Notes From The Tiger’s Cave

Popped into my local supermarket last night to buy some more of those cheap Kirin “Aki Aji” (Autumn Taste) beers that I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post. As I was loading a few cans into the basket I noticed that there was a price label stuck onto some of the cans…

Usual price of beer in my supermarket: 215 yen

Autumn Taste beer price: 208 yen

Price tag stuck on side of beer can: 138 yen…  :shock:  :grin:

It was strange because there was no big notice pointing out the low price deal. I checked the can again to make sure it wasn’t the dreaded “happoshu” (mock beer) that people who love their wallet more than their palate tend to drink… No, it was “honto no beeru” (real beer)…

I put three of the cans into my basket and went to the check out. Sure enough, the beers went through at 138 yen each. Bargain!

Back at home, when I poured one of the beers I noticed that it was darker than yesterdays’ brew. A second look at the can revealed the reason: I had bought SAPPORO’s “Aki Raku” (”Autum Happiness”) beer and not Kirin’s “Aki Aji” (”Autumn Taste”) beer.

It was a perfectly good beer, so why was it being sold off at such a big discount and without any fanfair?

Obviously, someone had screwed up!

The beer cans look very similar and even the name is similar - Autumn This and Autumn That. Whoever was responsible for ordering new stock must have mistaken Aki Raku for Aki Aji and is now breaking rocks somewhere in Hokkaido.

Meanwhile, I had three very enjoyable beers for the price of two! Now that is Autumn Happiness!

Sapporo’s Aki Raku Beer. Excellent value at 138 yen a can!

David Hurley
Free Business Websites

I spent the summer holidays relaxing with family and friends in Miyazaki Prefecture on the south-east coast of Kyushu, Japan, and I think I caught a glimpse of “the good life” while I was there!

My wife, my daughter and I flew down to Miyazaki on a local flight from Hiroshima and were met at Miyazaki Airport by a good friend of ours, Neil, a self employed Japanese-English translator who never has to commute to work because he deals with his clients almost entirely by email and can therefore live wherever he likes.

Live Where You Like When You Work Online!

It didn’t take us long to discover why Neil chose to live on the coast of Miyazaki. Beautiful beaches, a pristine ocean, fine scenery, a warm climate, cheap property and an easy-going pace of life all make Miyazaki a fantastic place to live.

On the first day we drove down the coast to go camping by the ocean at Nichinan and visited the stunningly located Udo Shrine the next morning (photo, left).

While my wife, daughter and I visited the shrine, Neil stayed in the car and fired up his laptop to work on one of his translation projects.

Another day, we stopped off at Starbucks in Miyazaki City (yes, Miyazaki is quite “civilized”!) and Neil worked quietly on his laptop while we drank our coffee.

The great thing about setting up some kind of online business is that once the business is established you can do it from anywhere! Since setting up his translation business, Neil has lived on three of the four main islands of Japan. Of course, he could live anywhere else in the world that has an Internet connection if he wanted to, but Japan is his “thing”.

You Can Do It Too!

If you’d like to get started with an Internet business so that you can live in your dream location, but don’t know how, I can help! I’ll take you through the process of setting up a website - in fact, I’ll do it for you using an economical web hosting package to set you up with a Wordpress blogging platform. If you already have a business idea I’ll also get you started by posting some unique content on the site. Also, I’ll stay with you to help you develop your Internet presence and take a step towards the dream of total freedom from having to commute to work…

I’ll Set Up Your Website - Free!

And the great news is, I do everything FREE of charge so there is really nothing to stop you getting set up with a home-based online business. There are no hidden tricks or anything like that. Your only expense will be for a domain name and web hosting, but I have found one of the best deals on the Internet to keep your start-up costs to a minimum, to say nothing of the hundreds of dollars you’ll save when I set up your website 100% free of charge :grin: … It is a very straightforward process. Find out more about my Free Business Websites offer by clicking the link.

Here’s to a great autumn!

David Hurley

Free Business Websites

Which is the best place in the world to start a new business?

According to Ejovi Nuwere, it’s right here in Japan!

And that is especially true if you are a Johnny Foreigner.

Japan is smaller in surface area than California, but has 127 million
consumers and over four million companies. Lots of those companies are
busy importing gear from all over the world. Almost half a billion dollars of goods
are imported every year.

Of course, the Japanese are also keen on modern technology, with nearly 90 million hooked up to the Internet and over 100 million mobile phone users.

So, whether you want to export to Japan from your country, or whether you are an ex-pat living in Japan, there are lots of opportunities for you if you know - and here is the rub - how to do business with the Japanese.

For those of us foreigners who live in Japan, one of the keys is to take advantage of the fact that we ARE DIFFERENT from our hosts. Accepting that obvious fact and working with it - taking advantage of our differences - can give foreigners a great business advantage, or so argues Terrie Lloyd in the video below, talking to Ejovi Nuwere manager of Japan Jump Start.

Terrie Lloyd is the CEO of Japan Inc Communications KK. Read his story HERE

David Hurley

Best Internet Marketing Strategies

Back in February I took my daughter on holiday to England. I call it a holiday, but I spent the first couple of days clearing my books and accumulated clutter. I wrapped and packed 21 large cardboard boxes and asked a shipping company to ship them to Japan.

I found the shipping company on the Internet at http://www.shipit.co.uk/ . They offered a collection service and charged just under 800 quid to ship the boxes plus a William Morris carpet from mother’s house in Yorkshire to Kobe Port.

It was up to me to get the boxes (and carpet) from the warehouse in Kobe port to my house in Hiroshima.

I chose shipit.co.uk on the strength of their claims to take good care of packing, and also on the strength of the testimonials.

The lorry arrived in good time - always a bonus in England - and was gone in less than 10 minutes.

We then went away on our holidays to Blore Hall in the Peak District and I forgot about my boxes - after all, they were not due to arrive in Japan until the end of April or beginning of May…

One month later, back in Japan, I received notification that my boxes were still in England and that I would shortly have to pay warehouse charges. It turned out that I had missed an e-mail advising me that I had requested insurance but not paid for it.

When I saw that I would have to itemize every single packed item I decided not to bother with insurance at all since I had not written down a comprehensive packing list.

All that remained was for me to pay by credit card and, one month late, the goods were on their way. Meanwhile, there was a lot of news on BBC World about Somali pirates so I would not have been surprised had I never seen my goods.

Then, at the beginning of the month, I got a fax in Japanese informing me that my goods had been unloaded at Kobe and that I had a week in which to remove the said goods from the said port. There was also some disagreement between the authorities at Kobe and Shipit.co.uk as to whether or not I needed to present a Bill of Lading. Getting that sorted out took a few days.

The next problem was finding a shipping company to pick up and deliver the goods, oh but before that could be done there was a customs check, and also I had to pay 12,000+ unloading fee. But who to pay it to? I spent the best part of three mornings on the phone trying to organize everything, and the Mrs was assisting on the phone and Internet in the evening.

A week later someone put me onto a friendly chap called Mr Kurihara who seemed to know all about my case (I guess I was getting quite well known in his office as the private individual who was bringing 21 boxes of BOOKS for personal use through Kobe Port, which is used almost exclusively for the import and export business…).

Mr Kurihara laid out a plan of action in which he would estimate the cost of dealing with my case and would then go ahead subject to my approval. He turned out to be totally reliable and a few days later I paid the landing fee and the boxes passed through customs, onto a delivery truck and arrived at our house on Saturday morning, several hours ahead of schedule, for a total cost of 95,000 yen (I was expecting the cost to go as high as 150,000).

I was out when the boxes (and carpet) were delivered. The wife told me that there was just one delivery man who unloaded everything and piled it up in our genkan. Here’s a photo of the scene:

I have since discovered that the Japanese shipping company Kuroneko (Black Cat) has an office in London and that they ship goods back to Japan for Japanese tourists, so I guess anybody in England wanting to ship goods to Japan should telephone them first… It might save you a lot of hassle with the Kobe Port Authorities. If anybody has any legit stuff stuck in Kobe Port, drop me a line and I will put you in touch with Mr Kurihara!

David Hurley
Free Business Websites

I don’t care what anybody says, that Mr Aso Taro chap who happens to be a manga fan and, incidentally, The Current Prime Minister Of Japan, is a jolly spiffing all round good egg.

He’s going to give me and all other honorable foreign devils Â¥12,000 a head - something like $150 - in cash, no questions asked. We even get to keep our heads attached to our shoulders, I believe. All in the cause of reinvigorating the ailing economy.

By the time we get our mula, early next year, it will probably be worth about $500 and some other fellow will be The Current Prime Minister Of Japan. Whether Mr Aso Taro will get to keep his head or not is another matter.

I heard, the other day, that a lot of immigrant labour is having to pack its bags and leave Japan as the recession has caused a shortage of demand for concrete mixing. Perhaps it is just a cunning plan on the part of the Japanese authorities to save a bit of cash now that Mr Aso Taro has opened the palm of friendship to foreign devils.

Does anybody have any suggestions as to what I should invest my honorable windfall in? I hear that oil is quite cheap these days…

Since I am at last to receive some tangible recognition of services rendered to the Glorious Sons of Nippon of the last decade and a half of Toil in the Orient, I feel it somewhat incumbent upon me that I return the favour and invest my loot in 30 cans of Japanese lager and large it during the plum blossom season…

Seems only right really, and almost rude not to…

Kampai!

Aso Taro, Good Egg, Manga Reader & PM of Japan

My antique body is aching all over after playing football on Sunday. (Note to my American friends: Yes, I mean FOOTBALL, which you call “soccer”, but since the game was invented by the British, forgive us if we happen to think that it is our prerogative to call it what we like, i.e. FOOTBALL! :razz:)

Despite my advancing years and creaking joints, I still play football in Japan, along with a couple of other British players. The three of us play alongside a fine bunch of Hiroshima University Medical School students, i.e. trainee doctors, who are all young, fit and skillful.

I am the oldest player in our team, now in my mid-forties, while the other two Brits are in their 30s and the Japanese members are barely out of their teens!

Our team is battling for the top spot in the Hiroshima City League “B” Division and on Sunday we were up against the third-placed team, who turned up with just ten men.

However, our boys performance seemed a bit lack-lustre. It was still 0-0 at half time. I was brought on for 20 minutes in the second half and felt that I had contributed somewhat to livening our team up… Perhaps it was just that they had to make an extra effort now that “the old man” had come on. I got a round of applause when I was called off - or perhaps the team were applauding the manager’s decision! :lol:

Anyway, now that the two contributing foreigners were off the pitch we were free to observe our team’s performance, cheer them on and make a few salty observations as the game continued without a goal.

One thing you notice in Japan at all levels of the game is the tendency of many players to touch the ball just once too often when attacking up the wing. This extra-careful approach (so typically Japanese in many ways) gives the defenders an extra split second to cover the cross when it FINALLY comes in and the result is that an opportunity to win has been missed.

APPLICATION

If you are struggling to win with your home based Internet business it might be that you are spending too much time and effort on your ball skills and not enough on whipping the ball into the box. You need to prioritize marketing over design.

Too many newbies think they are working on their business by fiddling with the design and layout of their website, when in fact what they should be doing is building targeted traffic. Something like 70-90% marketing, 30%-10% website and product design might be a good proportion to work with, depending on your circumstances.

Every time you promote your website it is a bit like crossing the ball into the penalty box in football.

Of course, when you do put in a good cross, you want your striker to be there to shoot and score. When it comes to Internet marketing, you need to think like a striker and work on converting visitors into subscribers and customers.

So you must prioritize what to do with that 10%-30% of time you allocate to website and product design. Concentrate on delivering a clear action-inducing message to your visitors. Give them clear directions so that they know what to do next. Give them a good reason to do it and offer them a free incentive to get them to do it now!

We Score! :lol:

Just after the Brits had agreed that Japanese players spend too long on the ball, our sweeping generalization was, well, swept away when our team scored with just five minutes remaining!

They Score!

1-0 up, against 10 players with 5 minutes to go. You would have thought victory was in the bag, but we were up against a well organized and determined group of players. They didn’t give up, whereas our boys went to sleep.

Our central defender gave away the ball in a lazy pass, our left back recovered the ball and made a dreadful back pass to another of their attackers, our goalkeeper saved the shot but did not hold on to the ball, which went round the block again and eventually found its way into the net. 1-1.

APPLICATION

You might have made a sale, but you haven’t won your customer’s loyalty! All the gains you make in your initial sale will be lost if you alienate your customer through complacency or incompetence. Winning a customer is like scoring a goal, but losing a customer is like conceding one.

One of my English mates here in Hiroshima, Andy Lightfoot, is building up a collection of expensive guitars and has finally got his posterior in gear and posted a video of himself playing some Joy Division baselines…

What do you think? Should I employ Andy to provide the backing music for my website by twanging on a shamisen while I sing about the joys of having a viable internet marketing strategy…??

Gilbert and Sullivan meet Peter Hook…

David Hurley

Internet Marketing Strategies