Japanese Language Review & Marketing Support for the Japanese Market
Your Japanese page is translated. Is it working?
We review the Japanese on your product pages, pricing, and checkout from the customer's side: not just whether the words are correct, but whether a Japanese buyer understands your value and feels safe enough to order. For small and mid-sized companies selling into Japan, not only the big ones.
You don't need to read Japanese to work with us. Everything we send you is in English.
Sound familiar?
If you sell to Japan and one of these sounds like your team, this page is for you.
- Your Japanese page was translated by a professional, but sales in Japan stay flat and you can't tell why.
- Customers ask questions that your page already answers in English.
- A category name, a material description, or a shipping note reads "correctly" in Japanese but says nothing to a Japanese shopper.
- You've been told the Japanese is "fine," and nobody can tell you what "fine" means.
A translation can be accurate and still leave a Japanese customer unsure. That gap is what we look for.
What we check
We check every page in two steps. The first asks whether the Japanese is right. The second asks whether it works for the person reading it.
1. Language review
Is it correct, natural, and appropriately polite for a customer who is deciding whether to pay you? Tone and distance matter in Japanese: too casual loses trust, too stiff feels like a legal notice.
2. Market-fit review
Does the page answer what a Japanese customer asks before buying? We look at how the value is framed, whether product categories make sense locally, whether pricing and delivery terms are unambiguous, and whether anything on the page creates doubt instead of removing it.
We do not promise higher sales or conversion rates. We promise a clear, prioritized list of what to fix and why.
What you get
A review report in English, organized so your team can act on it without reading Japanese:
| Column | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Original | The Japanese text as it appears on your page |
| Suggested revision | Our proposed Japanese, with an English back-translation |
| Why | What a Japanese customer would misread, miss, or hesitate over |
| Priority | High / Medium / Low, based on how close it sits to the purchase decision |
| To confirm | Facts only you can verify (specs, pricing, policies) before we finalize wording |
A made-up example
This is a made-up example for a fictional product. It is not from a client. The Japanese is real; the English in brackets is a back-translation so you can follow along.
Original: 「7日以内なら返品可能です」 [Returns accepted within 7 days.]
Suggested revision: 「商品到着から7日以内であれば、未使用品に限り返品を受け付けます（送料はお客様負担）」 [Returns of unused items are accepted within 7 days of delivery. Return shipping is paid by the customer.]
Why: "Within 7 days" of what? Japanese shoppers expect the starting point, the condition, and who pays for return shipping to be stated up front. Leaving them out reads as evasive, not concise.
Priority: High (checkout-adjacent)
To confirm: Is return shipping actually paid by the customer? Is "unused" the right condition?
In a real report, each row points to a specific line on your page, so your team or your translator knows exactly where to make the change.
Who does the work
The review is done by two people. One looks at the page as a marketer and a customer. The other looks at it as a language specialist.
Aya Yikai — Marketing and customer-side review
Former trade-press reporter and technical writer with around 300 interviews behind her, author and co-author of around 10 published books, and around ten years of hands-on marketing and content work for 20+ companies in the Japanese market, with e-commerce experience in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States.
Masato Yikai — Language review
Registered Japanese Language Teacher (national registration, Japan) and has passed the Japanese Language Teaching Competency Test. Doctor of Engineering in electronic and information engineering (The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo), with research experience in fuzzy inference and deep learning. Has taught Japanese at university level outside Japan. For technical products in electronics, software, and AI-related fields, this background lets us check terminology as well as tone.
How it works
- Send us the pages — Share a few URLs (or files) and tell us what the page is supposed to make a customer do.
- Scope and quote — We confirm what's in scope and quote for that scope before any work starts. If something outside it comes up, we tell you first.
- Review — Language and market-fit reviews, done by the two of us independently, then merged.
- Report — You receive the English report described above. Follow-up questions are welcome by email.
- Your call — Apply the changes yourself, or ask us about implementation and ongoing support.
Start small
We recommend starting with a limited review: a small number of pages that sit closest to the purchase, such as a product page, the pricing or plan page, and the checkout or inquiry flow. It's enough to show you what kind of issues your site has, and whether our way of working fits yours.
From there, some clients may want a site-wide review, a recurring check of new pages and campaigns, or help rewriting rather than just reviewing. We'll suggest what makes sense only after the first review.
Get in touch
Tell us which pages you'd like reviewed and what they're meant to achieve. We reply in English within 3 business days (Japan time, UTC+9).
To request a scoped review, email us at info@kikukaku.com. A few URLs and a sentence about what each page should do are enough to start. If it helps, include:
- Your company name and website
- The pages you'd like reviewed (URLs or files)
- What each page is meant to make a customer do
- The language your original content is written in
FAQ
How is this different from translation or proofreading?
Translation makes the Japanese exist. Proofreading makes it correct. We check whether it works for the customer who reads it, and tell you why.
Do you guarantee results?
No. We give you a prioritized, reasoned list of changes. What happens after is up to your product, your market, and your execution.
Which languages do you work from?
English and Traditional Chinese. If your original is in another language, send it anyway and tell us; we'll say honestly whether we can do a proper job with it.
Can you also rewrite or implement the changes?
Our main service is the review. Rewriting pages or helping with implementation is something we can discuss case by case. If it looks useful, we'll suggest it after the first review, once we know what your pages need.
Do you review apps, ads, or emails as well as web pages?
We usually start with web pages. App screens, ads, and emails can be discussed case by case. Tell us what you have, and after the first review we can suggest whether looking at them makes sense.