Summary:

Five years from now you would see many bilingual websites (English and Japanese) in Japan. The Tokyo Olympic is held in Japan, the year of 2020. We, Japanese, expect many, many overseas tourists coming from all over the world and have to prepare for welcoming. One of them is information in different languages. I hope Joomla would find a place to meet those needs.

Outline:

The year 2020 is Tokyo Olympic year in Japan. Many overseas tourists are coming. The Japanese government and Japanese business people are starting to prepare for that big event. Last year more than 13 million overseas tourists visited Japan and we expect this year, more than 20 million.

Japanese websites are mostly in Japanese. The bilingual or multilingual websites are not prominent. At least we believe Japanese and English bilingual web site is a must for informing things Japanese.

■ Is Joomla easy or difficult to build a bilingual web site in Japan?

I think it is up to who builds the site. Ideally the person should be Japanese and English bilinguist with Joomla site-building experiences. There are not many bilinguist like that, I assume.

At least, it is acceptable if they are capable of handling Japanese, English and Joomla well.

Recently I built Japanese and English bilingual website and some nice guy from joomlabamboo.com pointed out to me that I need a template for default main menu besides Japanese and English ones.

My initial thought is only two templates for each language required for the bilingual website. Nobody tells me so before and in any documentation.

■ Installation?

Joomla 3 makes an ordinary Joomla user much easier to install a bilingual or muti-lingual website. No one argues about it. Super easy!!

■ Menu, module, plugin and template setups?

I think many Joomla users are having some kind of hard time in setting up menu, module, plugin and template. Many users do not realize some adjustments required when they add new menu in module and template menu assignment.

These are the areas Joomla users finding some difficulties, bilingual and multilingual site in particular.

■　Meiryo font is the Japanese website standard!

Non-Japanese website designers do not know that Meiryo font looks excellent in Japanese website. For windows pc world Microsoft includes its font in Japanese windows operating system.

In Japan windows pc users are larger than Mac users, so Meiryo font is the Japanese website standard.

Joomla template developers do not offer Meiryo font option for their template framework. Please include Meiryo font option in your template framework when you update its feature.

7. Kawaii banner give-aways!

Japanese Manga or comic culture is spreading widely now and I am sure some of you may be interested in visiting 'Akihabara' to get firsthand experience on Japanese Kawaii culture.

The below banners are give-aways to let you feel Japanese 'Kawaii' culture. Please feel free to get copies.

Joomla Banners