w1ntermute, I have to disagree with you here. If we are going to generalize, the Japanese are most definitely clued-in to the Internet. They may not use Faceb

w1ntermute, I have to disagree with you here. If we are going to generalize, the Japanese are most definitely clued-in to the Internet. They may not use Facebook as much, but they have one of the highest usages of Twitter in the world (a little old, but here: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-top-countries_b26726 http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-top-countries_... and here: http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/09/huge-in-japan-twitter/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/09/huge-in-japan-twitter/), and they use the Internet for a lot of things like making purchases, finding product/store/restaurant/etc. reviews, auctions, etc. And, despite the relatively lower numbers, tons of Japanese are on Facebook (although, this article describes how teenagers are more into Instagram and other photo-sharing services, moreso than FB, which makes sense consider Japan's history of photo sharing via feature-phones...but I digress: http://japan.cnet.com/news/commentary/35029092/ http://japan.cnet.com/news/commentary/35029092/). AND, let us not forget venerable old 2chan, the inspiration for 4chan(!). To say that they are ten years behind I think is pretty much not the case. Which all just goes to say that it is even more of a shame that the government doesn't have a clue about this shit. Now, if you are talking about building an environment to create new web businesses, or adopting new software development techniques, then maybe they are behind...but not ten years (and most everyone is behind the U.S. on this as far as I've seen). -A guy who works at a Japanese internet company in Tokyo