Delay in New Products

Because of technical glitches with our storefront provider, cafepress.com, we have been unable to release any new products all week. We have quite a few designs ready to offer, but have been unable to finish processing them. And we have more new ideas under development just waiting to proceed. This problem has left us stuck in a bottleneck or sorts. We are anxious to get back to releasing the cool products our customers have come to expect. Please remain patient as we try to resolve this computer Voodoo.

Hi-Tech Japanese Barcode

Hieroglyphics for the modern age. QR Codes are wildly popular in Japan. They are basically a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code), capable of holding quite a bit more data than a standard UPC code. Based on an internationally standardized system of encoding information, they can be read by visual scanners from many consumer products. These codes are quite common in Japan and are often seen on flyers and magazine ads. As their popularity continues to expand, so does the creativity of their use.

DoCoMo Mobile phone users can scan the code with their built-in camera and immediately have all the text decoded and entered automatically into their phone. Because this technology is so easy for the average person to use, it has developed into a pop culture craze. NOTE: Even the product design thumbnails are camera phone readable.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/787303

Popularity Comes With A Price

Here is are several combined entries that summarize how our day has gone:

12:30 am (Japan time) - Our server is shut off again, so many images from our web site are missing. It would seem that another popular tech web site in Japan posted another story about us.

http://www.slashdot.jp/
The traffic caused the same trouble as before (there were some 2,000 hits within 5 minutes). We are in the process of tracking down the offending PHP file, and may have to remove it completely to avoid more trouble. We are still at a loss for why a simple script that rotates small images would hog all the CPU time of a server. Our provider has not offered any suggestions, so all we can do is delete the file and wait for them to turn our site back on. Wish us luck, as we are in the middle of sorting this out...

2:30 am (Japan time) At around 8 pm, our site had only 10% of the traffic from the previous day. so we quit monitoring it and went on to other things. Sometime around 10 pm, the traffic began to spike again. There were 10,000 hits from 3,000 people in two hours. We did not catch the crisis until 12:30 am. In the two hours since, the traffic has remained paced the same.

Our provider will be turning our web site back on, so all our remotely hosted images should be returning soon. We decided to remove 2 of our php files in the sidebar. They were so useful, as the rotated new images every time a page was loaded. But clearly, we do not want to wake up a third time and find our web site shut down and account suspended.

So we are working on a graphic solution to fix this design gap, while monitoring the crazy traffic flow. From what we can tell, the links are spreading out into more bbs forums, where people are chatting about our products instead of just giving a link to check them out.

8:00 pm (Japan time) In the 20 hours since this second wave of traffic began, we have had nearly 80,000 hits from 26,000 unique visitors. That trashes Thursday's high of 31,320 hits from 9,628 visitors. Finally, one sale has been made - but not an inspiring ratio. We usually do far better in sales with 1/10th of 1% of this traffic burst.

At the moment, we just want to lick our wounds from being so popular.

Japanese Traffic Shuts Down Our Site

We woke up this morning to discover that one of our web sites had been shut down. This cut the links to many of our online store images, which we host remotely from our shop provider. Needless to say the situation sent us scrambling to find out what was going on.

Apparently, we had created quite a buzz in Japan.

Last month, a rotating National holiday fell on a date, so that when spoken in Japanese it sounded like the word for masturbation.

See previous thread: Japanese Masturbation Day

Because of the language idiosyncrasy, we thought it an interesting topic to do a design for. We focus our shop on all things Japanese and Chinese, after all.

We do not do a lot to promote our shop in Japan, even though we have an office there and do generate some sales. So this attention really caught us off guard.

It would seem a popular tech web site featured our masturbation design, and the hits went through the roof. Over 20,000 hits (yes, twenty thousand) from 7,000 users in less than 24 hours.

http://techside.net/news_log/newslog.html

We host some images on our own site server, because we use a php script to rotate them as featured products. Our Internet service provider in America actually had to shut down our web site to break the link, because their servers were nearing over-capacity from all the traffic. (Our server is back on, minus a disruptive php file).

The Japanese are amused that an American web store would sell wacky items with a Japanese theme (as if the Japanese don't have enough wacky items they make and sell to themselves). We realized the design would be limited to individuals with a hard-core like for all things Japanese. But we never expected the Japanese themselves to pick-up on it like they did.

This increased traffic for us has only translated (pardon the pun) into a great deal of disruption in our workload. Of course, if "hits" were dollars we could all retire after a couple days. No such luck yet.

A Worthy Pet Charity

We donated a couple original designs to a unique spay/neuter project based in Memphis, TN. The charity is trying to raise funds to fix pets in low income households, by selling wearable artwork. Please show your support to their valuable cause by buying something, even if it is not our design (which they took the liberty of altering a bit anyway).

http://www.cafepress.com/spaymemphis

Spotlight Feature From Last Month

Our month in the sun as the shopkeeper spotlight with CafePress.com is now over. If you wish to view our interview, you can still visit the original page and follow the "past spotlights" link. Otherwise, you can follow this direct link:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/community/spotlight_songli

Non-Kanji "Engrish"

Americans love Kanji, the Japanese love Engrish. Confound your friends with Japanese ENGRISH. In Japanese, the "L" and "R" are interchangeable, which makes for some interesting and wacky translations into English. Our "Engrish" designs are all authentic translations from Japan. The bad grammar and misspellings are taken directly from actual Japanese public signs, or non-trademarked custom issued t-shirt designs. Just like Americans like to wear Japanese Kanji, the Japanese love to wear English t-shirts. These odd translations are often very humors to English speakers, but are hip and make perfect sense to the Japanese.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/778394

Cosplay

Cosplay is a Japanese contraction of the English words "costume" and "play." It is a fan-based subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, and video games. Conventions are often held to judge the best most realistic costumes.

Purple
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/764509

Red
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/764505

Blue
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/764374

Zero

Zero in Japanese is spoken "Rei." It is a number, it is a name, and it is a popular horror video game title. Enjoy this design with its multiple meanings.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/764132

unWrestling

No such team exists, because no such University in Japan exists. But if they did, the U.N. abbreviation would make all things "un" in nature. Show your unSupport.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/764052

The U.N.

Not a real university, but a great design for any student involved in the study of Japan. U.N. or "un" is the cool abbreviation for the University of Nippon.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/764063

Affiliate Banners

Linking to our web site is even easier with these web banners. The standards for web banners evolved from guidelines several market leaders worked out in early days of the internet. Of course, many sites define their own standards to fit their own format, but we have produced this collection to correspond with the sizes favored by most advertisers. We have provided this collection in an effort to fit the requirments of our affiliate members. You may download these graphics (right click and "save to disk") we created for use as a link to our shop. The size of ad units is defined in pixel - width x height. If you would like a banner custom designed or specially sized for your web site, please contact us directly. Of course, you are welcome to use a simple html link to forward traffic as well. Thanks for your interest and linking to our shop.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/758584

Spaceman

Japanese TV in the 1960s had many giant robots and alien heros. Being an "Supeesu" man was a popular playtime activity, inspired from one of these imported shows. Live those youthful days again with this Katakana version of the "Spaceman" identity.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/762337

Now Loading . . .

Anyone who loves playing video games knows about the "please wait, game loading" screen. Perhaps it is only a few seconds, but it seems like a million years. This design is based on a popular Japanese game theme.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/762442

Agent Rei Rei Nana

If Britain's most famous spy had been born in Japan, he would be internationally known as "Agent Rei Rei Nana," after the pronunciation of the number characters using Kanji ("zero zero sebun").

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/762541

Shanghai Night (Music CD)

This music collection is published with permission. Zhou Xuan became known as "The Golden Voice" and was a popular singing star in the late 1930s and 1940s. "Golden Voice" was Zhou's nickname to commend her singing talents after a competition for the most popular singers in Shanghai, where she came in second. Zhou rapidly became the most famous and marketable popular singer in the gramophone era up to her early death after the war.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.27814917

Japanese Family Emblem

A Kamon, or "mon" is the Japanese family crest. These historic symbols are what samurai war, to show who their lord was.

Kamon of the Shogun
A paulownia flower is taken from Shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/750316
Kamon of the Samurai
The pine tree is the mon emblem of a historic Japanese family, Matsu.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/750314
Kamon of the Emperor
The chrysanthemum (kiku) is the mon of the Japanese Emperor.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/750311

Eat In Chinese Take Out

A Recipe Book by Shu Chusi. American Chinese cuisine is a unique style of cooking served by Chinese restaurants in the United States. While it is not authentic, it was created to satisfy Western tastes.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.27733352

Historic Japanese Battles

The Sengoku Period or "warring-states" period, is a period of long civil war in the history of Japan that spans from the middle 15th to the early 17th centuries.

The Battle of Nagashino on June 28, 1575 took place at Nagashino Castle in the Mikawa of Japan, considered the first "modern" Japanese battle. Takeda's cavalry charge represented the old, traditional, means of warfare, invented by his father, Takeda Shingen, less than a generation earlier. Others had used firearms previously, but Oda Nobunaga was the first to conceive of the wooden stockades and rotating volleys of fire which led to a decisive victory at Nagashino. The famous Takeda clan, once a hopeful candidate to rule Japan, was effectively annihilated.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/749344

The Battle of Sekigahara was a decisive battle on September 15, 1600 that cleared the path to the Shogunate for Tokugawa Ieyasu. Though it would take three more years for Tokugawa to consolidate his position of power over the Toyotomi clan and the daimyo, Sekigahara is widely considered to be the unofficial beginning of the Tokugawa bakufu, the last shogunate to control Japan.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/749348

The Battles of Kawanakajima were fought between Takeda Shingen of Kai province and Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo province in the plain of Kawanakajima, in the north of Shinano Province, very near the modern-day city of Nagano.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/749342

New For 2006

After August 4th we will have our new line of 2006 Calendars available for sale. In addition to updates of our popular collections from last year, several new series have been added. Follow these links to view the latest designs.

2006 "China Doll" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.18351577
2006 "Historic Manchuria" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.20094893

2006 "Vintage Dairen" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.20221824

2006 "Xuemei Fashion Model" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.20489073

2006 "Dalian: Now & Then" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.20532306
2006 "Everyday Asia" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.27534680
2006 "Yuki TV Host" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.27535449

2006 "Japan Spring" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.27535482

2006 "Chinese Zodiac" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.27535840

2006 "Everyday Dalian" Wall Calendar
http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation.13489755

Chinese Take-Out

Don't worry, you'll still be hungry a half hour later. Chinese take-out food is a part of American culture and diet. What student or corporate suit hasn't worked late, fueled by this cuisine? Proclaim your loyalty to this simple, yet vital nutritional resource.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/744911

Kanji French Fries

"Would you like Kanji with your French Fries?" In the language business, many companies serve up translations like they would a greasy order of fast food fries. Language students face a similar challenge, being forced to learn more Kanji in one year that Asian learn in 7 years of elementary school. This sarcastic design, with its dual meaning, is perfect for either perspective.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/744898

No Spitting

No kidding, it is a bad Chinese habit. Even though China has an ancient culture, good hygiene is only a modern concept. In 2003, SARS helped change the bad habit of spitting in public places, but it is common to see such signs forbidding the action, as well as the continued act of spitting itself.

http://www.cafepress.com/hantranslation/744916