Hello from Asuka, a beautiful village in the Japanese countryside about an hour from Nara. If you’ve never heard of Nara, well, Nara is an hour from Osaka which you have probably heard of! The photo above I took during one of my early morning walks.
Anytime I visit another country I can’t help but pay attention to domain names; of course I’ve only been in Japan for a week so take all these observations with a grain of salt. I’ve gone from a larger city like Osaka, to a smaller city like Nara, to a tiny village like Asuka. Here’s a few things I’ve observed when it comes to domains:
- .JP or a variant like .CO.JP or .OR.JP seems to be the most common domain extension in Japan. This isn’t wildly surprising as there are many countries where the local ccTLD is the most popular.
- I haven’t seen any IDNs yet so while most signs use Japanese characters (hiragana, katakana, and kanji), the domain names use the standard English alphabet.
- Somehow I haven’t seen a single .COM domain yet but I did manage to spot a .NET and took a photo of it as proof that there was more than just .JP domains here!
Below are some photos I’ve taken of domains along the journey:
Now all this being said, I imagine that I have a number of readers who either live in Japan or who have spent a lot more time in Japan than I have. So I’m very interested to hear from those who know a lot more than me if my observations are right at all?
As usual – I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!
