Not surprisingly, their stomping ground is Shibuya, the trendy center of Japanese youth culture. But unlike platform shoes, J-Pop idols and other ephemeralities of Tokyo's fashion mecca, Japan's new Netrepreneurs are here to stay.

Or so they hope. In a country where old-style businesses continue to languish, iGeneration enterprises go from strength to strength. Their success is both a cause and symptom of the late-spurt growth of the Internet in Japan. In 1997, just 6.4 percent of Japanese households were wired to the Web, according to the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry. Last year, the number shot up to nearly 20 percent.

What these figures do not reveal is the sense of empowerment--real or illusory--generated by Japan's Net Bubble. As youngsters eye the values of their parents' generation with increasing disdain, it is as though the Internet has uncorked inside them a wellspring of potential.

"This is a major change of lifestyle. I think it's a revolution. It's a very, very, very exciting time," said Reiko Matsuura, spokeswoman for a nonprofit organization devoted to turning Shibuya into Tokyo's answer to Silicon Valley.

Matsuura went on to describe the area's young Netrepreneurs as men and women of vision whose motivation stems more from a drive toward "self-development" than regular notions of success. Most are not yet rich, she stressed, despite the media's obsession with dot.com millionaires.

Matsuura herself is about as Yummie as they come. Just 22, she graduated last month from Keio University, where she excelled in subjects diverse as international development, strategic enterprise management and feminism at the progressive Fujisawa Shonan Campus in Kanagawa Prefecture. While many of her "conventional" classmates had already pinned down jobs with major companies in their senior year, she opted for the "risky" route of forging her own path.

"I'm alive and I can choose anything I want, I thought. It's the freedom of being a human being," Matsuura said.

Her independence paid off. Today, she is the only full-time employee of Bit Valley Association, which boasts a membership of more than 6,000--about two-thirds of whom are said to be Netrepreneurs. The association seeks to foster Internet start-ups in Shibuya and surrounding areas by encouraging free competition and information sharing.

According to Matsuura, a number of factors have combined to make Shibuya the natural breeding ground for iGeneration pioneers.

Aside from its magnetic attraction as a center of grooviness, it is geographically convenient to many of Tokyo's major universities. Former students who five years ago worked nights designing Web pages in one-room Shibuya start-ups have since moved full-fledged businesses into bigger offices in the same neighborhood, she said.

Today, there are more than 250 Internet start-ups in the 14-odd square kilometers that make up "Bit Valley," a nickname deriving from the literal translation of Shibuya, which means "bitter valley" in Japanese.

Bitten by Bit Valley bug

Those hungry for a taste of Bit Valley excitement needed look no further than February's "Bit Style" event, which saw 2,200 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, headhunters, Net-nutters and plain old partygoers squeezing into Velfarre, Roppongi, one of Tokyo's hottest nightclubs.

This was the last in a series of monthly parties organized by Bit Valley Association to whip up silicon synergy. According to Matsuura, the events had to be put on hold--simply because there were "too many people to handle."

Softbank Corp. founder Masayoshi Son jetted in from Switzerland to attend, proclaiming: "Japan is going through its biggest social upheaval since the Meiji Restoration."

On the dance floor, people expressed their revolutionary zeal by swapping business cards and pumping hands. "A mob scene and a lot of kids running around who know nothing about the Internet, and people trying to sell domains and pass out their business plans," is how one observer described it.

But if trend-conscious wannabes outnumbered bona fide Yummies, it was a telling reminder of where iGeneration power really lies. As with so much else in Japan's consumer world, it is the Shibuya youth crowd that calls the shots. For Netrepreneurs, it makes sense to keep an ear to the ground.

According to Tim Clark, whose Tokyo-based e-business company TK Associates International, Inc. has carried out some of the most extensive research to date on Japan's Internet market, it is the emergence of the cellular phone as a platform for going online that distinguishes Japan from other countries.

NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service, which offers much in the way of entertainment and youth culture content, snagged a staggering 4 million subscriptions in its first year. Meanwhile, Japan boasts more mobile phone users than fixed-line subscribers.

And who is to thank for making wireless access such a runaway success? Trendy teens and twentysomethings, say experts.

"The Internet is a sort of window into a very bewildering array of options, and people are kind of at a loss as to what to do, whereas the cellular telephone offers a very finite, fixed set of clear choices, which is very appealing to Japanese consumers," Clark added.

'Information fashion'

At the same time, many of Shibuya's hip youngsters are eager to get their hands dirty. Perhaps inspired by their Yummie counterparts, they are enrolling in droves at Net schools like Digital Hollywood, located in the QFront building across the street from Hachiko Square. Here, budding Web-heads can learn everything from 3-D animation to how to start their own Internet businesses.

The company, which has tutored about 13,000 students in its half-decade history, recently set up a "Midnight School" offering lessons in Web design from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.

"It suits current lifestyles," said Digital Hollywood spokeswoman Hitomi Sano, explaining that about 80 percent of students go into Web-related work--as designers, producers, directors or programmers.

"In the last year, the number of job opportunities has doubled. That's because there are so many entrepreneurs around here," she said.

Sano added, "Shibuya has always been the center of subculture. So it's not surprising that 'information fashion' is also focused here."

Indeed, if there is a single physical embodiment of Bit Valley trendiness, it is the six-story QFront building, with its Starbucks coffee shop and giant Q's Eye screen broadcasting live Internet images to the crowds at Shibuya intersection. Here, members of iGeneration can relax over fruit juice in the funky Ubusuna chill-out area on the sixth floor, or rent the futuristic e-style space to make snazzy business presentations.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away in Shibuya Mark City, a different sort of Yummie is hard at work.

The H.I.S. Trade School--an affiliate of the nationwide discount travel company--this week opened Japan's first online day trading room for individual investors. Anybody can come here and use one of the 100 workstations to buy and sell Japanese or U.S. stocks and shares. According to the organizers, many of the day traders are in their 20s or 30s.

It is all about the Internet empowering the individual, said H.I.S. Trade School President Yoshio Hayashi. "Especially when it comes to securities transactions, (traders) will be directly connected to the market over the Internet by an electronic communications network. When that happens, we won't need securities companies anymore."

He added, "It's always said that Japan is about 20 years behind America, but here we are on the cutting edge teaching day trading. That's very Bit Valley."

Copyright 2000 The Daily Yomiuri