More Signs of a Strong Yen Hurting Japan's Economy?

One of Japan's biggest, oldest and most famous department stores has closed its flagship store in Paris.

From Breitbart: 

Mitsukoshi Ltd. on Thursday closed its flagship department store in Paris, ending 39 years of operation in the face of declining Japanese visitor numbers. As the first Japanese department store in Europe, Mitsukoshi's Paris outlet made its debut in 1971 and racked up profits by featuring Japanese language services and customer assistance in duty free procedures. After recording some 5.7 billion yen of annual sales in 1996, the store's business was severely hit following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which resulted in many people refraining from traveling.


The Wall Street Journal ran an article showing China was about to become #2 and Japan drops to #3... Is this is just another sign of Japan's slow drift into irrelavence? 

Marketing Japan: Like Japanese Rock? Music Japan Plus!

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers


In France, Japan, and all things Japanese are hugely popular and growing in popularity daily! I will get to that in a minute! Read on! 

People who knows me well or read this blog often will know that I am a devout advocate of specialization. It doesn't matter what you do, I believe that you must specialize or die.

The examples of this abound all around us.

Vamps are a new Japanese visual kei unit that is staple on Music Japan Plus

Take my oft sited example of family restaurants; sure Denny's has everything, but nothing is especially delicious. If, in your town, there was a Denny's (and four or five others like Denny's around it) but there was also a delicious sushi shop, Chinese restaurant, French, Italian, great Steak-house, Starbucks, Mexican, etc., etc., would you go to the Denny's?

I don't think most people would.

That's why our economy and the world are changing so very radically today; the Long Tail has been born (all hail the Internet) and specialization is quickly becoming the king!

Japan Expo in Paris Pop from 2009

Now, I'd like to introduce a site to you that is operating in Japan that is definitely niche marketing (but, in my opinion, will have to become more and more focused as time goes on!) I want to do this today because, from my radar, because of things like Hatsune Miku (the singing android) and other hard-to-pinpoint-factors, it seems that Japanese pop music is getting hugely popular in, get this, France!

Yes, yes... I didn't believe it at first, either... But some friends just came back from France and confirmed this for me: In France, Japan and everything Japanese is exploding in popularity! They even have a Japan Expo in Paris every year!

That site is called Music Japan Plus and gets my highest rating for a site totally dedicated to Japanese music. The site is also in Japanese and English and several other languages.

Music Japan Plus has information mostly focused on J-Pop, J-Rock and "visual-kei" artists. It also has an online shopping E-commerce component, articles, and artist database, forums and prizes! They also have their own Youtube, Myspace and Facebook.

So, if you're really into niche music and Japanese Rock (or the Plastic Trees) is your thing, then you need to check out Music Japan Plus. Click here to go directly to Music Japan Plus (English site).

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Keywords:
Music Japan Plus, Mike Rogers, Marketing Japan, Vamps, Plastic Trees, J-Pop, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, J-Rock, Visual-kei, Youtube, Myspace, Facebook