Second strings

Shin Yoshida leads a double life. And everyone, including his boss, his wife and three children, knows about it.

A full-time salesman for a food retailing and wholesaling company by day, the 34-year-old resident of Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, is a Web page designer/programmer, composer and plastic-bag retailer by night. Recently, his list of after-hours jobs has even grown to include giving seminars on how to run a successful business on the Web.

“Just having a Web site up and running is not enough to attract customers,” Yoshida told a group of three aspiring Web-based entrepreneurs — a florist, a travel agent and a man trying to market his wife’s bead-art — during a two-hour workshop at a Tokyo community hall one recent Saturday. “Imagine opening a restaurant. It’s like expecting a carpenter to be able to woo customers.”