Asiajin

Emobile, the No. 4 major cell phone carrier in Japan, said Wednesday that it will introduce a new cell phone price plan on February 7, which is the most attractive in Japan – at least if you aim for the lowest possible prices.

For an almost unbelievable basic fee of 780 Yen ($8.70/6.80 Euros), Emobile users can talk as much as they want among themselves at any time of day. The same goes for sending SMS messages. The new monthly plan requires a two-year contract, which is standard in Japan.

By way of comparison, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI au and SoftBank Mobile (the No.1, 2 and 3 in Japan’s cell phone market) are currently offering monthly fees of around 980 Yen ($11/8.50 Euros) at the cheapest.

Emobile is mainly known in Japan as a wireless data communication provider (and not really as a company you want to go to if you want to make phone calls primarily). Emobile has 1.1 million subscribers.

The press release with all details can be found here (in English).

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Serkan Toto
No Comments »

Kodansha, Japan’s leading comic and novel publisher, announced today that it is allowing bloggers to republish the comic titled “Mikako-san [J]” authored by famous cartoonist and illustrator Kyo Machiko [J].

The title appeared serially in Kodansha’s weekly comic magazine “Morning”, and the same content is also on the magazine’s official website [J].    Her fans can republish any of her works on their blogs under a Creative Commons licence.

It is quite rare for a major publisher to approve the republishing of its works. Kodansha expects a viral-marketing effect to be produced by this experimental trial.

Proofread by: Sean O’Hagan

Copyright (c) 2009 Kodansha Ltd. & Kyo Machiko.   Some rights reserved.
The content shown above is republished under cc-license of attribution, noncommercial and no derivative works.   Clicking the content will take you to its original website.

See Also

Kodansha makes one of its comic titles available on the Internet for free [J] (MSN Sankei News reporting)

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

In US airports, many people can be seen using their laptops plugged in to nearby outlets. If you do that in Japan, you could be arrested by the police.

In February 2004, a man using a power outlet in Nagoya Station was questioned by railroad police. The case was reported to the prosecutor’s office as a theft of one cent worth of electricity. It is not known whether the man was prosecuted or not.

In September 2008, a university student charging her cellphone in Sagamihara Station was questioned by the police. In this case, a passerby had reported the “incident”. The student was reprimanded, but was later released without charge.

A blogger reported [JP] that Haneda Airport uses non-standard power outlets (NEMA L5 receptacles) instead of standard Japanese outlets. He suspects that the airport authority wants to prevent travelers from “stealing” electricity.

Japanese society sometimes enforces minor rules too strictly and resists societal changes, but not everyone is opposed to change. JR Shinkansen bullet trains now offer power outlets to all window seat passengers and all first-class passengers on their new N700 series trains.

Tags: Japan, Society by Shunichi Arai
1 Comment »