An Interview of Japanese Forums Administrator Yokota Fumitaka by Lynn Fredricks.

Runtime Revolution is proud to announce the new user forums - in Japanese! These forums are managed by community partner Yokota Fumitaka. The Japanese language forums closely mirror the topics of the English language forum, though in time that may change. One difference is an open forum on documentation feedback. Yokota-san also translated the currently available Runtime Revolution documentation into Japanese and is actively soliciting the help of the Japanese user community to ensure the documentation is exceptionally readable in Japanese.

Yokota-san is also assisted by Kojima Kenji - a long time user of Revolution and contributor to the Revolution English mailing list. Kojima-san is originally from Japan but has lived in New York City since 1980 where he has published and released both paintings and interactive art. His works are also available on his website in English and Japanese at www.kenjikojima.com.

Runtime Revolution would like to introduce the user community (in all languages) to Yokota-san in this interview.

LF: Tell us about yourself.

YF: My name is Yokota Fumitaka, age of 52. I have been a Macintosh user since 1987. I am not a professional programmer - just hobbyist - and using Revolution Enterprise for about four years to build some small projects to help out in my work.

LF: What sort of projects are you working on?

YF: Now I am building a little application for taking an inventory of stock. I am developing on my Mac but using the application on Windows. This application is designed for use with a Tablet PC and bar-code scanner. Since there isn't anything like a Tablet Mac, I have to use a Windows-based Tablet PC.

LF: What sort of projects or project areas would Revolution be popular for in Japan?

YF: I think there are at least two doors to Revolution in the Japanese market. One is for business people - those who are eager to build simple utilities for their own business or own jobs - and deliver them in a very short time! These apps must be simple and easy to learn and mostly be a low price product.

And the other is for the educational market though probably not what you are used to. The "Learning English" market is very popular in Japan. Private, commercial English conversation schools like NOVA are extremely popular in Japan.

I would like to see Revolution also taught in such schools - learning programming or algorithms at the same time as learning English.

LF: What would you like to see Runtime doing to be successful in Japan?

YF: It is very important for Runtime Revolution Ltd. to know how Japanese think and act; I mean, the Japanese market is very hard to enter if a language barrier persists. I believe the reason why MS Excel or MS Word have come to be so popular is not for its user centric way of thinking but for Microsoft's strategic view points. "User Centric in Japan" means all documentation and application appearance must be written completely in Japanese to enter the Japanese market successfully.

Interestingly, one of my favorite songs is Revolution, sung by John Lennon:

"You say you got a real solution.
Well, you know.
We'd all love to see the plan.

You ask me for a contribution.
Well, you know.
We all do it when we can."

This sums up my view of what Runtime Revolution should do and encourage in the user base.

LF: You picked December 23 as the announcement date for the Japanese Revolution Forums. Can you tell us why you selected that date?

YF: Yes, December 23 just happens to be the current tenno tanjobi, which is the current Emperor's birthday. The Emperor's Birthday is a national holiday in Japan, so this day changes with the current emperor. The current emperor is Akihito - he is referred to as Emperor Heisei. Past emperor's birthdays - the last two - became other national holidays after their deaths.

LF: So it has nothing to do with Christmas being so soon?

YF: No - Christmas is a fun day for kids in Japan, but our big family holiday is Japanese New Year's.

LF: Thank you again for becoming a community partner, Yokota-san!

A note for our English readers - in Japanese, the family name comes first; Japanese people usually refer to each other using their family name in non-intimate situations.