Become a Yakuza! Japan's #1 Online Yakuza Fashion Boutique! なんちゃってヤクザファッション専門店！

Folks! I have my nominee for "Best Website of the Year!" It is called "Birth Japan" (http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/auc-birthjapan/) and it is a Yakuza Gangster Fashion and accessories site on Rakuten. Rakuten is the largest e-commerce site in Japan and among the world’s largest by sales. So, Rakuten is a name you can trust! (Insert diabolical laughter here.)

Don't believe me? Go to check this awesome webpage out RIGHT NOW! https://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/auc-birthjapan/

Birth Japan seems to be run by some (former?) Yakuza. On their website they say they've gone straight and so you can trust them too. Honest!

My best friend, "Ken" (not his real name), showed me the Birth Japan website yesterday and I loved it!!! "Ken", also told me that he had finally found his dream; his calling in life. He said he wants to become a Yakuza! 

Wow! That's cool! Me too! I'm totally serious here folks. "Ken Nishikawa" (not his real name) has found the website of the year. I haven't had this much fun and been excited about a website like this since the early days of the internet. I'm being dead serious here ("Dead" in a "figuratively speaking" manner, of course) you will just LOVE the Birth Japan webpage!

I want to become a Yakuza too! And you can in an instant with Birth Japan! They even say so on their webpage!. And when you go to their webpage, they've got gun shots and cool suspenseful background music too - so you can feel like you ARE doing something illegal when you visit their pages!

Don't move! Hands up!

(Above) It says something like, "If you are a good person, you can become a bad person instantly. If you are already a bad person, you can become a really bad person in seconds!" (with Birth Japan!) 

What are we waiting for? I'm in!

The above is a cool link from their webpage. It says that "Everything here (at this click) is only ¥1 yen but there is a, er, 'catch,' or a 'condition.'" Gee, I wonder what that 'catch' or 'conditions' could be? 

Well, I trust these guys, so I'm going to click it... If I suddenly am "disappeared" then you'll all know what happened.

If anything, "Birth Japan" is a name you can trust when it comes to buying stuff from and looking like a Yakuza. The above shot is announcing their big 10th Anniversary Sale! It's the 10th Anniversary of the boss of Birth Japan being released from prison! You can also sign up for their mail magazine that is full of outlaw stories from the boss (before he went straight!)

This is really hilarious. These guys have a sense of humor! I love that photo of the boss at the top right!

Keep your eyes open when visiting the site, there are discount coupons and all sorts of stuff flying by the screen at all times. It really does remind me of the fun sites from the early days of he internet. I really do dig Birth Japan!

Check it! You can order a wide variety of fashions for Yakuza as well as accessories like sunglasses, chains, belts, shoes, boots, buckles, lucky charms, dog tags, etc. You name it. They got it. 

And, if you buy it, WHAMMO! You become instant Yakuza bad guy! How cool is that?

Check it! Luxury for you and your favorite gangster and gangsterette!

Talk about Customer Service! What's this? Another sale? Yep! You can get a 5% discount on all deliveries to your friends who are currently in prison and a 5% discount for your friends who have been released from prison within the last 3 months. ABSOLUTELY NO C.O.D.!

Hey, and if you know what's good for you, you'll go and "Like" the Birth Japan Facebook page! (https://www.facebook.com/893fashion)

There's a few hours of fun and cool stuff on the Birth Japan site. Here is their "Image Video." How cool!

不良ファッションブランド「BLOOD MONEY TOKYO」イメージCM その2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgLjO5Lxaqk

Check out the Birth Japan website. It's fabulous! "Birth Japan" 
Tell them "Ken Nishikawa" (not his real name) sent you!
(http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/auc-birthjapan/) 

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NOTES: Some folks reading this might think I am joking. And I am, a little bit. But I think the guys running Birth Japan might be genius. They could be onto something big here. Imagine of the Anime community found out about this? Birth Japan could become very wealthy.

Also, I have written about the Yakuza before and have no real complaints about them. They have always been polite and had manners.... They are much better than the government who, through coercion, extorts money from us at gunpoint and bombs kids in foreign countries. The Yakuza also follow a code of ethics.... The government? Ethics? Never in the same room or in the same sentence.

Read this: Yakuza: Japanese Modern-Day Cowboys 
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/01/mike-in-tokyo-rogers/japans-modern-day-cowboys/  

Worldwide Rock N Roll Radio! Now On Air!

Crimson FM "Rakuten Power Morning" (The Mike & Taro Show) has begun! Now on air!

This show is the 1st time in Japan history for a show to be broadcast on radio in Japan and simulcast all over the world on the internet. This is the future of radio broadcasting. It's not streaming. It's simulcast - if you miss the live show, you can't listen later. In fact, we are the 1st and the ONLY one from Japan. If you have Wi-Fi, then you can tune in anywhere in the world.

It's the return of the Mike & Taro Show!「Rakuten Power Morning!」 On air now! Want to listen? On PC「Crimson FM」Go here PC: http://rakuten.fm/station/crimsonfm?l-id=crimsonfm_TOP_panel (Click the red arrow!)

Mike & Taro Show 「Rakuten Power Morning」始まりました！ここにクリック！

聞きますか？ここ：Go here PC: http://rakuten.fm/station/crimsonfm?l-id=crimsonfm_TOP_panel
赤い矢印をクイック！

Rakuten Power Morning is on air every Monday ~ Friday 6 am ~ 10 am Japan Time. (Broadcasting live in Tokyo and Osaka from August 1 - Worldwide from July 4, 2016!) Wi-Fi is now the biggest thing to happen to radio broadcasting since the advent of FM!

To listen, go here: http://rakuten.fm/station/crimsonfm?l-id=crimsonfm_TOP_panel

Click the red arrow.

Please come "Like" our FB page: https://www.facebook.com/Rakuten-Power-Morning-1698303740432946/

New Credit Card Rule in Japan Bad For Small Businesses

Because of so many credit card scams and crooks running around nowadays, it seems that the credit card companies are getting stricter and stricter by the day.... 

A good friend at Citi Bank informs me that the Japan Credit Card Association has passed a new rule that says all internet companies using credit card must register with the association and get a individual "credit card approval stamp" for their site and every sale must run through their approval process first before each and every purchase is made! 

The big companies like Amazon and Rakuten have rejected this new rule but the association, according to my friend, is insisting upon new and small businesses to toe the line by early next year... 

This is just another scam targeting small businesses and making it more difficult for them. 

How this process works is like this: A customer decides to buy something. They must access the Japan Credit Card Association site first to get an approval (to confirm they are the registered user of that card and not a fraudster). The customer gets the approval first, then receives some sort of numbered identification. Then, after that, they go to an individual site and buy what they were looking for! 

It's obvious that this is damaging to small businesses and just the big guys (like Amazon or Rakuten) can say "No! We're not going to do this!" But to others, this is another block in the road. 

Anyhow, it seems, according to my friend at Citi, that there is a fight going on about this right now but the association is insisting upon it.

Like I said, the big guys won't follow the rules (Why should they? They have all the money and money equals clout!) But the little guys and small businesses will be damaged by this new rule as customers will find it troublesome to have to go through just another process and a bunch of clicks to buy something.

Amazon's and Rakuten's "One-Click" systems will become even easier to use... The small businesses? They'll lose sales.

Japan's Deflation: The Department Store Numbers From 2009 to June 2012

I've been doing a lot of data searching and number crunching for the purpose of making presentations for a new Japanese company to obtain government funding. I sometimes help new companies and entrepreneurs to gain government loans and financing as the rates from the government of Japan are incredibly low, and, if the company goes bankrupt, in many instances, the entrepreneur does not have to pay back the loan as it is government backed. Wow! Free money, right?


Well, it is not as easy as it seems; the presentation must be extremely thorough and, when making a profit and loss chart, every single number input must have some justification and rationale.


In order to help make a realistic profit and loss three year sales projection presentation I searched the Japan Ministry of the Economy, Trade and Industry site for information on sales for typical bricks and mortar shops. 


While doing so, I found information for department stores which I deemed to be very good (to cast things in as positive a light as possible) as Japan's department stores are world famous as a barometer of the shopping and spending habits of the Japanese. Also, since the department stores are very geared to a slightly older and a bit more upper and middle class spenders (rather than young people who are not big spenders), I felt it would represent true Japanese society better. Meaning; it will represent people with money, not those without.


What I found greatly surprised me. Here's the chart and a brief explanation of what really stands out below;

Click on image for larger view:

Data from the Japan Ministry of the Economy, Trade and Industry

In the red circles are the final tallies for sales for each year. Comparing the final annual sales numbers from department stores from 2009 to 2011 show a full -7% drop in revenues and spending by customers (as indicated by the blue arrows). We don't have full data for 2012 yet, of course, but if you compare YoY from 2011 to 2012 it isn't so bad as sales are up +1.88% for the first six months of 2012.


That sounds great! Things are looking up.... Well, not so fast! Comparing 2009 to 2012 we have still experienced a full -10% drop! (Green arrows).


Now some will say, "Not so fast, Mike! This doesn't represent online sales which have grown. And yes they have. But still consider that, according to Nikkei survey results show that only about 60% of all Japanese households have a PC. This points to a still strong market for people to shop bricks and mortar in Japan... And, actually, isn't going out and shopping half the fun?


But let's compare just for fun... Let's look at the dominant player in Japan's online sales and that is Rakuten. Rakuten is Japan's #1 (maybe #2) online "department store." Here are figures from Rakuten's annual sales reports for the sample years of 2006 ~ 2011:


Click on image for larger view:

Data from Rakuten Annual Sales Report


Sales from 2006 to 2011 showed a brisk increase. It slowed down greatly from 2009 to 2011 (which was a bad year all around for department stores and the economy as a whole). Yet Rakuen still showed a healthy increase. Still total annual department stores sales in Japan are well over 173 times that of Rakuten... So, when the department stores are dropping 10% a sales increase of 130% from Rakuten is a drop in the bucket... 


I must add one point too, I go grocery shopping three times a week. I keep close track of food prices (in my world, that's one of the few things that matter). Prices have held steady or dropped over these last few years.


Couple that with the price of land (I keep and eye on that too) there can be no doubt that Japan is mired in deflation as land prices where I lived have dropped ever so slightly and that even with a brand new giant shopping center built within 12 minutes walk from my house just one year ago.


Things do not look well in the Japan retail market at all... Or anywhere else in Japan for that matter.

TV Sets Don't Even Make Beautiful Antique Furniture!

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

If you would have told me fifteen years ago that old style TV and radio were going to die out, I wouldn't have believed you. But now, I can't really see any other way. Oh sure, there will probably always be TV and radio stations, it's just that they won't be these massive companies with thousands of employees that we have today. I foresee them becoming like their cable and satellite competitors. I have written before on some technical reasons, see here and here. Today, I want to write from my own experiences as a 30-year insider and the only foreigner who was ever the general manager of a major Japanese broadcasting station in history.

Not even useful as a future antique

Today, companies like TV Tokyo have over 1,000 employees. A satellite music TV station like Music On! TV has less than eighty. I foresee stations like TV Tokyo becoming the same in five years... This will cause them severe restructuring or bankruptcy. Not good for the shareholders; terrible for employees.

Take your average FM radio station in Japan that has 40 employees... I predict that, if they can even survive the next three ~ five years (which most won't) they will have to find a way to run the station with, not 40 employees, but 5. If they can do that, they have a chance.

With the poor quality of management that many of the stations in Japan have today,  I'll give 40 - 1 odds of that ever happening.

What are they going to do when the only way they can survive and stay competitive is to cut 90% of their workforce, yet Japanese labor laws will not allow such a thing? Talk about stuck between a  rock and a hard place!

What they will have to do is to force older employees into retirement earlier and to cut salaries across the board and hope that employees quit. I have seen this method employed before. The company cut all salaries by 25%. Then, six months later, they cut all salaries by 25% again for a total of 40%. Many employees quit. The problem with this method soon became apparent when it was realized that all the good employees quit because they could find a job somewhere else, but the poor employees, the "dead-wood" stayed.

So the station lost all of its productive employees and was left with the useless ones.

I have worked in TV & radio (the music business) since 1978. When one works in these businesses, there are many "tops of the mountains." In my later career, radio, the top of the mountain was producing, directing, and hosting the morning drive time show Monday - Friday. I did that. We made one of the most famous and successful morning shows in Tokyo history. When that ended in 2009, at 52-years-old, I decided to retire from that business. Why?

It's best to retire when you are at the top of the hill.

Since then, I started another business with some friends whereby we do new methods of marketing and Internet hybrid marketing and PR in immature markets. It's been fun. Through his experience, though, I have been able to go around to most of the major mass media and get a glimpse of what is going on everywhere.

I have had face to face talks with upper management about their struggles and travails in a steady shrinking market; I have been in meetings to discuss strategy and develop methods to generate sales. All of them revolve around using the Internet as, not just a piece of the puzzle, but, in many cases, it has replaced the old media as the "main course" on the plate presented to sponsors and advertisers.

In fact, at one station, the chief of programming admitted to me that he thought it was impossible to sell his old media vehicle, as is, to sponsors.

From these experiences I, too, have come to see the future quite clearly; there is no way for over 70% of the major TV & radio stations to survive in their current state more than 5 years.... I doubt that any major station will be able to survive in their current state past 10 years. In twenty years, there will probably be entirely brand-new names running our media. Who knows? Perhaps Google or Apple will buy out these major media conglomerates? Perhaps, in Japan, Rakuten will own TV Tokyo and turn it into a 24/7 shopping channel? That's the only think that I can see that the station could be useful for...

Still, not even beautiful as an antique

Either way, TV and radio are antiques. Their days are numbered. This admission not from an old Internet hand, but from an old TV/radio hand. Unlike the radios of old, today's TV and radio sets are near useless... They don't even make beautiful furniture to display in the living room.

Like Marc Abela wrote:

I personally think that the days of "TV" as a concept (i.e. you sit there and someone tells you what to watch, when and how) are so totally counted. Hard to put a clear number, is it 2 years left, 5?, 10?, 1? ...

It has been a year and some I have not turned my TV on. Not even once. Really. Weird. But it still sits in my living room. Antique.

Remember this day well, my friends, the day is coming when we are going to tell our children or grand kids that, "there was a time when everyone had a TV in their house...." Those children won't believe us and will say, "What for?"

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Keywords:
TV, radio, Google, Mike Rogers, Marketing Japan, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, antique, Rakuten, Apple, TV Tokyo, Music On! TV