Asiajin

American Popular Game blog Kotaku licensed its brand and contents to a Japanese company Mediagene, after their first localized blog in Australia to open a new blog media [J] in, one of the most important countries for game industry and market, Japan.

Mediagene already has been running two Japanese version of popular English blogs provided by Gawker Media, Gizmodo Japan [J] and Lifehacker [Japanese version] [J].

Kotaku Japan introduces its 12 staff of editors, translators, column writers, manga drawer, etc [J].

Kotaku Japan’s direct competitor may be 4Gamer.net [J], which is not blog-originated but a successful online media around game information in Japan. On their media sheet they say 4Gamer.net’s page views is 40 million per month. The border between blog-based and non-blog-based professional media is not clear now.

hat tip to Kirikomi-Taicho

Tags: Japan, News, USA by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

“Bakuon Sentai Sumpu Ranger[J]“, or the roaring squadron Sumpu ranger, is a popular local rock band originating in Hamamatsu City which is well-known as the birthplace of Honda Motor, Suzuki Motor, Yamaha and Kawai Musical Instruments.

The band composed a song to call the local people’s attention to the dangers of phishing scams, and the song was published on crime-prevention and police-related information portal site “Police Channel[J]“.

Hamamatsu is also known for eel farming and their locals’ honesty, so they rarely question strangers.   Police say this local characteristic is reflected in the high number of scam victims — the prefecture that Hamamatsu City belongs to recorded the highest number of phishing scam crimes among all prefectures in Japan.

The local heroes lend the people a helping hand to rehabilitate themselves.

• Download an MP3 music file (6.7MB  5 mins. 39 secs.)
• Download a PDF file of the song’s lyrics (110KB)

Via Impress BB Watch[J] and IT Media News[J]

(edited by Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)

Tags: Community, Japan, Joke, News by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

Game geeks and Internet geeks usually gaze at computer screen without blinking their eyes, that may cause the high number of patients who are suffering from dry eyes. For many of them, eye drops no longer act on that.

Fukui-based Masunaga Optical Manufacturing, which is now well-known because former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin wears the optician’s glasses, developed a new product to prevent dry eyes, which is called “Wink Glasses”.

A built-in sensor on the glasses detects your eyelid motion, and if you don’t blink your eyes in five seconds after the previous one, your sight will be shut off to encourage you to give an intentional blink. (It uses switchable light control glass technology.) When you give a blink again, your sight will be back on. Two button batteries power it for up to eight hours, and USB power supply makes you possible to use it without worrying about possible battery dying. A set of sensor module and glass flame costs approximately USD400.

Via Impress Internet Watch[J]

Tags: Company, Japan, Joke, Technology by Masaru IKEDA
3 Comments »

This is a reboot of a post I wrote back in July last year, listing up the Japanese equivalents of websites that are popular in the US and Europe.

For example, Japanese people don’t know Ebay but auction their stuff off on Yahoo Japan Auctions, get in touch with friends via Mixi instead of Facebook etc. etc.

I linked to the English versions whenever possible (see the [ENG] mark).

Leave a comment if you want to know more or think one of these attributions is off.

I) General web services

What is the Japanese equivalent of Tripadvisor?
4Travel.

Google?
Yahoo! Japan.

Wikipedia?
Wikipedia Japan.

Facebook?
Mixi.

Flickr?
Yahoo! Japan Photos.

Digg?
Minna no Topics (Everyone’s topics/closed).

LinkedIn?
No equivalent (many business social networks failed in Japan – look here for a list).

Twitter?
Twitter Japan.

Youtube?
Nico Nico Douga.

Amazon?
Rakuten and Amazon Japan

delicio.us?
Hatena Bookmark. [ENG]

dooyoo (price comparison engine)?
Kakaku.com.

Netflix?
Posren.

Craigslist?
No equivalent (there is no culture for classifieds in Japan, which means an instant success for a “Japanese Craigslist” is next to impossible to achieve).

imdb (Internet Movie Database)?
Nihon Eiga Database (Japan Movie Database).

Wall Street Journal Online?
Nikkei Online. [ENG]

monster.com?
Rikunavi.

Ebay?
Yahoo! Japan Auctions.

Alexa?
Pathtraq.

Hulu?
acTVila.

4chan?
Futaba (the original).

last.fm?
Mixi Music (registration required/will be turned off soon).

Technorati?
Kizasi.

Yahoo! Answers?
Oshiete!goo and Yahoo! Chiebukuro.

Zynga?
Hangame Japan. GREE and Mobage-town on cell phones.

II) Blogs

What is the Japanese equivalent of Techcrunch?
No equivalent. TechCrunch Japan is beginning to publish original articles.

the Huffington Post?
Agora.

tmz.com?
Zakzak.

Boing Boing?
Zaeega.

Gizmodo?
Gizmodo Japan.

Engadget?
Engadget Japanese.

III) Web tools and software:

What is the Japanese equivalent of Gmail?
Yahoo! Japan Mail.

Blogger?
FC2.

iTunes?
iTunes Japan (Lismo for mobile downloads which accounted for 90% of all music downloads in 2007 in Japan).

BitTorrent?
Share. (see info on Asiajin)

Opera?
Sleipnir [ENG] and Lunascape [ENG].

IV) Web Companies

What is the Japanese equivalent of Federated Media?
Agile Media Network. [ENG]

Admob?
Cirius. [ENG]

In case you want to know more, please add a comment.

Tags: Japan by Serkan Toto
6 Comments »

On Tuesday, Shibuya-based Q&A portal site OK Wave officially released its Chinese edition[C] in association with Chubun Industry[J] which publishes a Chinese-language newsletter[C] and provides a multi-channel IPTV service[C] for Chinese residents in Japan, and Aoyama Data Center[J] which has data center facilities in both capital cities of Japan and Mainland China.

(Asiajin has not yet confirmed if any access to the website from Mainland China is not blocked by China’s Great Firewall. The website seems to be physically located in Japan since its IP address is registered as one of NEC Personal Products‘ network.)

The portal site basically targets Chinese residents in Japan and Chinese visitors to Japan. Japanese/Chinese and Chinese/Japanese translation feature will be added by the end of this year.

Three companies plan to develop an advertising business model specifically designed for Chinese market, and also to provide Chinese well-known portal sites with their Q&A system on an ASP basis. The companies expects to earn 2 million users and 50 million PVs by June 2010.

OK Wave says, it’s hard for Chinese residents and visitors in Japan to find where they can buy what they want to have despite their population is so large that daily life information should be provided in their mother tongue. Currently the population of Chinese residents in Japan is 650,000, and the number of annual Chinese visitors to Japan exceeded 9 million in late 2008.

The site is reportedly targeting Chinese living in Japan, but its domain name ending with Chinese country code makes us aware that the site is going to target Chinese people living in Mainland China as well.

Tags: Cellular Phone, China, Company, Event Report, Japan, Joke, New Service, Service, Taiwan, Technology, library by Masaru IKEDA
2 Comments »