Business hotels

If you are stuck in Japan without accommodation, there are actually tons of small hotels called "business hotels".

Generally you can always find vacancy in those somewhere in the city. The name sounds luxurious but they're actually low-priced and no-frills.

They typically don't have a restaurant or many amenities, and the rooms are small. However they are clean, comfortable and get the job done. They are mainly used by people on business trips.

I've used them a lot myself and was always pretty satisfied. However most of them don't have much info in English. If needed I can give you a hand with that when you're here.

Sales in Japan and the West

I get the impression that in the West, sales is all about closing the deal.

A salesman thinks his job is done when the deal is closed. A lot of Americans, in particular, can be such reality-distorted optimists that in my experience some of them act as if their commission is already in the bank from the point that it merely appears that the deal is going to close. When things fall through (as is increasingly common in these times) they are honestly surprised and shocked and angry.

In Japan, always a few degrees less flaky than America in most aspects, a salesman isn't as defined by the deals he's made and closed, so much as the maintenance of existing relationships. After a deal closes, his job begins in earnest.

Japanese clients seldom start out placing any kind of large order to a supplier or vendor they are using for the first time. They start out placing a small order and carefully observe the level of quality and service they are receiving. They are particularly finicky about the kind of customer support they get from the salesman, how responsive he is, how clear his explanation is, and his approach to dealing with errors or trouble. If they are satisfied they will progressively place larger and larger orders.

Japanese websites

Always being interested in the superlatives of life, I spent a couple of hours - that, as usual, I don't have - goofing around on Alexa. It is always interesting to see the traffic rankings of various websites, both big and small.

Among other things I was curious as to how Japanese websites rank traffic-wise compared to other sites around the world. I found 8 of them in the top 100. Here they are, with rank and a short description (or anti-description) by yours truly.

5: www.yahoo.co.jp - Need you ask? Abbreviated to "NYA?" hereafter.

17: www.google.co.jp - NYA?

35: www.rakuten.co.jp - Japan's biggest shopping site. You can think of it as a digital mall, where individual sellers can set up shop.

41: www.mixi.jp - A social networking site. Similar to myspace, but much broader in terms of age and demographics. Also, it doesn't allow the kind of page customization that myspace does, so generally it is much a neater and more relaxing social surfing experience.

58: www.goo.ne.jp - Portal site. In particular the Japanese <-> English dictionary is popular. Yes, Japanese people are frequenty looking up English words... ranging from kids trying to figure out Nirvana lyrics or studying for an English test, to businessmen struggling with an email from a foreign client to a scientist trying to read an academic paper from abroad.

60: www.msn.co.jp - NYA?

65: www.infoseek.co.jp - Portal site.

76: www.amazon.co.jp - NYA NYA NYA NYA NYAAAA NYA! (imagine me singing it)

(rankings as of today, March 21, 2006)