Arguing whether or not domain names in Japan are actually "totally out" feels short-sighted. Domain names are a scarce resource and will eventually hit a limit. The DNS system is fundamentally flawed in that respect, and I'm eager to see what will come next.

This article's proposal that search boxes are the next step sounds likely, but again, doesn't scale well, and has substantial search-engine risk. If Google drops your pagerank then not only is it harder to find you in a search engine, but all your marketing is useless because your call-to-action is broken.