Q&A: What’s the Japanese equivalent of [enter foreign web service here]?

Posted on July 29th, 2009 by Serkan Toto

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.

Serkan Toto

Dr. Serkan Toto is a German based in Tokyo. Like us, he is passionate about introducing Japanese IT to the rest of the world. Full-time, Serkan works as an independent web industry consultant for hedge funds, venture capital companies and start-ups worldwide. He is also a writer for mega tech blog network TechCrunch, covering Japan-related technology and web trends. This is Serkan's website. Follow Serkan on Twitter here.

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