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Last week they started registering Japanese-language domain names. I heard that there was quite a bit of chaos all over Japan. Webmasters were trying to make sure that they weren't preempted by an enterprising cybersquatter. It was nearly impossible to log onto the registration sites. The Japanese courts are interminably slow and will probably be tied up for years dealing with claims from larger companies trying to retrieve the rights to some Kanji name that in one or more permutations could sound like their own name.
It's particularly scary that no one really knows what is going on here and companies with web sites are worried about whether they need to register now (some news reports say that this is only a test period) or wait until everything becomes official from the beginning of next year. Whoever is in charge of setting up Japanese name registration in Japan is doing a pathetic job of publicizing and organizing the process. And if it is just a test so far, why are the participating ISPs collecting fees already?
InterQ Inc., one of two authorized ISPs registering Japanese-language domain names so far, has said that by Nov. 13, three days after the program began, it had accepted registrations for more than 10,000 Japanese and Kanji character domain names. InterQ's service is called onamae.com and charges 3,600 Yen per year (US $33). (Source: [url=www.interq.ad.jp/ir/en/release/20001113_en.html]interQ[/url], Nov 14, 2000)
Many people are crying foul and taking their issues to court. Japanese courts are notorious for being incredibly slow (those people they caught for the Tokyo nerve-gas attack in April 1995 are STILL on trial), so Japan may have this whole thing straightened out around the same time the US Presidential election is cleared up...;) However, to be fair there are only about 17,000 lawyers in Japan, one for every 7,000 people, compared with one for every 400 in the US. This is a notably non-litigious society, but recently that is changing and more and more people are bringing their cases to a court system that is unprepared to process them quickly.
