You're absolutely right. I think it's very hard for office workers to blog when they get home after working long hours. Especially on a platform like HIVE, which is complex and requires English....
I think one of the reasons why the number of Japanese increased considerably during the Steemit era a few years ago was that they could get paid for relatively simple Japanese-language-only posts. Whether that was a good thing or not.
I think your idea of approaching artists and local stores is a very good one, it's best to have people who have a strong affinity with HIVE. I'm thinking of reaching out to those Splinterlands players who already have a HIVE account but have not yet entered the blog platform☺
I have a Twitter account (thanks for the follow) but haven't been using it very well. I'm thinking of tweeting about topics that people would be interested in... like HIVE earnings reports, for example. I've been writing about how to register for HIVE and how it works on my WordPress blog since this spring, so I want to put that to good use as well.
The amount of ways to earn hive have increased a lot, and also we have weeded out a lot of the drama and scams, so I think it's a more attractive place, but the entry point is a hurdle. The only issue is building some kind of trust and interest between new people and existing members. Easier said than done. I think once we get 10-15 core people who are working to spread hive in Japan it will happen naturally.
I hope we can meet to talk about it soon.