Published by Motoko on 30 Sep 2009 at 04:34 pm
Do you want new Japanese ccTLDs?
Back in July, ICANN announced its plan to begin offering TLDs in different letters and characters other than Alphabet in 2010. The plan includes Japanese characters, which makes domains such as “.Japan” (see above) and “.Tokyo” (see below) possible.
Since then, several organizations such as Internet Associations in Japan have been discussing to set up Japanese Internet Domain Name Conference. The conference is now officially working with 16 organizations including Japan Lawyers Associations, TCA and Ministry of Internal Affairs. The main purpose of the conference is to set the regulations and standards for new Japanese ccTLD related issues, and to select contractors in Japan.
Currently available ccTLDs such as “xx.co.jp” and “xx.jp” (any Japanese characters can go in the second-level domain – xx) are available. Japanese characters can also be used in directories and file names. But, this new TLD will bring huge opportunities for website owners especially since it looks that “abc.jp” and “abc.(Japanese characters for Japan)” will be treated as different domains. We may see domain such as “hotel.Tokyo” (as shown below) soon.
