"Kujira-san no Game"(Whale Game) [J] is a tiny Flash shooting game, which takes Twitter and its notorious Failing Whale as motifs, made by a Kansai-based game hobbyist group Daiojyo [J].

You may be requires to unlock your browser's pop-up blocker. Control your bird by mouse, and shoot by left-click. There will be a power-up item on the middle.

The last boss to beat is, of course, everyone's enemy the Fail Whale, which seems a bit overloaded.

Play yourself!

See Also:

Twitter Whale – Japanese Interpretation

Tags: Japan, Joke by Akky Akimoto
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Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications published an interesting report [PDF] about the country's market for mobile content and services this week. According to the ministry, that market grew by 12% to hit 1.52 trillion yen ($17.3 billion) last year, including mobile advertising.

The $17.3 billion breaks down into mobile commerce, which was worth $11 billion and mobile content (games, ring tones, e-books etc.), which amounted to a $6.3 billion market (see graphic below - click to enlarge).

If you keep asking yourself why mobile gaming firms such as GREE ($222 million profit last year) or Mobage-town are currently printing money in this country, the report has an answer for that, too: the ministry says that the market for virtual items in mobile games and social networks grew by a whopping 185% to $508 million year-on-year. In 2007, virtual items accounted for just $68 million of the mobile content business.

Tags: Japan, News, Trend by Serkan Toto
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Japan's first start-up operating deal-of-the-day website Piku Media[J] announced today that they completed the allocation of new shares worth USD7.3M to Germany-based VC fund Rebate Networks GmbH (co-founded by the owners of Germany's largest social network service studi.vz[G]), Global Venture Capital, DIT Partners and an undisclosed investor. This fundraising was arranged by Tokyo-based tech start-up incubator J-Seed Ventures. Piku Media funraised USD1.7M last month as well, and is now capitalized at USD10.2M in total.

The company is now providing coupon-based daily deal service for limited regions, that allows you to be served at discount prices at restaurants, ice cream shops and spas etc. With the fundraised money, they're planning to expand the service for the markets in all 47 prefectures of Japan.

Piku Media was founded in 2004 for running an English language school and providing membership discount services for hotel and restaurant visitors. They launched the deal-of-the-day service in Tokyo last April.

Tags: Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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Tokyo-based zakka and hardware store chain Tokyu Hands[J] is now running a campaign which gives you additional reward points by tweeting begging for something you want.   The store chain is known for working very much on developing social marketing services including "Korekamo-Net[J]" that allows you to search their inventory of the item you wish to have by asking it on Twitter.  (Hardware store chain Muji's Japan unit also joins Korekamo-Net.)

If you'd like to join Tokyu's tweets begging campaign, follow @HandsNet[J] on Twitter and tweet the name of the item you wish to have followed by hashtag #HandsNet.   HandsNet will give you back an answer and also give you reward points according to your tweet.

Yahoo Shopping[J], an e-commerce portal powered by Yahoo Japan, is also running "web-order gourmet championship, begging campaign" that allows you to win a prize of food item by tweeting about a theme (e.g. side dish) they announce every week.

Japan's local unit of an UK-based women's underwear manufacturer, Triumph International Japan[J] is also known for having set up the "begging" function on their e-commerce site, which allows a woman to e-mail her boyfriend(s) a begging for a lingerie item.   If he(or they) complete an order by clicking the link in the e-mail received, she will be able to get the item.   The company disclosed that 79% of all women's beggings had reached the orders made by their boyfriends or husbands.

"Tweets begging" is now becoming an effective way to socialize online merchandising and to revitalize e-commerce industries in Japan.

See Also:

japan.internet.com: Will "tweets begging" let e-commerce grown up to "social commerce"? (posted by Tsukuru Kasahara of World Cafe) [J]

Tags: Company, Japan, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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Japan's mobile social gaming giant GREE is becoming so successful, it's scary. According to Japanese daily The Nikkei, the Tokyo-based company's operating profit ballooned to 19.5 billion yen ($222 million) in the fiscal year that ended in June. That's $17 million more than the company expected and a whopping 130% more than in the year before.

GREE's yearly revenue even grew 140% year-on-year to hit $387 million, which is also slightly more than projected.

The Nikkei says that membership exceeded 20 million at the end of last month (a 60% increase year-on-year), meaning GREE is now more or less as big as Mixi. Reportedly, GREE currently gets 500,000 to 600,000 new members per month.

GREE itself hasn't confirmed the news on its corporate site yet.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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