Japan' opposition Democratic Party (DPJ) Tokyo branch has launched a new website "Tokyo Life".

Tokyo Life has two main sub-sites. One is "Tokyopedia" which is a wiki about topics around Tokyo metropolitan assembly and local administrative information. The tool used for the Wiki part is MediaWiki. It is said that the wiki editors are young representatives belong

For example, one short page says that DPJ is against Tsukiji Fishmarket movement, which Liberal Democratic Party supports.

The other sub-site is "Electric Forum", which is a social network with open registration. After the launch on 12th, it has been not even displayed for many visitors because of access overload, now the social network part is turned down and it is asking feedback by e-mail for temporarily.

On the top of the "Electric Forum", they protest against Japan's public offices election act, which prohibits internet usage during the campaign. That means if Obama were in Japan he would be arrested by violation by using blog, YouTube and twitter.

This "Tokyo Life" seems to be prepared for Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly Election which will start on 3rd of July. After the starting day the site is supposed to be frozen, no update to avoid the violation of the law. Updates before or after the election term has no limitation.

Expecting the election of the national house of representatives soon, this "Election and the Internet topic" is again heated up on the web, though traditional media stays rather distant.

Fumi Yamazaki has written up a great article around this issue.

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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People say two key reasons why they subscribe to daily newspaper are for checking up TV program's time table and free standing inserts provided by local supermarkets. The inserts are very important items especially for housewives who have to manage the family budgets. On Friday, it became possible for them to check up the latest edition of the inserts only with their WiFi mobile devices such as Nintendo DS and iPhone at railway station platforms absolutely free. Now you don't have to subscribe to any newspaper, and you can compare local supermarket prices at the station on your way back home.

Shufoo![J] (named after Shufu, meaning housewives in Japanese), Toppan Printing's web-based service which collects free standing inserts distributed by 16,000 household retailers in every town of Japan, scans them and publishes them on the web, teamed up with Japan's nationwide public WiFi service[J] operator NTT-BP[J] (NTT Broadband Platform).

Basically, Shufoo! allows you to find the latest copies of the inserts provided by supermarkets located near your home by entering your ZIP code. NTT-BP has installed WiFi access points at 1,100 public locations including Tokyo Metro subway stations, private railways' stations in major cities, Tully's coffee shop chain[J] and KFC shops[J] nationwide.

When you login the WiFi service, your location will be automatically detected by the parameters associated with access point you use. With your WiFi-enabled device, you'll be allowed to check up scanned standing inserts of supermakets nearby as well as e-free paper, fortune telling, local weather forcast and the guide to restaurants nearby.

As I mentioned in this story, switching Japanese terrestrial TV system to digital broadcast may cause removing the reason why people subscribe to daily newspaper. Now it is possible for housewives to get the supermarket inserts for free and in an easier way. The second reason for the subscription has been removed as well.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Company, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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As we reported a week ago, national newspaper Asahi Shimbun began a twitter experiment reporting soccer match by national team for the World Cup.

The tweeted reports were well-received by web users, but some web people worried that the too frank and personal-sounding tweets may make the main readers of the newspaper, elders, upset. Then the tweets was switched to the latest news from their RSS feed, kind of boring, which web users expected somehow as what traditional company behaves.

However, today they stopped news notification on the twitter and made another live report of a national team match, then back to news RSS again after it. The number of followers is now over 6,000. It seems that Asahi Shimbun is using
carrot-and-stick for this social media to shed its square image.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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New legislation (its proposal draft[J]), which allows nonbanks to deal with payments and money transfers, was approved by the Lower House of Japan today.   It will accelerate competition in reducing remittance charges among banks and potential service agents in this market.

In order to protect consumers from damages caused by possible bankruptcies of remittance agents, the government will set upper limit per transaction between 500,000 and 1,000,000 yen after the examination.

When buying something good at e-commerce shops in Japan, we're usually allowed to pay for it by credit card, C.O.D. (cash-on-delivery) provided by courier operators, bank transfer and postal money order.   Some shops can accept pre-paid point card systems such as WebMoney[J].

The legislation, which is defined to be effective in a year since today, will enable nonbank companies to get new business opportunities providing the Internet users with easier-to-use and cost-effective money transfer services, that's why PayPal is reportedly expecting to set up a new service specifically designed for Japanese e-commerce market.   U.S.-headquartered Western Union, which is famous for providing foreign workers with P2P money transfer service requiring no banking account, is also considering full-scale market entry in the near future.

Tags: Company, Japan, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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Traffic Gate, an affiliate service provider and a joint venture of two of Japan's major dot-com companies CyberAgent and Rakuten, unveiled today a new ad network for developing ad-revenue services using iPhone app, named "TG Ad for iPhone[J]".

It is a very similar approach to AdMob's mobile ad solutions that the San Francisco-based tech company has developed and provide iPhone app developers and service providers with an SDK (software development kit) to put ads on their app. Traffic Gate will focus on matching advertising needs between service developers and potential advertisers in the Japanese iPhone community.

Tags: Japan by Masaru IKEDA
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