My experience of creating a website for a small business in Japan

I am currently studying at Yokohama National University in a international program. In the beginning of my second semester, the batch which I belong was asked to do a project during the semester. In the end of the semester, all the students must do a presentation about  the website, the business and the experience of the project. 

So, fortunately I am one of the few out of my batch that knows how to speak Japanese, which is key for doing the project. In addition, I also have lived in Japan for almost two years, whereas my classmates did not have such experience in Japan or even overseas. These are amongst the reasons I smoothly completed the project in comparison to the other students. 

My project is based on a club-bar business located in Kanagawa prefecture, Yamato city. I chose this business since the rest of my classmates were doing restaurants or coffeeshops. In my opinion, this type of businesses are a little bit traditional and not interesting on night life, which I love to spend my money and time on the most in my spear time. 

This business is called Club Orion and have been in the night life business since 30 years ago and the current owner has been working their since 2010. The theme of this club is a place where people can meet and talk while they drink preferably alcoholic drinks in order to have a more relaxed and fun environment. The capacity of the facility is more than 30 people and has karaoke service available for the costumers. In addition, they also serve food and several types of coctel.

The costumers that come more often are the workers that live around the Yamato area. There is not an average age amongst the costumers, although there are allowed people with 19 years old or younger. One of the characteristics of this business is that the staff from the club are friendly and available for conversations and take some drinks with the costumers.

In order to get all the information about the shop and pictures for designing the website, I went and talk to the owner of the business several times. During these meetings, I realized that for Japanese business people is very important to explain each detail and make sure that all the topics in discussion have reach an agreement point. 

Finally, after getting all the information and pictures that I needed, I started to make the website through the notes app in my pc and picking up free templates of websites from internet. I designed 3 templates, showed to the owner and we reached a conclusion of picking up one of the websites from my templates.

This experience has allowed me to have a direct interaction with community members of Yokohama and understand better their way of thinking. As well as, their behavior towards foreigners and how to run a business in Japan. I am looking forward for the next project in Autumn.