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While Asian countries are often accused of taking jobs from the West, the President of South Korea's Hyundai Motors visited factories in Russia and the Czech Republic. He said he was impressed by the quality of workers who were far superior to South Korean workers -- they never staged strikes and had far lower wages. While a South Korean factory takes 30 hours to make a car, the Czech factory takes 16. The visiting Korean managers could not keep up with the pace of production, so they received help from local secretaries in their 20's to fill their checklists. South Korean industry has been crippled by constant labor strikes demanding ever more wages and shorter working hours.

Do students who score high on achievement tests demand higher wages, cushy jobs, and become less internationally competitive?

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20131203-00000030-xinhua-cn
http://japanese.joins.com/article/999/178999.html?servcode=300&sectcode=300

Yahoo! Japan (and its fellow Softbank) is incredibly popular in Japan, and plays a top role re Internet: ISP, search, mail, cell phones (SB)...
Question is "why?" Why Yahoo! (mail, search, ...) are still that popular? Why the Japanese didn't follow the Google trend (as much as the Western countries) during the mid 2000, where Yahoo! had (and still has) those very busy pages and (for a long time) the search was of a much lower quality compared to Google, having a lot of results being sponsored by 3rd parties displayed on top without further indications about that sponsoring.
There is a technical answer: most PCs come with Yahoo! stuff, the search is set to Y! and nobody changes that. The thing is, compared to the West, the Japanese do not have that "pursuit of genuineness" reaction - they trust what is popular and Y! is very popular...
Furthermore, there is no strong consumer association in Japan, and abuses (in any field) may remain undisclosed for a long time (yes, there is a connection between Y! and abuses).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan
http://www.yahoo.co.jp/

Yahoo is actually really big over there. eBay exists, but may as well not: Yahoo! Auctions is overwhelmingly dominant in online auctions. Yahoo! Shopping takes the role of Amazon.com. (Amazon itself has a presence also, and it isn't too shabby.) And Yahoo! Japan is also a broadband provider with a lot of mindshare.

They've diversified. Wisely so.

Err, I posed as AC a second ago, and forgot to post the link :) Anyways, all Japanese people I know use this site to route (mostly between train stations?), but it gives you all things including normal buses, high speed buses, shinkansen, walking, water ferries, etc. I don't know if they have an english version though... http://transit.loco.yahoo.co.jp/

I actually read the story on Yahoo! News Japan, but I didn't figure anyone else could read Japanese, so I just googled up a similar story in English and used that. The one I read was new though. Their story has since been removed though, so I don't know what to think.

http://mora.jp/artist/80307744/80006846/?cpid=sony.co.jp

This example has a design no more complicated than an English website serving similar purpose (in this case, music retail). It mere appears to be more cluttered because the Japanese writing system is more complex.

A similar observation can be made with regards to Chinese, which is even more compact than Japanese due to the lack of a phonetic alphabet. Take a look at Yahoo:
http://www.yahoo.com/
http://www.yahoo.com.cn/
http://www.yahoo.co.jp/

The hanzi/kanji writing system simply does not lend itself to minimalistic designs in the same way that can be achieved by the Roman alphabet. This is partially why many modern brands in Japan make liberal use of English in their designs and typesets.

That said, it is also true that Chinese and Japanese web designers appear to follow a set of standards rather different from the Web 2.0 design philosophies. Many of them still like to use <TABLE> to format their layouts.

http://geocities.yahoo.co.jp/ For some odd reason, Japanese Geocities sites are still up and running. I think it might have something to do with the Harajuku generation...

We've had LED signals here in Osaka for 5+ years how and they work very well. Here are some links (in Japanese) with photos showing what they look like:

Red Light, Green Arrow

Pedestrian Crossing

Green, Amber, Red (the amber is actually brighter than it seems in this photo)

I haven't experienced any problems with them and I drive daily here. There is no noticeable flicker and they are a lot brighter than the traditional signals they replaced.

for those interested. The Godzilla statue is located in Hibiya, Tokyo. Directly infront of the original Toho theater. Now known as the Toho Hibiya Building. (the orange building under the cross. The indicator is the location of the statue)
http://map.yahoo.co.jp/pl?type=scroll&lat=35.67029086&lon=139.76332388&sc=2&mode=map&pointer=on

Yahoo is ANYTHING but sinking. Yahoo.com is still the number one most visited site on the web (check alexa). Now, Google happens to be number two, followed by youtube. Who in their right mind wouldn't want the top three websites? I'D shell out $45B if I had it.

The reason why Yahoo! has managed to keep its top Alexa position despite clearly lagging behind Google is because it redirects regional pages to subdomains. For example, Yahoo! Singapore) redirects to sg.yahoo.com. To Alexa, this counts as a part of yahoo.com and the visit is attributed accordingly, the exception being yahoo.co.jp, which has its own domain probably because Japan is one of the few regions where Yahoo! is outperforming Google.

Google on the other hand, has separate domains for all its regional versions. Take a look at Alexa's top 100 list: a good 21 out of 100, or one fifth, of them are really just Google in different languages, and we are not even counting subsidiaries like YouTube yet. I'd say that Google has long surpassed Yahoo! as the most trafficked website on the net. Yahoo! is just barely holding on to its top Alexa ranking even despite this discrepancy in the tabulation.

Yahoo is also an ISP in Japan with a rather large penetration.

My point exactly -- the image you posted is 11 times bigger than, say, the one on yahoo.co.jp (scroll down for it), and it contains less data (shorter URL). And a 2-inch square is quite a big chunk of a business card or brochure, so my point remains that some of the earlier comments in this thread about putting 7K of data on a reasonably small QR code are rather overly "optimistic" unless the macro focus issue is taken into account.

Interesting that your device has macro focus. I wonder what percentage of devices in North America have that feature nowadays?

If you go take a look at auctions.yahoo.co.jp right now and search for PS3, you'll find lots of auctions being bid up to astronomical amounts. Millions, hundreds of millions, even billions of yen. There are some threads on 2channel (this monster BBS where loonies get together and plot mayhem) filled with people urging each other to set up new yahoo.co.jp accounts in order to go ruin the bidding on the PS3 units.

The seller has the ability to delete or ignore these obviously false bids, apparently, but it's an interesting reaction from people who aren't too happy with the whole "free market, charge what it will bear" approach shown by the flippers who buy these things in bulk through their homeless minions and turn right around around to make some yen off of the things.

1. Pay homeless man $200 to buy you a $600 video game console.
2. Sell console on Yahoo Auctions for $100M
3. Profit!

http://page7.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g5053 3791 This 60GB one's going for ~10 billion yen, or approximately $100M.

I don't disagree, I think the 360 is dead in Japan, but... I recently saw these polls:

http://quizzes.yahoo.co.jp/quizresults.php?poll_id =3482&wv=1
http://japan.cnet.com/game/sp/story/0,2000079540,2 0243887,00.htm?tag=poll.votl

Basic translation on the Yahoo one:

"With PS3 and Wii, where better and better picture quality can be seen, which one will you buy by the end of the year?" (Cooperation with Famitsu Editorial Staff)

Buy both: 3% (1,227 votes)
Buy Wii: 15% (6,893 votes)
Buy PS3: 16% (7,608 votes)
Buy neither and buy Xbox 360: 55% (26,474 votes)
Still looking at the options (IE., unsure): 13% (6,201 votes)"

Doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me.

What store?

Dunno. I haven't been in Japan for a while, and maybe not too many carry it because it costs over a thousand bucks. But if you want to buy one, you can buy one here , so I think it's pretty obvious it was on retail shelves at some point...

I'd be really interested to see a link to any evidence of this. Most Japanese who don't read much old literature don't even know how to write the hiragana for "wi," I don't someone would be crazy enough to name their kid something that starts with a sound no longer used.

Well, a recent example would be Katoh (W)Ikuko, the nutritionist / author. (OK, she is super old, so maybe not the most "recent" example...) There is no legal problem using the classical "wi" hiragana (or katakana for that matter) in a Japanese name. (See here for an explanation of the law, in Japanese.) However, it would still be pronounced "i". It could be romanized as "Wi", though, and might even appear in the passport written that way. For example, "Kaoru" is classically written with the "wo" kana (now mostly used as an object marker and pronounced "o"), and in some cases, the name is legally romanized as "Kaworu".

I don't think anyone would name their kid "Iku" or "Ikuyo", but a number of other combinations are reasonable. Legally, you can assign any kana pronunciation you want to your kid's kanji, it will just make life difficult for them. Even English katakana readings are sometimes assigned to kanji, such as the boy's name "Raito" (Light) being written with the kanji for light (hikaru). If it's legally possible, someone will do it.

And yes, no question about it, Nintendo is not using the classic "wi" character in their name. That would be an interesting anachronism though!

If by Google you mean Yahoo!, then no, there's nothing Google can't do.

(English guide to aforementioned service)

Another thing that's knid of surprising, Excite is still a very popular search engine in Japan. A surprising number of people here who have never even heard of google use it every day.

Yahoo Japan and goo provide far better searching of Japanese sites than Google. As someone used to using nothing but google for English and French language searches, I find it pretty shocking just how bad google's Japanese results are.

Yahoo BB, too, if you're in Japan. The service you want is BBPhone.

They already have this!
http://bbpromo.yahoo.co.jp/promotion/adsl/regular/ index.html

I think it equates to around $40/month for the 50mbps connection. Doubt we'll ever get that good of a deal here.

Google news Japan kanji for volcano search ... better pictures!

Yahoo news for Japan with the kanji search ... some with video. ;-)

appologies for the self reply.

Much faster than... pressing F12? Sorry, grabbing the weather and using world clock to find out what time it is back home on the other side of the planet are two things I do *every morning*. Under 10.3, it took 30 seconds from opening the laptop, to switching to the browser, and hitting the bookmark for the Tokyo wather page at Yahoo Japan. With dashboard it's more like 5 seconds. A few seconds doesn't seem like much, but the small convenience of having to hit one button as I'm rushing out the door in the morning and need to know whether I'll need an umbrella today or not is enough to justify it to me.

If you can read Japanese, you might wanto check out places like Yahoo Auctions:

http://search3.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/search/auc? p=SL-6000&auccat=23336 ...where, as I type this, there are two SL-6000s available for about US$600, with no bids. Don't be put off by the "will not ship internationally" bit; that's the default setting on Yahoo! Japan auctions, so some sellers don't realize it. Ask politely (in Japanese if you can) and they'll send you the goods.

Yahoo! BB

Yahoo BB here in Japan offers ADSL in a variety of flavours from 8Mbps (¥3000-ish/mo) on the slow side to 50Mbps (¥4000-ish/mo) on the fast side, which is great for using sites within the country, but for outside of Japan connection overseas is the limiting factor, so you really don't get 50. You do have bandwidth galore for downloads though.

*hugs his 50 meg DSL* Ahhhh, 50 mbps down, 3 mbps up. I think that YahooBB would make a killing in other parts of the world. And better yet, I only pay 4000 yen for the connection (about 38-40 US $). On the other hand, it is basically just a giant LAN here in Japan.

...Nakamura held a press conference (Yahoo Japan link) after the settlement was reached, where he said he considered the result to be a "total loss", described the Japanese legal system as "rotten", and urged researchers in technical fields to move to the US (he currently works at the University of California).

Meanwhile, the CEO of Nichia held a separate press conference where he announced that real researchers do it for the joy of technical achievement, and not for mere monetary compensation. What an asshole...

Possible withdrawal from plasma market by Sony

"It was discovered on the 20th that Sony is considering reducing the scale of its plasma TV manufacturing and sales business. There is also the possibility that it will withdraw entirely from the market next year. Currently Sony manufactures and sells plasma, LCD and rear-projection types of slim TVs, but with the continued increase in size of LCD screens, it is looking at concentrating its business resources on LCD and rear-projection units, thereby increasing its competitiveness in the market.
Slim TVs had, until recently, been divided along clear lines, with LCDs being used for medium and smaller screens, plasma for larger screens, and rear-projection used for the largest sizes. However, advances in LCD technology now allow mass production of screens of up to 40 inches in size.
In addition, with a Sony/Samsung LCD factory coming on line next year, it appears that Sony have decided it is more profitable to produce their own LCD screens rather than obtain plasma screens from other manufacturers.
Sony's main plasma screen factory in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, will reduce its production of plasma screens over time, and increase production of LCD and rear-projection screens."

It would be nice if those computers you have there have access to the internet. There are tons of free resources to supplement language learning.

Here are what internet can provide:

• Online dictionaries
  I recommend the following English Japanese dictionaries:
  Jeffry's Japanese English Dictionary
  SPACE ALC
  Yahoo! Jishou (Yahoo! Dictionary)
• Tutorials online
  I recommend the following website:
  Nihongo Resources
  
• Online news sites
  Since these students are learning Japanese, chances are they don't know enough Chinese characters (2000+ of them) (and grammar) to read your average Japanese newspaper. I suggest news sites written for children:
  Kodomo Asahi (Children's Asahi)

Oh, MSN started blog service, wait a minuts. thay start beta Aug. this year in japan MSN Japan and the English version is still in beta?
At lease I have not seen BETA in Japanese version.
I've heard that Yahoo BB will start their blog service next year and it WILL be more powerful than MSN's.

There will be an Earthquake in Japan sometime in the next ten years!

Well, there was an intensity 5 earthquake here in Tokyo yesterday night. I was doing some work at the computer at the time, when the ground started shaking slightly as if there was a very big truck passing by. A few seconds later the big tremor began. It was shaking for like 20-30 seconds before starting fading slowly. It even woke my wife up.

This site has real-time information about earthquakes in Japan as they take place (site is in Japanese). Clicking on the left arrow in the top right corner you can see information about past earthquakes (at the moment of writing this, there has been another slight tremor in northern Japan).

Looks like at least six people were killed on yesterday's big one (site in Japanese too).

That's almost exactly what the movie suggests: that we are a message and we can pass the same message onward. Won't say too much lest I ruin the movie for yall though, as much as I realize it has but a small chance of ever making it to the states. (wonders about the prospects of Cutie Honey in the same vein.)

Point in case: MTF (Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi). In Tokyo those shares can be bought for roughly 1M Yen (about US$8000). See here That's the price for one share. Makes you think twice about getting those.

I'll say. I'm working near Tokyo getting 12 mb/s downstream and 1 mb/s upstream for less than my cousin's 512 kb/s line.

I understand there are factors that affect the different markets, but that just seems to be ridiculous. For example, compare YahooBB Japan and YahooBB USA .

You can read the news in English here.

Winny developer to arrest the Kyoto headquarters of police, 30 generation Tokyo University assistant domestic beginnings

Assuming that file sharing software "Winny" of the personal computer which exchanges the data of the popularity movie and hit tune etc. () by the fact that it develops, the illegal copy of the movie and music was made easy the Kyoto headquarters of police high-tech crime measure room and five provision stations, in doubt of the Copyright Act violation one help, requested option accompanying from Tokyo large assistant of 30 generations of the Tokyo residence even in 10th morning, set the policy of arresting. As for , being free on Internet, the program software which is open. As for questioning the software developer to "the one help" of the Copyright Act violation the domestic beginning. Stand case in the criminal incident of the joint ownership software developer almost there is no example even in the foreign country.

When the infringement of copyright which worldwide used the file sharing software has swaggered although you feel concern the administration of justice judgement even internationally for the illegal characteristic of the file sharing software has divided, it may call discussion centering on propriety.

That the file sharing software where with investigation of prefecture police/policing, as for Tokyo University assistant, anonymous characteristic is higher than past, is difficult to be exposed by the police opening will be sent plan. The major bulletin board of Internet with "2 don't you think? as development program is announced the ", 2002 May, it released the software of to itself home page. Using , as for Tokyo University assistant with no permission, the doubt which makes exchanging the data which infringes the copyright of the movie and the game etc. easy has in the literary work authority e.g., the salesman of Gunma prefecture (41) the inside = and others of the trial releases the data of the popularity movie to the many and unspecified persons person illegal with crime of = Copyright Act violation.

In addition, as for prefecture police/policing the policy of starting the forcing investigation of several places such as Tokyo University graduate school information science and engineering type postgraduate course even on the 10th.

Tokyo University assistant is special information processing engineering. It is called "47 people" with the net bulletin board, "the file sharing software which gradually can actualize anonymous characteristic appears and does not change the concept regarding present copyright the expectation which is stopped obtaining. It probably is about to try boosting the flow by your?", and so on with, development intention of had been explained.

* Infringement of copyright, the judgement which cracks internationally

The kitchen knife also and, can also be able cut the vegetable damage the person. Those where you accuse of a crime to the person are just the execution doer who kills and wounds. The handgun the person other than killing and wounding, in Japan the possession and production is prohibited with purpose. The Kyoto headquarters of police this time, the developer of the communication software, as for with "one help" of the Copyright Act violation it finishes stepping on in stand case, in the same software net society, it is equal to the development "of the handgun", that you probably can say that it judged.

As for , as for the data which is exchanged the necessity for the user to register to the provider without, it is entirely encoded. As for the prefecture police/policing high-tech investigation room, Tokyo large assistant who was developed the major bulletin board of Internet to "2 don't you think? from the speech

THE GNAA jacks off to lemon party!

As somebody else said, Konami does make a home version of Para Para Paradise.

http://www.konamijpn.com/products/parapara/index.h tml

Unfortunately, the Para Para fad died out in Japan around the same time the home game came out, so only one home game was made. Because of the extremely low difficulty level, and the inability to edit your own "steps", it gets boring quickly.

The game uses a very unique controller! It is a set of 5 infrared sensors that are placed in a semicicle on the ground, and they detect your hand movements by noticing when your hands pass over them. In this way, the game notices when you extend your arms in various directions.

Because only one home game was released, there was little demand for the controllers. Konami actually overproduced the controllers! They can be found for as little as 500 yen (roughly $5)!

http://search.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/search?sb=desc& desc=%a5%d1%a5%e9%a5%d1%a5%e9+%a5%d1%a5%e9%a5%c0%a 5%a4%a5%b9&acc=jp&&f=0x12&at=true&alocale= 0jp
(Good luck with this URL, Slashdot may mangle it)

Unfortunately, shipping to the US is a killer, as you must go through third-party services since Japanese typically pay through internal bank transfers (an option unavailable to those outside Japan). A very good service that I would recommend is Rinkya.

http://www.rinkya.com/

I have PPP and two controllers. Despite its problems, PPP is still a very good game. The background graphics are incredible and hypnotic, and all of the songs are good (if you like Eurobeat and J-Pop). The actual game disc itself is harder to find than the controllers. If you can find it, get it!

BTW, the controller is a standard USB device, and it will show up properly. However, the sensors will not register, as evidently it has some kind of lockout! If I had access to a USB bus sniffer, I would try to see what it is that prevents the controllers from working. If somebody were to reverse-engineer it, it would be great, because there would be all kinds of fun applications for these controllers!

I really dread the thought of moving home to Canada one day when I read these kinds of things. Here in Tokyo, Japan I have ADSL to my home. It is 8MBdown/1MBup. I am about to upgrade to 45MBdown/3MBup for oh, about $35-40/month. It also has IP phone services with it so I can call overseas to the US/Canada for EXTREMELY low rates. 100MB FTTH is also quite common in most areas and many apartment complexes come with it standard with the apartment/home. There are no qualms about download caps or bandwidth caps here. Japan (and Korea no doubt) is internet heaven. I understand the nature of it though, both Japan and Korea are smaller countries and thus much easier to wire than say North America. Also, is the fact that North America's infrastructure is quite archaic compared to Japan's all digital switching. This allows for much more bandwidth to be handled by the internet infrastructure here. North America, however, really better get on the bandwagon FAST as they are really falling behind.

Yahoo! Japan's giving out 26MBit/sec ADSL with Wireless LAN package, with an initial first-3-months waiver... how cool is that... oops... have to wipe drool from my keyboard now... :) BuDn3kkID

The Yahoo! broadband guys have already got 26 Mbit pipes for sale for about $34 a month, with the first 3 months free! And they have that same IP-phone deal too that Softbank does as well. It's most likely a rebadging of the same service...

Yahoooooo!

There's a price chart at the bottom. The higher price includes a wireless LAN kit.

Good thing I studied Japanese back in school....!

As you can see, you basically need to live next door to your local NTT station in order to get 12Mb/s. Living 2km away (not unlikely, even in allegedly densely packed Tokyo) gives you maybe half that. Even the new 26Mb/s service doesn't give you 12Mb/s at 2km.

If you can sort out the confusion babelfish will spew at you, point it to this YahooBB Japan DSL price chart. It's not as cheap as the service mentioned in the article, but it is 26Mbit for ~US$41/month (assuming 116yen/US$).

For more clarification of the babelfish machine-translation artifacts, here's a decent translation, but that's from me, so I dunno if you'll trust it -- you know how much I like to make people feel bandwidth envy.

While I'm here, I'll share some choice funny Engrish from the babelfish translation:

As for proposal simplicity! Now we can propose immediately * * Make wait it does not do to utilization! * * Proposal day July 16 day Construction completion due date July 25 day. After the completing the construction, connecting the modem which reaches, the Yahoo! Start of BB utilization! As for details this way.

As for proposal? Telephone number is inputted from correspondence area check just!

As for construction? Because it is construction of NTT inside, being at home there is no necessity!

As for setting? Because video and the CD-ROM help, you feel at rest even alone!

Not just some strange new title with weird new characters shaped like blocks with arms...it's first itteration was as a Japanese cartoon. The franchise eventually found it's way stateside as a board/dice game with collectible pieces. The game is rather fun to play, especially with friends and playing for keeps (keeping the monsters you capture), but I don't know much about the series itself, as I have yet to see even a fan-subbed episode of it available anywhere. Seems like the RHPS logo rip-off has been around since it's inception, though, so that's not likely to change (barring, of course, some sort of injunction from those who hold the appropriate rights over RHPS and it's associated logos ant TMs). Just an FYI for anyone wanting to know more about this new offering from Capcom (and the screens I've seen online and in gamer mags do, in fact, look great...so their at least not just cookie cuttering for this title;)).

Broadband via cable TV is available, but cable modems are a fairly new thing over there and many apartments don't have the cable lines anyway. (Take a look at any apartment building in Japan and you'll see dozens of those mini satellite dishes perched on the balconies.) However, if you want cable TV and broadband Internet, you can get a pretty good deal by combining the two -- about 80 USD/month. You might need a local friend to help you, though, because most cable providers don't have English-speaking customer service.

If you just want the Internet access, a better option is ADSL, which has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years. Before ordering, you first need to decide whether you want land-line (as opposed to cellular) phone service. If you want a land line, get ADSL Type I, which includes phone service and Internet access. If you plan to get a cell phone in Japan, choose ADSL Type II, which provides Internet access only, but for a lower price.

The cheapest ADSL service is probably Yahoo! Japan BB, but they don't provide any English support, not even for sales. You're better off going with a company that has a dedicated English-speaking support line such as Global OnLine or eAccess. Unfortunately, these providers usually serve only the larger metropolitan areas, so if you're in a suburb or a smaller town, your only choice might be good old NTT. All you have to do is call the English-speaking sales line for NTT (the number depends on whether you live in the east or in the west) and tell them you want ADSL Type II. They'll be happy to hook you up for about 25 USD/month, and you can rent an ADSL modem from them for another 5 USD/month. Important tip: NTT will send you a CD-ROM containing PPPoE drivers that only work with the Japanese version of Windows, so you should download the freeware program RASPPPOE before you go and bring it along with you. It's compatible with NTT's ADSL modems.

There's another catch: Because NTT only provides the physical ADSL connection, you'll need to find an ISP that supports ADSL. I got mine through OCN for about 20 USD/month. They offer sales and support in English.

The Macintosh has about the same percentage of market share in Japan as in the U.S. (in other words, not much), so you can expect the same level of support and availability over there that you'll find here. I expect it's entirely possible to hook up your Mac to a Japanese ADSL modem, but don't expect much technical support if things go wrong. (I had no trouble connecting through my Linux laptop once I got the Roaring Penguin configuration set up right.) As for 802.11b, coverage is almost non-existent, although just about everyone over there does email wirelessly through their cell phone. Text messaging and services like DoCoMo are far more popular than the Internet in Japan, at least for now.

You should visit the ISP Japan FAQ for more details. You might also want to check out my Japan page for tips on living and working in Japan.

Here's a link to a photo from the Japanese announcement.

Maybe there's some of you that can read japanese and give the rest of us some update, but YahooJP and many other japan telecoms are offering 12mbit DSL service. See: Yahoo!BB Japan

Wouldn't this mean it's waaaaay faster than a standard T1? Why don't they offer this kind of consumer service stateside?