This is a very, very incisive report on the deadly train accident down near Takarazuka, Osaka, Japan.
Norimitsu Onishi, who writes for the NY Times, hits the core issue when he focuses on the punctuality culture of Japan. The argument is that the extreme focus on punctuality in Japan caused this accident because the young train conductor was focused on being on time moreso than being safe.

Across the country, the accident has already caused much soul-searching over Japan’s attention – some would say obsession – with punctuality and efficiency. To many, the driver’s single-minded focus on making up the 90 seconds seemed to reveal the weak points of a society where the trains do really run on time, but where people have lost sight of the bigger picture.
“Japanese believe that if they board a train, they’ll arrive on time,” said Yasuyuki Sawada, a 49-year-old railway worker, who had come to look at the crash site. “There is no flexibility in our society; people are not flexible, either.”
Sawada was one of many who came to stand and watch behind the yellow police line here, and who saw hidden in this accident deeper problems.
“If you go abroad, you find that trains don’t necessarily arrive on time,” Sawada said. “This disaster was produced by Japanese civilization and Japanese people.”

In Japan, punctuality proved deadly [iht.com]

The University of Essex is hosting a conference on the cultures surrounding eBay. One of the accepted papers is by Yasushi Fujita of the University of Texas, looking at why eBay Japan failed. This is very interesting information for any internet entrepreneur in Japan.

An eBay Japan’s Mistake
Mr Yasushi Fujita
University of Texas
Everybody knows that eBay has succeeded globally, but does not know that there is a country where eBay had failed its business. It is Japan. Why was eBay’s business unsuccessful in Japan?
There had been a prior player “Yahoo! Japan Auctions” in Japanese Internet auction market. EBay founded eBay Japan, Inc. to defeat it or even eliminate it. But this challenge became unsuccessful and eBay Japan, Inc. was dissolved. Thereafter, eBay Headquarter released a statement mentioning that eBay was intending to acquire Japanese Internet auction companies (even including Yahoo! Japan Auctions), but eBay has performed nothing in Japanese market yet.
The auction items that eBay handles are thoroughly categorised and structured in directories. EBay users can reach an item which they want to bid on or purchase through tracing the directory tree. For instance, when you want to find a desktop PC memory module, you can trace directory layer of Computers & Networking > Desktop PC Components > Memory for Desktop PC in order, and may find an appropriate one.
EBay Japan, Inc., however, constructed and provided another approach, which depended strictly on its search engine function. For a category Computers & Networking, sub-directories were not prepared at all. A search engine was done instead. It should be obvious that this style is quite inconvenient for every user. When a user enter keywords “desktop memory” for his wishing item, a listed PC itself whose description includes memory amount would be also fetched.
In the same period, Google was about to magnify its business in Japan. Compared with Google, eBay Japan’s search function was insufficient and unsatisfactory for the users. It can be mentioned that poor usability eliminated eBay itself from Japan. Further survey about the parties who selected this inappropriate tactics may be needed.

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