The Japan Business Insider Newsletter is the only English newsletter concentrating on success strategies and niche business opportunities in Japan. Stay informed and know where and how money is being spent and made in Japan.

 All You Need To Succeed in Japan ... For Free!

Published by
Richard Posner

Website
http://www.successinjapan.com 

Contact Us
newsletter@successinjapan.com 

Subscribe To Our Newsletter 

Thoughts From Above And Below

The Finger Points Back At Us

"Never look down on anyone unless you're helping him up "   ~Jesse Jackson, activist~

(A message written in response to some seemingly smug, employed people putting down unemployed Japanese people in a forum)

Education is the key to a successful life. But not the type we traditionally think about - reading, writing, history, math and science.

I'm talking about the mindset that teaches an individual to love learning rather than feel education is a means to an end. While it is that...it is much more.

I'm talking about the mindset that teaches every child how to work with and manipulate his/her world through core competence.

We should learn how to make money and how money works and can grow, from grade school onward.

We should learn how to repair and build the things which addict us in our rush to consume.

We should learn that an education is a never-ending joy.

We should learn to delay gratification or have have our privileges taken away from us as a reminder of how grateful we should be.

Why is it that schools don't teach us to be rich internally and externally?

Why is it that ninety percent of the wealth of the world is controlled by less than 5% of the population?

Why do we sell a failed education policies as a mainstream avenue to success?

Yes, the government must intervene to restructure education systems to encourage thinking rather than random brave waves.

Yes, the government should intervene full force and emphasize that my piece of the pie needn't be smaller; we just need to create a bigger pie based on real rather than phantom value-added services such as the notorious security houses.

This Japanese man was sold a bill of goods that did not match his interest and ability. Japan is a sink or swim society because the price of conformity is that you must stop thinking and get busy. By doing so, you never have a chance to develop possibility thinking.

Too many people get this Japanese guy's story wrong and look down at him. The greatest leaders in business and commerce have arisen Lazarus-like after hitting rock bottom.

Rather than look down at this guy as a bum, you might want to wish you were him. Why? Because the only way he can pull himself up will be to think and do.

If we are not growing, we are dieing. That Japanese man is in a much better position to grow and thrive than his critics who feel cool and smug because they have some income and comfort.

We only condemn the downtrodden and the poor because of a poverty of ideas and an uneasiness when we see a world of despair which is uncomfortable to ponder.

Japan Niche Opportunities of the Week

1) The holiday season and annual festivals draw large crowds of people who are bent on eating delicacies and frittering away money on a variety of things they will never touch or use beyond that day.  What's even worse is that local businesses often don't consider the casual, one-time buyer as a potential long-term customer.  An incentive to visit the shop or business which sold the goodies to you again never crosses the mind of merchants hawking goods at fairs or waiting for street traffic to arrive at their underpopulated stores. 

An Opportunity:  The lifeblood of any community is dependent upon not letting big conglomerates swallow up small businesses.  Small businesses should learn a lesson from all super successful online marketers and co-op their efforts and capture shopper/buyer names and email addresses at a minimum by offering useful services or products for gratis or heavy discounted prices in exchange for putting that person on their subscriber list.  For example, retail creamery Cold Stone Japan is selling ice cream gift coupons for Christmas.  That campaign, however, would be more effective if they co-opted with non-competitive businesses such as a confectionary chain, a sugar refinery, or a restaurant chain and made coupon books.  In order to get a half-price ice cream and the coupon book, for example, the buyer would have to give personal information of their first name and email address (to be confirmed).  A bargain or freebie would be offered by each co-opting member.  The advantage is that you can develop a relationship with each drop-by customer to your store, fair booth or even the casual buyer of a product from a store shelf.  For small shops to survive, it is necessary to share buyer data in a win-win, responsible fashion.  A starting point to understanding this needed concept for Japan can be found by CLICKING HERE.

2) There are many more people in Japan reaching 65+ than there are children being born.  In the 1950s and 1960s - when Baby Boomers were having children in record numbers - the infant diaper industry took off.  Now we are at the other end of the tunnel, a time when adults are starting to develop incontinence - peeing and defecating in their pants - and the need for diapers for such people is skyrocketing.  Look at a trend graph below:

An Opportunity:  From regular hospitals to hospices to convalescence homes, incontinence diapers, ointments for urination rashes, and a host of other products for aging are growing in demand.  The big paper companies think they have a lock on such services, but my sense is that these products will be expensive and increasingly difficult to find on demand as Japan ages.  Many experts cite incontinence as the most common reason for nursing home placement. At least half of all nursing home residents are affected by incontinence and the annual cost of caring for those individuals is more than a billion yen.  The trend is toward better technology in the form of products that move beyond basic containment needs - which are already being met fairly well by many products - toward improvements that help to meet higher-level needs related to skin health and breakdown prevention, as well as comfort and dignity.  Proctor and Gamble is at the forefront of this research, but any country or company or country that has breakthrough technology in this field will find a hungry market in Japan.

Want to Introduce Your Product or Service to Japan?  Looking for partners?  CLICK HERE.　

Empowering Japan Resources

Nagano Prefecture

Located in central Japan and surrounded by 3,000-meter-high mountains, Nagano Prefecture is home to 2.2 million people with an area of 13,585 square kilometers, and is Japan's fourth largest prefecture. Nagano's unspoiled natural beauty and clean air attract over 100 million visitors annually - a number slightly smaller than Japan's entire population.

Heads Up

I encourage everyone to look at Japan as a place for business, commerce and opportunity in the Twenty-First Century.  It is a not only a strong launching ground for enterprise, but the last, great hope for the survival of this planet.  Please fill out the form below and join our Japan prosperity circle:

**********

**********

********************

One Village, One Product Campaign

The One Village One Product Market refers to shops that exhibit and sell particular goods from developing countries, organized by METI and JETRO. Since April of 2008, the shops are being operated in the international airports in both Narita and Kansai.
Profit from the shops will be allocated to the production side in the developing countries through importers. Read more about this initiative of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) by CLICKING HERE.

********************

Outline of Testing Machines

The Japan Testing Machinery Association outlines the types of material tests undertaken in Japan and the machines which are used in each case.  This is an easy yet informative webpage that makes these matters comprehensible to the novice.  To learn more, CLICK HERE.

********************

Supplying Restaurants

The language barrier beside, here is an English-language list of restaurants throughout Japan published by the Japan Restaurant Association which could be invaluable for JBIN subscribers or friends wishing to reach real restaurants and potential buyers of food and restaurant supplies.  CLICK HERE to access this free resource.  Also, take a look at the extensive Success In Japan Restaurant Directory by CLICKING HERE.

**********************

This Week's Challenge

On Procrastination

~Paul Graham, multimillionaire programmer~　

Technology investor Paul Graham has written an essay about procrastination that is also about the mindset required to tackle hard problems.

My favorite part of this essay is:

"But the trouble with big problems can't be just that they promise no immediate reward and might cause you to waste a lot of time. If that were all, they'd be no worse than going to visit your in-laws. There's more to it than that. Big problems are terrifying. There's an almost physical pain in facing them. It's like having a vacuum cleaner hooked up to your imagination. All your initial ideas get sucked out immediately, and you don't have any more, and yet the vacuum cleaner is still sucking.

You can't look a big problem too directly in the eye. You have to approach it somewhat obliquely. But you have to adjust the angle just right: you have to be facing the big problem directly enough that you catch some of the excitement radiating from it, but not so much that it paralyzes you. You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as a sailboat can sail closer to the wind once it gets underway.

If you want to work on big things, you seem to have to trick yourself into doing it. You have to work on small things that could grow into big things, or work on successively larger things, or split the moral load with collaborators. It's not a sign of weakness to depend on such tricks. The very best work has been done this way."

I can attest that I've felt that way before, and I'm sure just about any  entrepreneurial thinker has as well. I am now almost four years into a project of mine, and I'm just now getting to the point where I might see some results that will tell me just how close I've come to making it work. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time. I don't want to post too much here about personal stuff, but I'll probably post about it occasionally as I start to see real data come out.