What are Japan's top products in 2010? That's a question Japan's (and one of the world's) biggest advertising agency Dentsu recently asked in a survey [PDF] it has been conducting since 1985 (n=1,000). For the first time, Dentsu has also compiled a "hit list" that's supposed to shine a light on what's going to be "hot" in Japan next year.

The subjects of the survey could name anything they wanted to: persons, products, services, TV shows, food etc. What's interesting is that there is a high number of tech-related items in both lists, which are shown below:

2010 Hit Products (emphasis on tech-related items supplied)

No. 1: Smartphones
No. 2: Twitter
No. 3: Munchable chili oil (a hot topping)
No. 4: Digital broadcasting-equipped flat-panel TVs
No. 5: Ryoma Sakamoto (popular historical figure; a TV series about him was aired earlier this year)
No. 6: International flight services at Haneda Airport (Japan's No. 2 airport boosted its number international flights this year)
No. 7: Tokyo Sky Tree (broadcasting tower to be completed in 2012)
No. 8: Energy-saving home appliances (the government supports individuals buying eco-friendly electronics)
No. 9: 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa
No. 10: LED light bulbs
No. 11: "B-grade" local gourmet food (relatively inexpensive food)
No. 12: Akira Ikegami (journalist)
No. 13: Domestic "fast fashion" brands
No. 14: GeGeGe’s Wife (hit TV drama)
No. 15: 3D movies, TV, cameras and other 3D products
No. 16: Hybrid vehicles
No. 17: Imported "fast fashion" brands
No. 18: AKB48 (48-member all-girl idol group)
No. 19: Tablets
No. 20: Yoichi Watanabe (war photographer and TV personality)

In the 2010 list, eight of the top 20 products are tech-related, but the number is much higher in the list of the upcoming hit products and services, which just sees six items that are not related to technology in one form or the other:

2011+ Hit Products (emphasis on tech-related items supplied)

No. 1: Tokyo Sky Tree
No. 2: LED light bulbs
No. 3: Electric vehicles
No. 4: International flight services at Haneda Airport
No. 5: Smartphones
No. 6: 3D movies, TV, cameras and other 3D products
No. 7: Hybrid cars
No. 7: E-book readers
No. 9: Discount airline tickets
No. 10: Tablets
No. 11: Home solar power systems
No. 12: Digital broadcasting-equipped widescreen flat-panel TVs
No. 13: Compact data communication devices
No. 14: Home fuel cell systems
No. 15: Group purchase coupons
No. 16: Bread and sweets made with rice powder
No. 17: Blade-less electric fans
No. 18: Cloud computing (including related books)
No. 18: B-grade local gourmet food
No. 20: Alcohol-free beer-like beverages

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Virtual Dating Game LovePlus on Nintendo DS was a smash hit, let Konami themselves publish a sequel LovePlus+(Love Plus Plus) [J] (feature limited), iPhone version and coming arcade version.

Two gigantic social gaming networks, Gree and Mobage Town, who have been adding new games every day, of course ride on this trend. On the same LovePlus format, choosing one from high school girls each of who has different characteristics and charm-points, and the most importantly feels kindness for you, you go out and experience school life with her.

Both games are published not from platform companies but from third-parties. But seems strongly cheered by Gree and DeNA(Mobage Town). TV commercial films of both games are on the air (embedded later in this article).

Himekoi on Gree

Himekoi [J] (a guide page on PC as the game itself is only on feature phone) by Winlight is a social game on Japan's largest social network Gree.

"Hime" means princess and "Koi" is love. You, a high school boy, enter a school which recently changed from women's to coed, and has a strict rule to prohibit dating. You are asked to go out by three girls on the same date, and will have to choose one with making it secret from the school.

Here is a playing movie by manabi2006,

Another movie by ajtmw86, showing the events with voice,

Gree's TVCM featuring Himekoi,

On the release of the game, Gree got some critics as Himekoi is too similar with LovePlus, like having three heroines, character designs and drawing touch. Some fans claim that even the girls' illustrations are plagiarized [J].

The game is, as always told so on their CM, basically "free" but purchasing virtual items will help your school love life a lot easier.

Koiken on Mobage Town

Koiken! [J] (again, a guide page for cellphone) by Vector is a cellphone dating game on Mobage Town, the game centric social networking service which is passing the No.2 Mixi by number of users.

The title "Koi-Ken!" means "Dating Research". According to Wikipedia (Yes, Japanese Wikipedia has a dedicated page for this game), the game was released in January 2010.

In a virtual high school, you are going to meet 10 girls, establish a new club for researching romantic experiences. You will have to visit the game often and click to build your communications with the girls. And of course, your paying for virtual gears will make your virtual high school dating life better.

The game has a lot of spoken lines by popular voice actresses, but most of the recorded voice will be audible when you purchase a special item.

Koiken seems backed up by its platform, Mobage Town, as well. Here is a TVCM of Koiken by DeNA.

As Mobage Town allies with Yahoo! Japan in PC social game, Koiken is playable on the Yahoo! Mobage. Vector announced [J] to release smart phone version via Docomo Market (for Docomo Androids).

Competition heats up

Mobage Town and Gree have been competing to be the No.1 social gaming network in Japan. They fight on court around fishing game, run engineer hiring race, spending more money on TV CM than Toyota and Coca-Cola. That is no wonder as the market, supported by far easier money charging mechanism on cellphone, is over 10 times profitable than U.S.

These dating games are just another battlefield for the big two. Whatever games getting popular, they have to ensure it on their line-ups, by referring their opponent, and consumer game consoles to become the last one to stand.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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It is a year-end buzzword ranking season. Yahoo! Japan, Japan's most popular search portal, though the backend search engine has been gradually switching to Google's one (everyday more people report that their search results are the similar with the Google's results), eventually gets the highest number of search volume in Japanese.

Yahoo! Japan just released the most searched keywords ranking both on PC and mobile during 2010 [J].

PC search

Some notable changes

Last year, most top ranked keywords kept the same positions from 2008. However, this time there are some interesting changes as you see above.

Google and Amazon, two world-class services were searched more, whilst the gigantic anonymous BBS 2-channel and the largest e-shopping mall Rakuten stepped down. Rakuten and Amazon Japan are direct competitors so, even Rakuten is leading the market, it may not be a good sign for them. (it is search "volume" so you may also tell that Rakuten became to be so common to make people less search though.)

Another big newcomer is Twitter, ranked at 8th from out of the ranking (top 100). Facebook jumped into the ranking, too (39th).

CyberAgent Ameblo, is also showing their traction. I can tell that their vacuuming all TV talents into their blog and microblog (Ameba Now) platforms goes successful.

Boosted web services:

• Cookpad(recipe site) 14th(20th in 2009, 47th in 2008) (Asiajin)
• Google Maps 22nd (42nd, not ranked)
• Zozotown(apparel mall, recently allied with Yahoo! Japan) 24th (46th, -)
• Ameba Pigu(CyberAgent's avatar social) 30th(-) (Asiajin)
• Ameba(CyberAgent's head brand) 42th(-)
• Gree(No.1 Social Network, 99% for mobile) 43rd(73rd, -)
• Rakuten Travel 47(59th)
• Navitime(cellphone navigation service) 68th(90th)
• Pixiv(UGC drawing site) 40th(-) (Asiajin)
• Gmail 56th(99th, -)
• Mobage Town(No.2? Social Network, mobile only) 75th (94th, -)

Services Losing positions:

• Zenryaku(mobile profile site) 48th (34th, -)
• Wikipedia 52nd (26th, 19th)
• Rakuten Market(full name of Rakuten's shopping mall) 59th (37th)
• Gurunabi(restaurant review site) 76th(53rd)
• Hotpepper(restaurant coupon site by Recruit) 82nd(58th)
• @Cosme(cosmetic products review site) 97th (87th)

"Free Game" went up from 69th to 46th, the word both Gree and Mobage Town used a lot to describe their service on TV CM. Both "Movie" and "Map" downed around 10, but "Weather Forecast" got 21 ranks up (see my article on Japanese weather services).

Mobile search

2-channel lost its popularity on the mobile ranking, too. Twitter comes up also on mobile this year.

See Also:

The 2009's ranking we covered

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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Yesterday, Japan's biggest website Yahoo Japan announced a tie-up with Chiba-based Start Today, operator of popular online fashion store Zozotown. Under the agreement, Yahoo has listed around 100,000 items from Zozotown's catalogue in its Shopping category.

As you can see on the screenshot below, big Y already began promoting Zozotown on its shopping site. If users click on a product that's actually listed in Zozotown's database, they will be led to Zozotown's website where they can shop using Yahoo Japan IDs (or use their existing Zozotown IDs).

There are around 25 million active Yahoo Japan accounts currently, but Yahoo's shopping site trails Rakuten, the country's online shopping giant. We reviewed Zozotown, which is mainly designed for a younger audience and exclusively offers fashion items, in September 2008.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Internet research company Ishare reported [J] that new phone call "manner" emerging, especially among young women in Japan. 40.7% of female and 19.9% male answered that they ask if they can call others by cellphone e-mail. (n=556)

So, those people make an appointment for telephone call by e-mail. The reasons they do that are;

• to assure that the other end is not working
• because the receiver's job is the job distracted by phone call
• because the other has a baby at home
• when calling late night, when most people are sleeping
• to confirm that the receiver is not on train
• because the other side may not be able to ignore phone ring (and ought to take it even when it is not a good timing for them)

The reason for train one, in most settings in Japan, talking over cellphone on train is either prohibited, or voluntary ban requested.

Tokyo Metro Manner Poster 2008/06

There are also other reasons than caring the other end;

• the other person does not like telephone
• want the other take his/her call for sure
• as it is the manner
• because it is recent trend

Not only on trains, but also on sidewalks, there are not many Japanese making cellphone call if you compare it with other countries like U.S.

General atmosphere let people refrain from talking loud publicly might be boosted by handy cellphone e-mail environment. And that made Japanese feature phones and carriers plans be more e-mail oriented, like flat-rate e-mail programs, emoji and decome(decoration mail) support.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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