This is a reboot of a post I wrote back in July last year, listing up the Japanese equivalents of websites that are popular in the US and Europe.

For example, Japanese people don’t know Ebay but auction their stuff off on Yahoo Japan Auctions, get in touch with friends via Mixi instead of Facebook etc. etc.

I linked to the English versions whenever possible (see the [ENG] mark).

Leave a comment if you want to know more or think one of these attributions is off.

I) General web services

What is the Japanese equivalent of Tripadvisor?
4Travel.

Google?
Yahoo! Japan.

Wikipedia?
Wikipedia Japan.

Facebook?
Mixi.

Flickr?
Yahoo! Japan Photos.

Digg?
Minna no Topics (Everyone’s topics/closed).

LinkedIn?
No equivalent (many business social networks failed in Japan – look here for a list).

Twitter?
Twitter Japan.

Youtube?
Nico Nico Douga.

Amazon?
Rakuten and Amazon Japan

delicio.us?
Hatena Bookmark. [ENG]

dooyoo (price comparison engine)?
Kakaku.com.

Netflix?
Posren.

Craigslist?
No equivalent (there is no culture for classifieds in Japan, which means an instant success for a “Japanese Craigslist” is next to impossible to achieve).

imdb (Internet Movie Database)?
Nihon Eiga Database (Japan Movie Database).

Wall Street Journal Online?
Nikkei Online. [ENG]

monster.com?
Rikunavi.

Ebay?
Yahoo! Japan Auctions.

Alexa?
Pathtraq.

Hulu?
acTVila.

4chan?
Futaba (the original).

last.fm?
Mixi Music (registration required/will be turned off soon).

Technorati?
Kizasi.

Yahoo! Answers?
Oshiete!goo and Yahoo! Chiebukuro.

Zynga?
Hangame Japan. GREE and Mobage-town on cell phones.

II) Blogs

What is the Japanese equivalent of Techcrunch?
No equivalent. TechCrunch Japan is beginning to publish original articles.

the Huffington Post?
Agora.

tmz.com?
Zakzak.

Boing Boing?
Zaeega.

Gizmodo?
Gizmodo Japan.

Engadget?
Engadget Japanese.

III) Web tools and software:

What is the Japanese equivalent of Gmail?
Yahoo! Japan Mail.

Blogger?
FC2.

iTunes?
iTunes Japan (Lismo for mobile downloads which accounted for 90% of all music downloads in 2007 in Japan).

BitTorrent?
Share. (see info on Asiajin)

Opera?
Sleipnir [ENG] and Lunascape [ENG].

IV) Web Companies

What is the Japanese equivalent of Federated Media?
Agile Media Network. [ENG]

Admob?
Cirius. [ENG]

In case you want to know more, please add a comment.

Tags: Japan by Serkan Toto
8 Comments »

On Tuesday, Shibuya-based Q&A portal site OK Wave officially released its Chinese edition[C] in association with Chubun Industry[J] which publishes a Chinese-language newsletter[C] and provides a multi-channel IPTV service[C] for Chinese residents in Japan, and Aoyama Data Center[J] which has data center facilities in both capital cities of Japan and Mainland China.

(Asiajin has not yet confirmed if any access to the website from Mainland China is not blocked by China’s Great Firewall. The website seems to be physically located in Japan since its IP address is registered as one of NEC Personal Products‘ network.)

The portal site basically targets Chinese residents in Japan and Chinese visitors to Japan. Japanese/Chinese and Chinese/Japanese translation feature will be added by the end of this year.

Three companies plan to develop an advertising business model specifically designed for Chinese market, and also to provide Chinese well-known portal sites with their Q&A system on an ASP basis. The companies expects to earn 2 million users and 50 million PVs by June 2010.

OK Wave says, it’s hard for Chinese residents and visitors in Japan to find where they can buy what they want to have despite their population is so large that daily life information should be provided in their mother tongue. Currently the population of Chinese residents in Japan is 650,000, and the number of annual Chinese visitors to Japan exceeded 9 million in late 2008.

The site is reportedly targeting Chinese living in Japan, but its domain name ending with Chinese country code makes us aware that the site is going to target Chinese people living in Mainland China as well.

Tags: Cellular Phone, China, Company, Event Report, Japan, Joke, library, New Service, Service, Taiwan, Technology by Masaru IKEDA
2 Comments »