy some air conditioners!

I am very much in favour of Kyoto University supporting the local efforts of the Kyoto Protocol. It will no doubt stimulate good debate and new research in both the environmental and economic departments. However if the current students are anything like me, perhaps the first this they will want to do will be to allocate some of that University Environment Tax to improving the environment of the students, by adding a couple of air conditioners?

The famous “Bulldog” brand of Japanese
Tonkatsu Sauce

Facing a potential takeover by the foreign investment firm Steel Partners, Japanese tonkatsu sauce maker Bull-Dog was saved last week in a disturbing effort by the Japanese courts to prevent foreign money and ownership permeating into an important aspect of the Japanese cultural dinner table.

Steel Partners has made investments in over 30 companies in Japan over the past couple of years, with a number in the “washoku” industry, including the holy grail of the Japanese sauce portfolio, Kikkoman soy sauce. Since Steel Partners announced they owned over 5% back in 2005, the stock price has increased over 50%. But enough is enough, apparently.

The number of M&A and takeovers in Japan, both domestic and from abroad has grown drastically in recent years on the back of a reviving Japanese economy. And a hot topic of deliberation in financial circles has been the introduction of so-called “poison pills” to prevent takeover by undesirable suitors. A culture of arranged marriage is much more appropriate than a shotgun approach it would seem. Activating a poison pill assures that a target company can be protected against the unwanted advances of a hostile investor to take control of the company. When a company begins buying up shares and launches a takeover bid, the target company activates the poison pill, which in effect stops the takeover company in their tracks.

Casting my mind back to ECON101, although it was a while ago, wasn’t the idea of a free market just that, it was free, and equal rules and fair competition by all ultimately drives up the value of the economy and the companies which are a part of it? The legality of this method has been hotly debated, but the courts have now quashed this debate, allowing the use of poison pills in Japan. Depending on the suitor. Maybe.

The process went as such; Steel Partners offered a premium on the current share price in an open takeover bid. They were told this was not welcomed by the tough characters at Bull-Dog, but proceeded anyway with a hostile bid. Garnishing 80% of votes at the Shareholder’s Meeting, the pill was activated, and Bull-Dog diluted the value of shares held by Steel Partners, from just over 10% to 2.5%. They did this by issuing free equity warrants to all shareholders, including Steel Partners. 3 new shares for each 1 held. However when it came to exchanging these warrants for newly issued shares, Steel Partners only was excluded. This increased the number of shares four-fold, but Steel Partner’s share numbers didn’t increase, dropping their percentage to a quarter of what they had, and dropping them out of the take-over bid.

Bull-Dog was also required to buy back the useless warrants off Steel Partners, at a cost of approx. 2.3 billion yen. Add to this the approx. 700 million yen in legal and advisory fees, and that is a loss of 3 billion yen, or almost 15% of the companies total assets of 18 billion yen. Theoretically this actually decreased the value of the investments of those 80% shareholders who voted for it.

This is not only a travesty of value-destruction for and by the shareholders of Bull-Dog, but it has also signaled to foreign investors that Japan is still not a fair and transparent market to invest in, that the establishment is still more than happy to jump in to block actions from foreigners which they don’t like, and it also shows that Japanese investors are still more happy to receive their box of tonkatsu sauce during dividend season than support that company to make higher profits and increase the value of their investments. This is a strong blow for those who hoped the recovery in the Japanese economy would be accompanied by a new level of sophistication of the public after experiencing the crash of the bubble.

Poison pills are illegal in the UK, and rare on continental Europe. They are allowed in the US, but their legality was debated for over 5 years in the early 80′s. The first pill was approved at Board level in Japan only 2 years ago, and the high court has now set a disturbing semi-precedent by allowing their use. Their reasoning? Steel Partners is an “abusive investor”, an unsettlingly subjective judgment.

In other words, the magistrate has decreed that the Gaijin kid is not suitable for his daughter, and will heed her cries of help. However another young local kid from down the road were to ask for his daughters hand, maybe he would agree. That is his role as a paternal figure, to protect his daughters and do what is in there interest. Not to uphold a rule of law or free market economics. Another bleak sign on the already stunted path of globalization for Japan.

One of the things I have always loved about Japan were the warm summer evenings. Sitting on the bank of the Kamogawa in Kyoto at 10pm, at 30 degrees in short and t-shirt, sipping on a cold Heartland, and deciding who was going to wade into the middle of the river to do sumo against the other blokes was one of my favourite pastimes. That was when I was a student, and unfortunately those days have gone.

One thing I often wondered about however, has not changed – why doesn’t Japan have daylight saving time (DST), or “summer time”? It was basically dark as we waded out into the Kamo river, but at the same time back home, it would still have been light, allowing another hour at the end of the day, by skipping one hour at the start of summer. Japan has never embraced daylight saving, and the Government had introduced a farcical experiment which is likely to convince themselves to shelf the ideal for another political cycle.

The first appreciators of daylight saving were in fact the Romans, who used water clocks to tell the time. They divided daylight hours into 12 hours lots regardless of season, so with summer days being longer, each hour became longer, and the evening hours were lighter. Got that?

Daylight saving, in the sense we know it today was initially introduced in England in an effort to save coal back in WW1, in 1916. And it was found to have pleasant side effects such as benefits for retailers, sports people, people who enjoy outdoor fun, and those with a healthy work and life balance. It has also been said to reduce not only electricity costs, but also improve health, and crime rates. Nobody doubts that a certain amount of sun is healthy for the body.

In a twist of irony, it was war which brought the idea first to Japan. After WW2, GHQ floated the idea of introducing daylight saving in Japan. The idea was put to the Japanese Government who in 1948 willingly implemented summertime (サンマータイム), which began in April 1949. It lasted 4 years, and was abolished in April 1952. The main reason sited was that life in the late 1940′s in Japan was so tough for the regular Japanese, that they in fact didn’t want the days to last any longer. They wanted them to finish as quickly as possible. Another result was that for civil servants, they were made to start work 1 hour earlier, which merely meant that they had to be there for one hour longer every day! Their schedules then also clashed with the regular salarymen, which made the trains and buses even more crowded, which was awful in the midst of summer.

Despite this history and its lessons, the Nippon Keidanren (日本経済団体連合会, the Japan Business Federation), has announced it is to implement summer time for 200 of its office staff, in August for one month, to determine the effects and whether it should be implemented more widely. People are applauding this right up to the PM’s office. However, back a few levels down the chain to reality, and the 200 staff guinea pigs for the test are extremely upset. Faced with the task of starting work at 830am, and finishing at 4pm, they have been told that they will have more time to go to the pool, or the movies, and that it is a great chance to reconsider their balance between work and play. To which the participants replied;

“That is absolute bollocks. We will get to work an hours early, which just means another hour of overtime later in the day. We have lots of evening meetings, and seminars etc. It is crazy to think that civil servants can go home at 4pm.”

This is Japan. A land where people don’t really play sport, don’t have such a reliance on the outdoors, where women brandish umbrellas to keep the sun out. And where people definitely do not finish work before 4pm. I think the Keidanren needs to take a hard look at what they are really trying to achieve with this little exercise.

On another note however, Japan is not alone in its choice not to implement DST, and even not alone amongst countries who have decided to give it a test drive, and decide they didn’t like it. However, countries close to the equator do not need daylight saving time, as they have pretty constant sun light all year round. But, as a developed country that is not at all close to the equator, they are pretty much a loner nation, as far as summertime is concerned!

What do you think? Leave us a comment on whether you think Japan needs DST or not.

Beatles music fans in Tokyo are spoiled for choice, with not just one, but two Beatles covers bars, both based in Roppongi. These are theme live houses, with Japanese Beatles look-a-like bands playing covers all night long. Abbey Road and the Cavern Club are located only a few hundred meters from each other, and are both packed to the eyeballs every night.

But according to “Docchi no Beatles-Bar Stippy” which is the better choice for a night out?

The 1960′s in Japan was famous for the Tokyo Olympics, the opening of the first Shinkansen, and Beatlemania. Abbey Road and the Cavern Club on a Friday night provide real flashbacks of this era with many of the clientèle “dankai-sedai” babyboomer salarymen. As the Beatles harmonize on the stage late in to the evening, many of these patrons can been seen sporting their neckties tied around their foreheads, staring toward the stage but with a distant look in their eyes, reminiscing about the past.

Despite the band members being Japanese and not speaking native English, for the most part they are surprisingly authentic in staying true to the original. They really give the impression that each of the band members completely live and breathe the Beatles. In traditional Japanese fashion, they have practised and learned to play the instruments impeccably, and every note is perfect throughout the Beatles extensive catalogue. This is particularly striking in the Cavern Club, which has superb acoustics, and the solo of While My Guitar Gently Weeps is so precise and full in sound that it is worth going just for that.

Both The Parrots at Abbey Road, and The Silver Beats at the Cavern Club have their star member of the band, who really makes it come alive. And in both cases, this member is John. Hidemasa Mabuchi from the Silver Beats has an uncannily resemblance to John Lennon. At only 27, he plays is a Rubber Soul era John, complete with the mop-top haircut, and the shaking of the head made famous in Twist and Shout. He commands a strong stage presence despite his age, and is a natural star.

Mamori Yoshi (Chappy) of the Parrots on the other hand, at 53, is an older era John, with the more respectable haircut, the round glasses, and gestures are identical to John from that period, right down to the over-bite singing style. He is established as world-famous John Lennon, and appears to love every minute on stage. He has an extremely strong voice which John himself would be jealous of, which is only done justice on certain tunes. His superior instrumental and vocal skills, as well as leadership of the band have made the Parrots world famous, and they have been asked to open for bands such as the Arctic Monkeys, who are huge Parrots fans.

Both the Johns are stars. It is the remaining members, and the atmosphere and food of the two clubs which separates them.

Akihiro Matsuyama, who plays George at Abbey Road is a delight to watch. The prodege of Yoshi, he is so precise on every note, and makes obvious effort to enunciate each word perfectly. Both Ringo’s have solid drums, and their vocals are pleasantly off key. Kame-chan at the Cavern Club has developed a cult following due to his average voice and enthusiasm. But the area where both these bands fall down is Paul. Such an integral part of the band, yet while both musicians are talented, neither are as authentic as the other members, which is a shame for those seeking a true Beatles experience.

In musical terms, Stippy rates Abbey Road as the better of the two. However it loses a lot of ground in other areas. The food and drink is expensive, and they don’t serve tap beers. 1500 yen for a bottle of Grolsch is just too much. The food is also expensive, and tastes average at best. It is the band which makes for an enjoyable night.

The Cavern Club has a more underground, crowded, and cosy atmosphere. They sell pitchers of beer at reasonable cost, and the food is all home-made and delicious. The acoustics reverberate extremely through well through the club. For atmosphere and dinner, Cavern Club is the better of the two by a long shot.

For more information, click for the homepages of Abbey Road, and the Cavern Club.

Yet another “Only in Japan” story, but we just had to delve deeper into this one! According to many of the foreign press outlets this week, hundreds, possibly thousands of Japanese women have been conned into buying baby lambs, which they thought were in fact poodles. Coming from a background where an annual highlight is Christmas lamb, this story tested my limits. But this is Tokyo, and anything is possible.

This astonishing discovery was made on prime time TV, where actress Maiko Kawakami (川上麻衣子) was proudly showing off pictures of her new pet poodle. When she wondered out loud why her short-cut, cute new puppy would neither bark, nor eat dog food, members of the panel amusingly pointed out that it was perhaps not a puppy, but in fact a common sheep! According to the reports, the police subsequently fielded thousands of calls from distressed women, who suddenly realized that their dogs “bark” only made it to “ba…”

Once my ribcage recovered from the hilarity and bizarreness of this supposed situation, I got on to scouring the Japanese news sites to verify this, because could it really be true? I could not find a single reference in the Japanese news. And no, it was not April 1st, but fool on anyone who throws a poodle in the pot for Christmas.

The only evidence exists at the source. Maiko Kawakami writes a daily diary on her website, the entry is here, which contains one line, nonchalantly saying “I have had emails from people who have also heard of toy poodles which have actually turned out to be lambs. But they have not heard what happened to them since, which is worrying.” A single comment on her blog states that this incident was shown on CNN News, but they stressed that this was only “something that Kawakami had heard about”.

A search for images of “toy poodle” brought up pictures of many breeds of dog, a couple of rabbits, kittens, and even a budgy, but alas, no sheep. Despite this though, the Japanese authorities have reported to the foreign press that they have shut down at least one company, which has imported from Australia and sold over 2,000 lambs as poodles, for over 150,000 yen each. This is about half the cost of a purebred non-sheep poodle in Japan.

Maiko Kawakami, born in Sweden, is now 41. Her first hit drama series in 1979 was called Kizuna, and then the high school drama”3-nen B-kumi- Kinpachi Sensei”, which is still shown on reruns 28 years later. Then, 4 years later, at 17, she was launched further into stardom appearing in a provocative “photographic essay” called “Atsui Kuni, Yume no Kuni, Umareta Kuni” (A hot country, a country of dreams, the country I was born”), shot by the well-known photographer Kishin Shinoyama.

These days, Kawakami is a famous actress, appearing often on TV talk shows, as well as a number of Japanese movies and drama series per year, including the current Usuwashiki-Oni drama series.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Despite the popularity of Usuwashiki-Oni, we were not so surprised that the Japanese media decided that one of the main stars having the wool pulled over their eyes in such a fashion was not worth mentioning. No doubt Kawakami will be sheepish in returning to prime time TV…

We would love to hear from anyone who actually saw this on TV. Please leave your comments below! By the way, the “Urban Legends” site has classed this story as FALSE, but lets not let that get in the way of a good yarn…!

In recent weeks, Stippy has been receiving much attention and many comments and questions based around our Tokyo Yakuza Wars and Prison in Japan articles. One of the questions we received was what is the difference between the Yakuza and the Right-Wing Nationalist groups? Are they different parts of the same organization, or are they in fact completely different?

For the average foreigner living in Japan, both the Yakuza and the Right-Wing Nationalists have very stereotypical images, and are easy to pick out from a crowd. The Yakuza are big, bulldog types with black glasses, often seen waiting quietly outside or by the bosses car, or in groups in the local Almond cafe. The Right-Wing Nationalists on the other hand, usually seem to be skinny undernourished guys, wearing a Long Live the Emperor style head bands, who cant say anything unless its standing on a big black vans through a megaphone so distorted that it is impossible to make out a word they are saying.

Despite the obvious differences, the first reaction is to put them in the same group, and assume that the vans, megaphones, Toyota Century cars, shouting in the streets, rallies on public holidays such as National Foundation Day (建国記念日), etc are all part of the same overall group, out to scare and control the public, and that they are mostly the same people on the same side of society. The mass media in Japan also tends to do so by portraying the Nationalists as “violence gangs” (暴力団). However, after the recent breakout of Yakuza Wars, and the Rise of Ishihara-style Patriotism in Japan, our research has shown that the two groups are surprisingly different, and have a very complex relationship.

Now, there are elements of the two groups which are the same- i.e. members of both groups who “wear both pairs of sandles”. For example, Yakuza’s have been know to form ad hoc Nationalist groups for specific purposes, and some members of the Nationalist group who cant make enough money to live, have joined Yakuza gangs. But in general, they are two completely separate organizations.

The most basic difference is what they are each working to protect. The Yakuza endeavors to protect its turf. This turf is an area within a city, and they compete with similar Japanese Yakuza groups for that turf, such as the Sumiyoshi-kai and Yamaguchi-gumi over Nishi Azabu. On the other hand, the area that the Nationalists attempt to protect is the entire country of Japan. “From the Senkaku Islands in the south (尖閣諸島), to the Hopporyodo Islands (北方領土) in the north”. (Read here for an amazing Government conspiracy about the Happoryodo’s uncovered by Stippy.)

Another related difference is that all Yakuza work completely for the benefit and the honour of a Boss, known as an Oya-bun(親分)、the top of their own Yakuza organization. Each Yakuza group in Japan has its own Oya-bun. No specific knowledge or education is required for this line of work. However, the Nationalists work with complete and ultimate loyalty to the Emperor of Japan, and act only in the interest of Japan as an independent nation. To do this successfully, the Nationalists need to study history, philosophy and politics to fully understand exactly what they are attempting to protect.

In the post-war decades, the Nationalists had strong and wealthy organizations, but in more recent decades, it is the Yakuza that have tipped the balance due to both higher membership numbers and greater economic wealth. The two tipping-points for the Nationalists were in both 1981 and 1997, with revisions to the Japanese Commercial Code putting a stop to two of the Nationalist’s most profitable activities, Soukai-ya (総会屋), which is where minority Nationalist stock holders arrive at corporation’s AGMs and cause trouble and extort cash, and also kigyo-mawari (企業回り), where Nationalist members would sell the organizations internal magazines and publications to corporations.- large numbers of copies at extremely high prices. This was a large source of income for them which funded their activities, but the new laws diminished their power greatly, and the Yakuza began to take over.

One of the Nationalists main activities, is denouncing in public those who they believe have done wrong by the country, and by the Emperor. This is where they stand in the middle of a public place, on top of a van, and shout denunciations through a megaphone. However, in many situations, those person being denounced will seek refuge with the local Yakuza boss, and the boss will call up the Nationalists, and they hit down and talk it out. Usually they will come to a middle ground of exactly how far the Nationalists are allowed to go in their denouncements. Although these two groups are different, and work for different causes, there is friction between them. But this rarely escalates into violence, which is avoided.

As the original founder of the Chuko-juku Aikoku Renmei Nationalist Group (忠孝塾愛国連盟) famously quipped, in an unfamiliar street, a Yakuza must walk down the footpath with his eyes to the ground, whereas anywhere in Japan, a Nationalist can walk down the middle of the road, with his head held high.

“Hagetaka” – New Japanese TV Drama Series

The current recovery in the Japanese economy has been a long time coming. For over a decade, Japan was watched from overseas, with foreign money waiting for the recovery, which had to come sometime. That time is now, and the takeover of Japanese companies by foreign firms and foreign funds form many of the daily headlines. As do the measures by the Japanese companies to resist the same. For example, the Sapporo Holdings’ current desperate measures to avert a takeover by US hedge fund Steel Partners, and Nippon Steel doing all it can to dispel continued advances by Mittal Steel. This type of assault on Japanese firms is captured in a gripping new NHK drama series called “Hagetaka”.

The recent increase in M&A and corporate takeovers of Japanese companies by foreign funds has once again stimulated the nationalistic sentiment in the Japanese people, as well as the idea of protecting Japan, its interests, and culture at any cost against potential foreign conquerors. Although Japan has been a capitalist country for over half a century, still, business is not always about just money, and many Japanese would go to great sacrifice rather than be taken over by a foreign entity. A much used analogy is that of Japanese soldiers in Okinawa in 1945 jumping one by one like lemmings off Suicide Cliff as that was preferable over being captured by the enemy. It would be naive to think that in merely 50 years that the fundamentals of capitalism could have replaced 2,000 years of cultural pride.

NHK has aired over the last 6 weeks a hugely popular TV drama called Hagetaka, a fictional drama about a US investment fund which comes to Japan to buy up companies and implements US style reforms. The setting is 1998, and the initial target is a traditional bank called Mitsuba. This was in fact the year in which the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan was taken over by Ripplewood and became Shinsei Bank, and is loosely based on events from that period. The literal translation for Hagetaka is “vulture,” however the English name for the drama is “Road to Rebirth”(再生への道). This Japanese characters for Shinsei are 新生、which also literally mean “re-birth”.

The main character is a Japanese called Masahiko Washizu, a fund manager of a US firm called Horizon Investments. Washizu originally worked for the same Mitsuba Bank, but moved to the US due to the crash of the Japanese bubble economy, where he became a New York-trained fund manger, and typical of the US influenced new generation for which money is the ultimate goal. His mission is to buy out Japanese businesses, beginning with Mitsuba Bank, and “save this decrepit country”. Washizu is determined to make as much money out of Japan and Mitsuba in the shortest time possible, and get back to the US.

Washizu is pitted up against his old boss, one of the top managers of the Bank, Takeo Shibano. Shibano is a talented manager, yet a conventional and conservative Japanese banker, who values his relationships and his clients over money. (Apparently, Shibano’s character was in fact based on a real person, Junichiro Koshi, a top level manager for the Industrial Bank of Japan (now Mizuho), who was a prominent figure during this period of bank restructuring. Koshi is currently serving as a senior adviser with the Bank of Thailand.)

Despite Hagetaka being a serious business drama, it has been extremely popular with Japanese viewers, with the first episode attracting an impressive 3.5 million viewers in Tokyo alone. Interestingly, 50% of viewers of the drama who were interviewed did not see the US firm as the villain of the story, and they faulted the Japanese company for allowing themselves to be vulnerable. The director Kei Kurabe said “the show struck a chord among Japanese because M&A is suddenly something that is close to our lives. Japan is still trying to decide whether M&A is a good thing or a bad thing.” The number of M&A deals in Japan has quadrupled in the last decade to 2,775 deals last year from 621 in 1996.

The series was based on 2 novels by Jin Mayama (真山仁) called “Hagetaka”(ハゲタカ), and “Buyout”(バイアウト). Kurabe “tried to depict only the business world in a documentary-like way”, and that he came up with the idea of producing a corporate battle drama after the furor surrounding internet company Livedoor in 2005. Ironically, it was difficult for Kurabe to get permission from NHK to produce Hagetaka, as NHK themselves had just been recently embroiled in the takeover bid from Livedoor of Fuji TV.

On a similar note, read here for a Stippy review of “Barbarians at the Gate”, the legendary story of the hostile takeover of RJR Nabisco in the US in the late 1980s.

Already seen it? Let us know what you thought in the comments.