The piece points out that blogs fill an important role in society by giving people a place to vent and express themselves when they might otherwise find it impossible to do so. At the same time, Japan has a high rate of adoption when it comes to high-tech devices and gadgets; people are familiar with the digital world and likely to try out new forms of technology.

Although the editorial mentions the importance of ‘chatting’ and the near impossibility of striking up a conversation with a stranger, blogs satisfy a need far greater than that. Blogs allow people to group themselves by interest and find others with similar interests.

We might even say that they allow one to expand the ’social network,’ should such a concept exist. Or, pushing it even further, they allow one to engage in ’social networking.’ Perhaps the marketing people can turn that into something.

Point is, blogs are popular in Japan. This much is true. Any business plan involving blogs and Japan should be able to communicate the reasons why quite clearly, with a little more research. Couple this with Dentsu’s recent report claiming that online advertising has potential for “growth into a 750 billion yen plus market by 2011? and you have a powerful recipe for building a business online in Japan.

It’s cooler than it was a couple of weeks ago and there has been quite a bit of rain. On Tuesday there was a surprise thunderstorm bringing you (hail) as large as ice cubes. It really came down heavy and its looks like the summer vet has had too much water. I expect I’ll soon be moaning about the lack of it.

On the way back from our trip to Mitokusan Sanbutsuji we saw the rice paddies flooded up in the mountains. It started down here last week. The odd early bird farmer in-between spells planting out rice.

Price rise announcements are now a common precursor to each month. Earlier in the year there were reports of Japan’s WPI being at a 27 year high and CPI being hitting decade highs. In a country where the economy is as stagnant as the wages, cost-driven inflation is really spanner in the works.

Being so hideously short on natural resources you would think it prudent that the country not to be reliant on something that can be grown at home. Japan’s food self sufficiency has fallen to a meagre 39%. Despite this there is still a surplus of the tightly controlled rice.

Back in 2006 there was a bit of a glut. Being tightly controlled by the government the dairy farmers were forced to buy back their milk (or their cow’s milk) and pour it down the drain. Many cows were knocked on the head.

There are similar issues with stockpiles of skimmed milk a by-product of the butter making process. Now that world’s traditional exporters are at the point of importing or diverting elsewhere, the big corporations have turned to raiding the domestic larder of fresh milk to produce the more lucrative coffee drinks, cheeses etc.

There is the tariff hurdle the bureaucrats fail to mention. The latest figure I can find, published a year ago is 29.8% plus ¥1159 per kg. I’ve seen total tariff figures of 700-800% mentioned. I couldn’t find any import prices, even rough figures based MDC Datum worldwide wholesale prices, works out to close to 500% last May and 350% this month (given the rises), making the above seem credible.