I have an inkling there is a mountain of advice in the discrepancies between Japan and New Zealand. What do I mean by discrepancies? Areas where the status quo, or the standard train of thought on ideas differ. Some greatly, some not so much.

An obvious example would be the TV. I never realised this until my wife commented on how many TV channels there are in NZ. Of course there are a lot, but that was when I realised, hey yeah, Japan does only have a few TV channels.

They do have cable here, but the only people I know who have it have it for sports (true story, I know the guy who made Japan's biggest cable company, called 'Sky perfecTV which the Japanese Call Sukapa スカパー). Most people are satisfied with the 5 or so channels, and that seems to be enough. I guess there just never was the demand, and people are more likely to go get a DVD, dvd stores are still very much alive here.

If I'm being honest, and cynical, it's all about the money. It's pretty obvious, but if you have control over what people watch, you have control over what advertisements they see. Traditional marketing based on mass is still big in Japan, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

This means it's hard to convince Japanese people that marketing for the masses is hard. It's all they've known. And it has to change if we're to attract the right people.