Getting a .jp domain

I have a super common family name in Hungary: Szabo. It means tailor, and appr. 2% of Hungarians have this family name (203,126 out of 9,730,000). Thus szabo.hu, szabo.eu, szabo.com, szabo.net, szabo.info, szabo.me, szabo.xyz etc. are mostly taken. However I recently checked and szabo.jp was available! Following a Tokyo Cheapo guide I found Star Domain and bought the domain there for 2560 yen/year. (Star Domain has a referral program, so if you use this link, I might earn a little money.)

I already had hosting elsewhere, so I only needed the domain and Star Domain has a pretty straightforward DNS configurator. I read that only people in Japan can register .jp domains, so I expected some verification, but only my phone number was checked and after I paid for the domain, I could use it immediately.

Most part of the site is text based, so Google Translate makes it possible to use it without knowing too much Japanese.

Revive this blog

After being rejected from ADDress, I abandoned this blog and focused on my blog in Hungarian. However a lot has changed recently, and I feel the need of a place to publish in English. Thus I decided to reuse this blog, but shift the focus from the original digital nomad life to more general life in Japan with occasional tech related articles. For this reason I also got a new domain name: szabo.jp. Szabo (read as サボー) being my family name.

Enjoy!