1. When doing business in Japan, it is essential to be punctual. If you have an appointment, you should make sure you are at the designated place some 5 to 10 minutes beforehand. If something crops up, you should phone to say that you will be late. Being late due to having to travel a long distance or encountering traffic jam is not an acceptable reason for being late, and will be regarded simply as an excuse by Japanese people, who will consider better start earlier in case they are delayed.
   
   
2. During business talks, you should listen carefully to what the other party has to say and give pertinent answers. While you should say what you have to say, there are unfortunately those who fail to pay sufficient attention to what the other side has to say. Business talks are two-way affairs, and only yield results when the positions of the two parties coincide.
   
   
3. As we have said before, it is essential that you should have a sufficiently deep specialist knowledge of the product you are trying to sell, and be able to answer all the questions that a Japanese person may put to you. One often finds that people such as dealers and traders who have not themselves produced the goods lack sufficient knowledge of their merchandise. As in such a case you will have been requested by a maker to market their products, you should make sure beforehand that you have acquired sufficient knowledge of the product. It is not acceptable in Japan to say that you will get back to someone after checking with the manufacturer about something
   
   
4. Whether a sample or a finished product, you should only provide or ship it after first trying it out for yourself. A sample wooden foot massager that we came across, for example, fell to pieces after being used only a couple of times. No adhesive had been used, there were hardly any wooden plugs and no nails or screws, and it was quite obvious that the product would immediately fall apart. Such a product should have been made stronger so as not to break right from the outset. That is why you should try out and test products yourself, and only ship them if they are OK. This is an important way of preventing claims and complaints proactively.
   
   
5. If you want to sell products in Japan, they should look good. They should ideally have a neat, clean and attractive feel that excites the customer�fs interest. You should avoid anything that appears dirty or has too gloomy an image.
   
   
6. Products suitable for a miscellany of uses but nothing in particular will not sell well in the Japanese market just because they are made from materials that are particularly unique to your country. You should instead adopt a more conservative approach and suggest only a limited number of suitable uses. That way, the product will have scarcity value.
   
   
7. You should not think that all the materials used in your own country can be used and will sell in Japan. Coconut fiber and coconut dust, for example, are too unusual to sell well. Demand for such products really only exists among mattress manufacturers. Flowerpot holders and other things made from such materials are sold in Japan as finished products.
   
   
8. It is important to realize that the Japanese market is currently polarizing into two camps: consumers who buy expensive brand-name goods, and consumers who buy comparatively good quality products even if they are cheap. Typical of the kinds of products bought by the first type of consumer are Louis Vuitton and Chanel bags. Young Japanese women will quite willingly part with several tens of thousands of yen for a Louis Vuitton bag, and the average Japanese woman has 2.58 Louis Vuitton products. A brand favored by the other type of consumer would be UNIQLO casualwear (owned by Fast Retailing). Also popular are the kinds of products sold at 100-yen shops such as those run by Daiso-sangyo. Digital watches, folding umbrellas and neckties can all be bought for \100. The market is thus split between the top and bottom ends, and products lying in the middle ground tend not to do very well.
   
   
9. Formerly, it was manufacturers who had the whip hand and could sell whatever they developed. It was, in other words, a time of " product out" . Now, however, the initiative is shifting to the consumer, and manufacturers have to gauge consumers�f needs and develop products that closely match those needs. Now is thus more a time of " market in" . What we have seen, then, is a move from mass production and mass consumption to production and consumption of a wider variety of products produced in smaller quantities.
   
   
10. Japanese have in recent years grown to value time rather than physical things. They prefer products and ways of shopping that save time. Products of this ilk that are doing well include musenmai (" non-wash rice" that does not need to be washed before cooking) and packs containing the ingredients for a week of menus. McDonald�fs, meanwhile, is pondering a take-out service where customers can phone their orders in on the way, and have it ready by the time that they get there.
    
    
11. Never forget that Japan has four seasons, and that products should be made to suit these seasons. A certain Japanese company imported a ballpoint pen from a country in Asia where it is summer all year round. In Japan, however, the ink leaks in the summer and will not run in the winter, making it impossible to write. The company as a result received nothing but complaints. It is just one example of a product that works perfectly well in its country of origin, but is defective when exposed to the four seasons of Japan.
    
    
12. Japan still has a few import and tariff quotas that you should be aware of. In the case of products affected by import quotas, such as seaweed, leather shoes, ground fish meat and devil�fs tongue, companies are not allowed to import unless they have previously applied for an import quota by the government. In the case of tariff quotas, imports up to a certain amount are subject to a low tariff, which is then approximately doubled when this total is exceeded. Products affected by tariff quotas include adzuki beans, natural cheese and canned pineapple. Always keep in touch with your importer in Japan so that you do not suddenly find that your products can no longer be imported or are subject to hugely increased tariffs.

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