Yahoo! Auction, Japan No.1 auction website who had defeated eBay in 2002 (eBay now collaborates with Yahoo! Auction), expands [J] its frontend into growing smartphone segment with a free iPhone application which name is “Yahuoku”.

“Yahuoku” is Japanese abbreviation form of Yahoo! Auction (such like “Super Mario” becomes “Su-mari” and “Pocket Monster” to “Pokemon”) and many people call and search it “Yahuoku”, which means this app is the flagship one on iPhone.

Although the app name shows their enthusiasm, the first version does not provide seller’s management features. i.e. You can only search and bid auctions, which seems to make many Yahoo! Auction/iPhone users disappointed with low user ratings on iPhone app store.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Nikkei BP Consulting and AdMob ran an online research to 1,000 Japanese iPhone users. The result [J] tells that 49.4% of Japanese Male iPhone Users have two or more cellphones.

On the same research, male:female ratio is 72.3%:27.7%. Web-tan Forum [J] who reported excerpt of this paid research did not mention how much of female iPhone users keep their second cellphone.

[Update] 1 in 5 Japanese cellphone users have second (or more) sub cellphone(s), another research says. So I can tell that more Japanese iPhone users need to have a second cellphone, probably a Japanese cellphone to keep using the closed cellphone websites and app stores.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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First half of February news which we did not write as a dedicated article. (follows to Part 2)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• Another Japanese iPad on… iTunes!
• Google Logo Contests By Kids, Japan round
• English translations of some popular 2-channel phrases
• NEC’s Android based touchscreen gear like iPad (December 2009 news)
• NicoNico Douga Testing Casual Games With Premium Members
• Microsoft, Yahoo and TBS Starts Web Drama C.I.A, Cyber Intelligent Angels, To Enlighten Internet Security For Teenagers
• One-day Rubber Suit Maid Cafe In Akihabara
• Hatsune Miku Rice-cookie
• Pepsi Rips Off Japanese Awarded Music Video, some Japanese claim
• Impress sold Digital Garage stock
• TV Over NTT East Optical Internet Supports Yahoo! Gyao Integration On STV
• Dentsu To Start Closed Beta Of Zapping Browse Site Gururin
• UCC(Ueshima Coffee) did the worst Twitter campaign with random reply spam from several accounts. Official apology [pdf]
• Google Japan Is Planning To Increase Ads Sales Staff 50%
• @kotarotamura) hurl abuse at his Twitter followers and blocked them, caused flaming. A week later he left LDP to join DPJ
• 2-channelers play on US Yahoo.com password reminder character
• Foursquare for Docomo Cellphone Proxy Service by @hkk
• 1 in 4 bloggers uses Twitter in Japan
• Funny And Amazing Japanese Vendor-machines
• Rakuten CEO now mixes tweets in English. “We changed the slides of all company meeting into English. Small first change.” “I encouraged our employees to use Twitter this morning:-)”
• Amazon Japan Aiming Japanese Books For Kindle In October 2010
• Evernote CEO told Japanese media(Nikkei BP) that Too Open Or Too Network Oriented Service Fails In Japan like Facebook
• KDDI America Invests Two American MVNO To Provide Cellphone Services To Immigrants
• Mixi and Bandai Namco Starts Purikura Photo Transfer To Mixi Photo
• Another Freemuim Model From Japan- Free Hentai Game Maybe To Promote Anime Figure
• Koei Announces Their Flagship Game Nobunaga’s Ambitious Goes On Mobage Town
• Pocky(Mikado) Snack AR Campaign For St. Valentine Day
• MovaTwitter, Third Party Twitter Mobile Service, Incorporated
• iPhone App Only To Cut 4 Girls Bangs
• Rakuten President Also Becomes The president of Edy(BitWallet) they purchased
• Yet Another Government’s AR experiment in Kansai
• Rumor: Amazon Is Seeking Tokyo Data Centre For EC2
• Cat Station Master Begins Twitter
• Fukuoka Tenjin Daimyo WiFi Association starts a Twitter campaign to revitalize the city’s shopping street.
• Bijin-Dog, beautiful dogs in Bijin-Tokei format
• Ioix Begins English Geek Blog Forever Geek’s Japanese Version (They already run The Blog Herald Japanese)
• CoroPura Starts CoroTabi, A Service Recommends Travel Packages To Their Users
• Japan Federation of Bar Associations Submits Statement On Google Street View Privacy to Google

If you want to know any specific news more, but unable to find them in other English blog/media, please let us know.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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As we reported the leaked info last month, Japan’s industrial newspaper Nikkei Shimbun (Nikkei is abbreviation of Nihon Keizai = Japan’s economy) is to begin their paid online version since March 23rd 2010.

The service name is “The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Digital Version”, nicknameed “Web-Kan”. This “Kan” means “publish” in Japanese.

As rumoured, the subscription fee is 4,000 yen (44.3 USD). If you are reading paper version (4,383 yen), you only need another 1,000 yen and can read both paper and digital version total in 5,383 yen (59.7 USD).

Mobile pages for Japanese cellphone are also provided, included.

See Also:

Nikkei’s Press Release [J]

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Fuji Television (Fuji TV), a Tokyo key station who has nationwide network, announced their coming Spring drama program which features Twitter.

The drama “Sunao ni Narenakute” [J], which directly means “I cannot be honest.” in English, but it is also the same as the translation of Chicago’s song “Hard to Say I’m Sorry“.

The synopsis [J] says,

Five young guys and girls, who are unsure that they are still in their youth or not, are feeling like nowhere to go. On Twitter, where people post their emotions and actions on the web in short 140 letters message(tweets), where others registered(followed) to watch those tweets, they become to know each other, make real friendship.

The screenwriter Eriko Kitagawa, known by her several successful TV drama series, posted her Ameba Now(Twitter clone by Cyber Agent boasts thousand of celebrities blogs) 3 weeks ago in a reply to other actress,

“Hi, how are you? Will not this message reach you? I don’t understand both Twitter and Ameba Now.” [J]

She got advices from her fans on her Ameba Now, and now stated,

Thank you for your avalanche of comments. I’m feeling my heartbeat speeding up (by microblog’s speed) so for now, or maybe for ever, I will only use blog. Yes, now I understand Twitter and Ameba Now completely, with these practices and researches.
[J]

If scriptwriter did not know Twitter, the idea to put “Twitter” on just another young idols drama might come from a producer, or a sponsor. Anyway, Twitter now has a power to drive them to add it on prime time TV even without understanding what it is.

[Update 2010-04-15] The drama begins.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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