New male singer "Clear" introduced his first album last Wednesday, its sales surpassed 13,000 copies by the end of last week.  It's ranked in the 9th place for Japan's Billboard-like company Oricon's weekly album sales chart[J].

He started his 'singer' career by posting his performance videos into the "I just tried singing out" section of Japan's largest video sharing website Nico Nico Douga[J].   He may cause a sensation following Hatsune Miku (see these for her) as the talents who have debuted from the video site.   Every time he has a live program on Nico Nico Douga, an audience of more than 2,000 fans signs in to watch on his music performance.  And finally, that new talent just appeared in the real space.  He had a live performance at Tower Records in Shibuya[J] yesterday, which was also streamcast on Nico Nico.

In a similar case, Japanese female singer and song writer 'Tamurapan[J]' was broadly promoted on MySpace Japan, where she has published new songs and engaged new fans using the power of social networking.

For Japanese music and entertainment industries, these ways might be a new good channel to find budding stars.

See Also:

• Clear's community top page on Nico Nico Douga[J]
• A list of videos tagged with 'Clear' on Nico Nico Douga[J]

Tags: Japan, News, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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Tokyo-based mobile service integrator IMJ Mobile[J] and its subsidiary developing iPhone/Android apps Bottle Cube have introduced the iPhone app that allows you to find available parking lots near where you are by using GPS.

IMJ Mobile has a database consisting from more than 36,000 parking lot location data, and they've been presenting the data to car navigation system manufacturers and map content providers.   The new app allows you to find the pay-by-the-hour parking lots, memorize which part of the lots you've parked in and show you composite pictures that makes you preview the location by the augmented reality (AR) technology.

Available with the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.   You can use it for free for the first thirty days after downloading, and then you'll be charged 115 yen for a 30-day subscription or 350 yen for a 100-day subscription.

Available on Japanese App Store

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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As reported earlier on TechCrunch, Japan has officially become the first country outside of the United States to receive Facebook Places. It comes as no surprise that Facbeook HQ made Japan top priority in releasing Places - with Japan's social urban lifestyle and feature loaded cell phones, Japan is a hotbed for location services. Foreign location services like Foursquare and domestic services like CoroPura and Tou.ch have grown immensely popular; Shibuya Station reigns as the most checked in location in the world on Foursquare. The launch of Facebook Places also comes on the heels of Mixi's latest announcement of their location service "Check-in". With nearly all Japanese 3G cellphones having GPS functionality since 2007, all of these services have considerable room to grow - though it is still unclear whether Japanese users will opt for foreign or domestic services.

The launch of Facebook Places in Japan also comes preloaded with an extensive variety of locations already integrated thanks to an unnamed 3rd party database. Up until this weekend, the listed locations on Places was barren save for a few check-ins by beta testers. Now, locations in and around Tokyo are nearly complete, and even on my weekend adventure into the country side I found numerous locations pre-registered. While Facebook Japan continues with the development of their local mobile site and integration of "Like" buttons in major websites,  Facebook Places will play a role as Facebook Japan continues to grow their user base.

Tags: Japan, Technology by Dominic K. Gallello
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Mitaka no Chushin de Nau wo Tsubuyaku

Mitaka no Chushin de Nau wo Tsubuyaku(I Tweeted "Now!" at the Heart of Mitaka)

The manga "Mitaka no Chushin de Nau wo Tsubuyaku" was published by Shogakukan in July 2010 drawn by comic essay cartoonist Yoko Gendai, which is likely the first Twitter manga in Japan, and so probably the world's first Twitter comic.

In the comic, the author herself experienced Twitter from registration, learned its features, manners and protocols with helped by others. She also had talks with several manga cartoonists who are using Twitter, including Hisashi Eguchi(@eguchinn) and Yoshida Sensha(@yojizen).

Tsuitta! - 4 Koma de Tanoshimu Tonari no Twitter

Tsuitta! - 4 Koma de Tanoshimu Tonari no Twitter(Twitter - Joy of Twitter in 4-frame cartoon)

The second Twitter manga planned to be released on 25th this month is a Yonkoma(4-frame style) manga[Wikipedia] from Enterbrain.

The cartoonist Ajiko Kojima wrote about the manga published and showed the characters rough sketch on her Hatena blog.

This manga draws funny anecdotes which Twitter users face regularly.

See Also:

Learn English On Twitter – At Least 5 Japanese Books For That

Japan’s First Twitter Novel Book Is On The Way

5 Evernote books in Japan

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Early part of September news which we did not write as a dedicated article. Continued to (Part 2)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• KDDI Introduces Their Android Market Payment Merged On The Phone Bill - Same Model As Successful Japanese Feature Phone Appstore
• Naver Search On Livedoor Begins
• Geo-location Based iPhone Social Game Lalacolle Launches
• LovePlus+ Atami Trip on Mashable [En]
• NTT Docomo's German Subsidiary Net Mobile AG Expands E-Manga For French Cellphone [En]
• Twitter Japan's Ads Sales number reported by WSJ [En]
• Research Tells 1/4 Mobage Town Users Pay, Whilst Only 9% On Mixi
• Rakuten.com.cn To Start Its Operation Early In October [En]
• Ketai Blogs For Gals Are Totally Different - Nikkei Trendy Report
• Docomo spMode Begins - Insiders Interview
• DeNA CEO's Talk At CEDEC 2010
• GREE CEO compares social gaming to Pachinko. LOL he is totally right. but it is amazing he said that in public.
• Hamako (@555hamako) Released On Bail, He Himself Tweeted. YouTube
• Kakaku.com's Gourmet Info Site Tabelog Enters Daily Deal Race, Tabelog Ticket. via ITMedia
• Facebook Uniqlo Official Page Publicized. release
• DeNA Engineers Made Mobage-Mixi-Gree Platform Wars During CEDEC. Joke idea from a CEDEC attendee was implemented in 3 days
• 6 Major Japanese Web Companies Starts To Test IPv6
• Twitter Hashtag Collides - Kamen Rider Hashtag #ooo Flooding On Twitter Annoyed OpenOffice.org users
• Kyodo News Internally Recommend Their Reporters Not To Use Softbank Cellphone. Internal documents revealed by Weekly Bunshun
• DeNA Guy Talks How Kaitou Royal Went On Facebook And iPhone Oversea
• A New Groupon Clone Preminow.jp
• Hatena Bookmarks Becomes To Display Twitter Retweets
• Hatena Bookmarks Retweet Display Feature Hacked By Ascii-Art
• iPod Nano's iWatch by a Japanese.
• TBS Mistakenly Reports Twitter Account Of Fake Ozawa, PM Candidate, As Real
• Three Social Networks Usage Research - Gree Gets Highest Paid User Rate
• The radio waves regulatory council, an advorisory board for Japan's minister of economy, trade & industry, to choose NTT DoCoMo as an operator for the next-generation broadcasting service for mobile.
• Freed Journalist Tricked Captors Into Twitter Access [En]. @shamilsh
• New Elementary School's Name Returns The Same Name Porn Site On Search Engine. The porn site [NSFW] Kotaku covered [En]
• By Expecting Nihon Tsushin-Docomo SIM, Hong Kong Imported SIM-free iPhone4 Sold In Almost Double Price In Akihabara
• Axe Campaign Lets You Remove One-way Following Randomly Without Permission - Twitter users who used it gets angry.
• ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie's Company Begins Groupon Clone Hangaku Tokyo. Many point out that the site plagiarized Kaupon HTML/CSS
• Gree iPhone Version Enables Avatar Purchase - By WebMoney Or Credit Card

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 IT Links by Akky Akimoto
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