While most of the websites are shortening their web URL dropping www and redirecting www to non-www URL . This trend is mainly adopted by relatively new websites ( web2.0 websites ) . Apple seems to be in the old age . In addition Apple doesn’t have any handeling if anyone typed URL without www ( at least for japan website ) . and thus misleading customers or even may be losing them. I first thought when i typed http://apple.com/jp that Apple Japan website must be down. But i tried putting the URL again with www i.e., http://www.apple.com/jp it worked fine. Really bad for Japanese Apple customers . and WTF this is a very simple thing which any website administrator should know .

UPDATE 1: seems its fixed now.. Or is it that it was the bad timing when i tried accessing http://apple.com/jp

UPDATE 2: i am still getting error when i open http://apple.com/jp with Chrome in Vista