Gauging the iPhone’s popularity in Japan is not easy. Just ask Brian X. Chen. He wrote a piece for Wired.com last April called Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone suggesting that despite the long lines that greeted the iPhone 3G last summer, the device was a big flop in Japan. “Apple’s iPhone has wowed most of the globe,” he wrote. “But not Japan, where the handset is selling so poorly it’s being off