While a significant portion of the population in rural Japan is "offline" many are online. The young, the businesspeople, the homemakers. They all have sophisticated cellular phones. The term smartphone is new here, but the notion of a smart-phone is far from it.

Big cities have numerous "goo-lu-meh nabi's" or "goo-lu-meh lan-kings." (Gourmet Navigator, Gourmet Ranking.) They are most commonly services where restaurants and business pay a small fee to have a listing published in a directory. A few pictures of menu items, a menu, phone number and location. A QR bar-code is then provided to the establishments so that they may put it on flyers, signs and menus. Customers can "scan" the bar-code with their cell-phone's camera and instantly the phone jumps to a browser webpage with the establishment's listing. Alternatively - and often the most widely used method - the hungry customer navgates on their own to the main page of the "nabi" and searches according to keyword.

I launched Saikoweb.com April 2011 as a local alternative to the big cities nabi's. It it currently free for a simple template listing or a pay-for option with more customized design.