PII-36 -- VENTURE COMPANY FILE: Value Golf

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P E R S O N A L I N T E R N A T I O N A L I N V E S T O R
Personal Finance Intelligence for the Tokyo Community
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Personal International Investor
Vol. 36
November 25, 2005 Tokyo

For the full HTML version, go to:
http://japaninc.typepad.com/personal_intl_investor/2005/11/vol36_.html

CONTENTS

+ From the Editor
+ Forex Weekly
+ Yen Watch
+ Events
+ Job Watch

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FROM THE EDITOR

VENTURE COMPANY FILE: NUMBER TWO

Value Golf (http://www.valuegolf.co.jp/)

We continue on with our series on Japanese companies that are yet
to go public and which we believe will do well over the next couple
of years. We encourage readers interested in either doing business
with these companies or with interest to invest, to contact the
foreign liaison team at TNP Partners (see contact details below).

Even after 14 years of recession and tales of bankrupt golf courses
and massive buy-outs by Goldman Sachs and Lone Star, in fact,
golfing in Japan is alive and well. Estimates are that there are about
13,400,000 golfers in Japan and that the size of the golf-related
industry is about 2 billion yen. The total number of visitors to
all the nation’s golf courses last year was about 88,580,000.

Clearly then, the golfing business is making a come back. With
the recovery of the economy and trickle down of company profits
to employees, we expect golf course attendance to improve by at
least 10% this year, making Goldman, Lone Star, and anyone
else who picked up golf courses cheaply in the last 3-5 years
look very good when their golf subsidiaries start to list - which
actually, Lone Star will do on December 15th with Pacific Golf
International Holdings KK. The valuation of the new company will
be a cool US$310 million, resulting in a 50% profit (our estimate)
on the listing.

Similar to general travel, the internet is playing a greater role in the
life of golfers. Right now, golf course bookings through the Web are
a mere 5% of the total bookings, but expectations are that this will
grow rapidly as the convenience of booking tee times and
memberships manifests itself through competition for slots
that will inevitably occur now that the economy is recovering.

One company which is uniquely positioned to take advantage of
the recovery is Value Golf. This company specializes in the planning,
production, and publishing of a free golf newspaper "Value Golf",
as well as producing online golf content, operating an Internet golf
course booking web site, and running a golfers’ call center.
The founder and CEO is Michio Mizuguchi, who learned the trade
of how to create compelling content and distribute it at the hands
of the masters - Recruit. He worked in the highly successful
Jutaku Joho print and online group in Recruit, which covers the
competitive housing sector.

After leaving Recruit, Mizuguchi joined one of Japan's major
publishing companies, to publish a free newspaper for golf bookings,
a business that he later negotiated the rights to and has spun off
into his own business. The training at Recruit was invaluable, and
Mizuguchi has been able to develop both the content and the
distribution network to build Value Golf into a print run of 200,000
copies a month and currently the company is the industry leader
in call-in and online golf course bookings. His business takes in
about 15,000 reservations a month, and has a membership
(as of September 2005) of 38,633 golfers.

Value Golf only does golf. As such it has stayed very focused and
after just one year of operation has established a distribution
network for its magazine of 1,300 outlets in the Kanto and 700 in
the Kansai. It receives advertising and bookings information from
700 golf courses in the Kanto and 200 in the Kansai, and it takes
online reservations operation for more than 170 cooperating golf
courses in both East and West Japan.

More information about Value Golf is available from Yutaka Shibata,
Manager of Corporate Communications at Tsunami Network Partners.
TNP is one of Japan's largest independent venture capital funds and
is invested in over 35 early-stage companies with technology and
innovative business practices comparable to that of Value Golf.

Terrie Lloyd
...Investor in Training/

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FOREX WEEKLY

Team Tokyo Forex Weekly
November 24, 2005

Thursday November 17
It has been a hectic week of ups and downs so this weeks article is
brief and to the point, watchout nextweek when my schedule settles
after my move to Saitama.

Yen remains supportive above a 27 month low against the dollar.
The markets buzz of a possible re-evaluation of the Yuan due to
President Bush's visit. Which was denied by the Peoples Bank of China.
The yen was boosted by a Japanese Ministry of Finance report of more
foreign investors to buy more Japanese assets. The factors took the
USD from 119.58 down to 118.50 against the Yen.

A US 2 year High against the Euro fell to a low US116.00.

Pound steadied on news of UK retail sales increasesed by .2% in October
from the previous month then slumped to a two year low against the US
dollars US171.00 following the quarterly publication of the Banks quarterly
inflation report. The Central Bank down graded it's growth and inflation
projections and revived expectation of another interest rate cut to come
as soon as February.

Here is some ForexTV.com commentary

USD/JPY Nov 23 2005
USD/JPY failed to break above 119.55 resistance again and sharp sell
off from yesterday's high has pushed USD/JPY now to below 4 hours 55
EMA and getting near to mentioned cluster support of 118.26
(50% retracement of 116.86 to 119.55 at 118.21).

Our view remains basically unchanged so that current up trend is still in
good shape as long as118.21/26 holds and rally in USD/JPY should
resume after current range trading. But a break below 118.21 will
suggest the whole rally from 108.75 may have made a top already
and risk further pull back towards 116.86 support first.

From a bigger picture, USD/JPY is now getting to some important
medium to long term resistance. Firstly, there will be 100% projection of
101.65 to 113.74 from 108.75 at 120.84. Then there will be long term
pattern resistance at 120.71. Also, it's now getting very close to long
term falling trend line (from 147.68, 1998 year high to 135.20, 2002 year
high) which is now sitting at 121.51. Hence, we should be seeing
continuous loss of momentum as USD/JPY approaches these levels
and a sharp reversal could happen in the coming weeks.

GBP/USD

Even though dipped further to 1.7065, strong rebound in late NY session
indicates cable's decline is not ready to resume and it's still being
bounded within consolidation pattern from 1.7097. Cable is now
pressing previously mentioned cluster resistance of 1.7257/61(38.2%
retracement of 1.7515 to 1.7097 at 1.7257, 23.6% retracement of 1.7793
to 1.7097 at 1.7261).

Back to the view in our weekly report, break of 1.7257/61 will encourage
further rebound but upside should be contained by next cluster
resistance of 1.7355/63 (61.8% retracement of 1.7515 to 1.7097 at
1.7257, 38.2% retracement of 1.7793 to 1.7097 at 1.7261). and bring
resumption of medium term decline. Below 1.7174 will suggest the
rebound from 1.7065 has ended.

From a bigger picture, ideally, we'd like to see the rebound/consolidation
to be followed later by a break of 1.7049 level for resumption of medium
term down trend from 1.8498 to projection target of 100% projection of
1.8498 to 1.7390 from 1.7902 at 1.6794. But a strong break above
1.7355/63 will muddy up this medium term bearish picture.

Editor : Jason Bainbridge
callme@tokyo-forex-japan.com

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EVENTS

No events this week.

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JOB WATCH

Brought to you by DaiJob, Inc - providing jobs for bilinguals.
http://www.daijob.com/dj4/tracker/counter?th=pii-toppage

- Documentation Manager (JPY 10-13M)
- Senior Asset manager (JPY 15-20M)
- Head of Japanese Media (Negotiable)
- Trading Operations Planning Manager (PM) (Over JPY 13M)
- Head of Financial Conrol, Bank/Securities (JPY 11-15M)

Check out these and other jobs like these here!
http://www.daijob.com/dj4/tracker/counter?th=pii-merumaga

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SUBSCRIBERS: 655 as of November 25, 2005

Edited by Burritt Sabin (editors2@japaninc.com)

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