Happy New Year! As we welcomed 2008 on a crispy cold day in Connecticut, I’m missing a Japanese New Year celebration. New Year is the biggest holiday in Japan, and it’s the beginning of new year, new life, and new everything.

Yahoo Japan entered the new year with their new home page, which has a stronger feel of the portal site than a search site. In fact, they got rid of the category list from the home page, and while it still has a search box right below the Yahoo Japan logo, my eye went straight to the news feed placed in a center of the page, and didn’t see a search box at all. Maybe they are trying to re-focus what they do best in 2008, which is to provide the overall services such as news feed, shopping, auction, etc.

Yahoo Japan has been one of the most visited websites in Japan for years, and many visits come from Yahoo BroadBand users who set Yahoo Japan as browser home page, and from services like Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Auction, and Yahoo E-mail. While SEO for the organic search is important, if you wish to reach Yahoo Japan users, Overture Japan’s paid campaign is definitely the way, and it looks that it’s more important now with Yahoo Japan’s new home page design than ever.