JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will launch the venus climate orbiter named “Akatsuki” meaning dawn in Japanese this morning.   It will be launched at 6:58:22 a.m. on Friday in J.S.T. or 21:58:22 p.m. on Thursday in U.T.C.    The scene of the orbiter’s launch will be streamcast live on several major video networks.

Video source: ANN News on YouTube[J]

Meanwhile, the orbiter will also carry three small plates having the pictures of Japanese vocaloid character Hatsune Miku(see these Asiajin stories for her details) illustrated by her 14,000 fans with a collection of their 260,000 messages sent from all around the world.

Promotion video produced for collecting amateur illustration and signatures:

Tags: Community, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
2 Comments »

I know we’re a tad late on this, but Japan’s No. 1 e-commerce company Rakuten announced earlier this week that all internal meetings will be held in English from now on. To say this is rare move for a Japanese web company (or any kind of company) would be a big understatement.

Rakuten has ramped up its internationalization efforts considerably in the past years, opening offices in a number of Asian countries, Europe, and the US. It made headlines just today with the $250 million acquisition of Buy.com, a California-based shopping portal with a large American and European customer base.

Rakuten said all formal internal meetings will be conducted in English to reflect the company’s latest efforts to enter overseas markets more aggressively. Some meetings, for example those on board level, were held in English since January already. But now Japanese will be banned from formal meetings at department and section levels as well.

The company also said that even if all employees present at those meetings are Japanese, using English will still be a must. Rakuten currently employs over 6,000 people worldwide, about 5% of whom are foreigners.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
1 Comment »