Gaijin-san domainer reports from Japan

[Theo]

Please welcome fellow DNF'er, David, in his 'virgin' guest post.

 

[amplify]

Thank you for the opportunity to share the domaining and technology aspect of the Japanese culture with your readers.

 

[Sapphiro]

Just saw the article a few minutes ago on facebook, not bad!

 

[katherine]

Thanks for sharing.
What about an article on JPRS, the Japanese Neustar

 

[amplify]

Thanks for sharing.
What about an article on JPRS, the Japanese Neustar

Since the release of IDN .biz, I have yet see a mom & pop - corporation using it. In fact, I've yet to see any cc/g/TLD using an IDN.

The most popular used extensions that are advertised in Japan are .ne.jp and .co.jp despite the fact that .jp is able to be registered. Quite a few use .info (I assume because the huge price difference) over anything else. As far as domain names, it's not a big business or nobody cares over here, as to why I never got into it for Japanese end users.

The domains that sell for (-)reg fee on this forum could quite possibly sell for $XXX+ to an end user because quite simply, Japanese put any English word/phrase together in a nonsensical manner.

I.E. a good domain for kids shoes: kidsshoes.com, though Japanese will poorly translate the phrase and use footwearkids.(cc/g/TLD).

If you were to offer kidsshoes.com to the owner of footwearkids.(cc/g/TLD) for what it would be worth to an English end user, they would simply decline because the knowledge isn't quite here yet for domain names.

As an example for exact local matches Japan:
kids shoes - 58 (presumeably from the military stationed here, contractors or expatriates that speak English)
kodomo no kutsu - 0 (Roman alphabet spelling of Kids Shoes)
子供の靴 - 110 (kodomo no kutsu in Kanji)

Though, doing an actual search on Google Japan for "kodomo no kutsu", you will receive the page:

http: // event. rakuten .co.jp /baby/shoes/

as well as if you searched it in Kanji.

That's why I believe IDN(/.IDN) will fail. Google is smart enough to know what you're looking for if you spell it in native characters or the Roman alphabet... but there's still skeptics out there.