Japan has been behind the curve for some time, but is catchingup quickly:

1. NUMBER OF ACCESS ACCOUNTS IS GROWING RAPIDLY

2. E-COMMERCE IS RISING RAPIDLY

3. JAPANESE SHOPPERS ACCOUNT FOR AS MUCH AS 10% OF U.S. E-COMMERCE SALES

Japan is behind the U.S. curve in internet use and e-commerce. As a result much Japanese internet shopping goes to U.S. based retailers.

The same reasons which have been behind the growth of catalog shopping in Japan, especially catalog shopping from abroad, will give the impetus to the growth of e-commerce in Japan:

• prices for products sold in mainstream retail are very high and there are structural obstacles to their lowering
• product availability is poor
• native enthusiasm for trying out the new, especially new technologies
• popularity of shopping by mail order from overseas

The single most obvious way to capitalize on the potential of e-commerce in Japan is to "Nipponize" your website. If you have an existing website in English, it is relatively easy and inexpensive to transform it into a Japanese website by emplying the services of a Japanese copywriter to "translate/adapt" your website and an html programmer to simply drop the Japanese text into the appropriate places in your existing program. This requires very little additional programming. Consequently, you can quickly set up a sister website in Japanese for the cost of little more than Japanese copywriting.