I remember commenting to my son when this emerged that they must be *very* sure of their search results. And no, one can't assume that it's Google -- Yahoo is the 900 pound gorilla of Japanese search, and there are other playas.

There's always of course paid placement.

I think the reasons for this are mostly covered above: confusion in romanization, the ability to search for the exact character or phrase. But there are a couple of contributing factors:

- The lack of distinct company names. Most companies are named after their founders. asahi.co.jp leads to the Asahi Broadcasting Co. and not Asahi Beer or Asahi Pentax cameras.

- This one I'm sure is the biggie: ISP service here is terrible, and it's quite difficult for small companies to get a website up at, e.g., akikosflowers.jp. (Again, Yahoo is helping here.) Far more likely poor Akiko will end up with some long URL five levels deep on the ISP's fifth server. Combined with some real management level bonerheadedness when it comes to selecting URLs at large companies (a certain hamburger joint is advertising mdq.jp on their packaging, and the only reason I remember that is it stuck in my head as an example of bonerheadedness -- and that's small potatoes compared to some I've seen).