UDX Insights
Entering Japan, explained from inside Japan
Most Japan-entry guidance is written from outside Japan, from translated sources. These are written by a digital marketing firm that runs Japanese-language marketing inside this market every day. Practical, opinionated, and free — no email required.
Market Entry
How to Enter the Japanese Market: The Sequence That Actually Matters
The five decisions — demand, compliance, channel, presence, proof — in the order a Japan-based team would take them, and what each costs you if taken out of order. Plus the four recurring failure patterns.
Read →Budgeting
What Entering Japan Actually Costs
A consolidated price view the industry mostly refuses to publish: research, localisation, retainers, entity setup, local hires. From USD 5,000 to test, to USD 1,000,000+ for a full first year — and why the order you spend in matters more than the total.
Read →Structure
Do You Need a Japanese Entity to Sell in Japan?
Usually not to start. Which specific things actually force one, the structures that let you defer it, and why incorporation is an expensive way to solve what is often a credibility problem.
Read →Channel
Distributor, Marketplace, or Direct? Choosing Your Japan Channel
Four routes compared on time, margin, data and reversibility — including the distributor trap, why it happens through arithmetic rather than bad faith, and what to negotiate before signing.
Read →Japanese Web
Do You Need a Japanese Landing Page? A Decision Guide
When a Japanese page is genuinely required, why an accurate translation still under-performs, and what a Japanese page must carry that an English one does not. Includes translation vs localisation vs transcreation.
Read →Consumers
Japanese Consumer Behaviour: Six Things Foreign Brands Get Wrong
Consistency over peak quality, unexplained price over price itself, verification over persuasion — six inherited assumptions corrected, each with the concrete change it implies.
Read →B2B
How Japanese B2B Buyers Actually Decide
The decision is built before you are involved and reached after you leave. How to read pace instead of enthusiasm, why risk of failure outweighs upside, and why your Japanese footprint is the qualification round.
Read →AI Visibility
Why AI Assistants Don’t Recommend Your Brand in Japanese
Five diagnosable reasons, a measurement method that is not guesswork, and the order of work that actually moves the number. With data from our survey of all 3,709 listed Japanese companies.
Read →3,709 Listed Japanese Companies: How Ready Is Japan for AI Search?
Our machine survey of every domain-resolved listed company in Japan. Only 4.5% have adopted llms.txt. Full methodology and industry breakdown, refreshed on a rolling basis.
Ready to move from reading to evidence?
The Japan Market-Fit Report (USD 4,900) answers whether your product will sell in Japan. Japan LP Sprint (USD 4,800) puts one Japanese page live in three weeks. Or just send us the question — written reply in one business day, free.
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