Japan's tech IPO market has been drying up dramatically in recent months, but there are still some IPOs happening. Today it was announced that Tokyo-based Japan Medical Net Communications, which operates several sites for medical services in this country (full list here), is next. The company has received approval to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's startup market Mothers on December 21.

The company will announce the fixed offering price on December 10, with Daiwa Securities Capital Markets being the lead underwriter of the offer (the tentative price range will be announced on December 1).

It's a relatively small IPO. Medical Net Communications said they expect 495 million Yen (US$5.94 million) of fresh money through the IPO. What's interesting is that the plan is to invest US$940,000 to set up a subsidiary in the US.

For the current fiscal year, the company expects revenue to stand at US$15.1 million and net profit to reach US$2.4 million.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Naoto Kan, Japan's 94th prime minster who took the position this June, enters into the web by his new blog yesterday, November 18th.

The blog, named "Kan-full Blog" [J] after his sirname "Kan" and an English word "full", which shows his full efforts on communication, also has a pun meaning "camphor" to inject for "revitalizing Japan", as explained on the blog's sidebar.

On the first post, the author, who is not Mr. Kan himself (clear by how the writing handle the name and the title), explains it is going to have three categories of posts.

Kan-full TV

Posts featuring movie which is either "interview of the PM" or his address/speech. Staff will find his odd minutes between busy works and take his fresh voices.

Ippo Ippo(step by step)

Daily report of his activities. Meant to be an index to the detailed political resources on all government ministries and agencies websites.

Kantei Zakkichou(The prime minister's office notebook)

PM's office staff and others will report the prime minister as they see.

So it is not direct speech by Kan himself, but by his team.

Interactivity and social aspects

It is nothing strange as Japanese politician's blog, there are no comments or trackback systems offered on each blog post. There is a feedback form, on which you may send his/her opinions, suggestions, etc. Your gender, age (from 0 to "over 100") and prefecture(or "oversea") are asked but not mandatory.

For a notification, you can choose from RSS1.0, RSS2.0 or e-mail.

Mobile version is guided by both URL and QR Code. The blog name is embedded at the centre of the QR Code, which is a gimmick using the bar code's error correction ability.

The blog article has three icons, linked to Google Bookmarks, Hatena Bookmark and Delicious Bookmarks. Hatena's one is the most popular one in Japan, but others are not so popular than non-listed ones like Yahoo! Japan Bookmark, Buzzurl or Livedoor Clip.

There are no Mixi Check, Twitter or Facebook Like buttons.

Opening trouble

The blog's URL had been reported on some Japanese media in morning 18th, however, when you tried to access it, you were asked to type user name and password by a dialog box (basic authentication dialog) until the evening, around 18:00.

The former prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, who is pretty unpopular now, ran Twitter and once got the most followed Japanese Twitter user title.

According to Asahi Shimbun, Kan did not continue the prime minister's e-mail newsletter, which had been kept by recent several PMs for years.

See Also:

Asiajin » Japanese Government Opens Hatomimi.com For Informants

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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As reported last month and a video link presented on October 14, 2010, the SF New Tech Japan Night event was held in San Francisco(SF). The event was sold out with over 260 on-line tickets sold with an additonal 40+ at the door.  Enduring a little jet-lag and some tech culture shock, six start-ups from Japan successfully completed their introduction to the SF Tech community on Octorber 13, 2010.  Here is a summary of the Japanese tech presenters:

Spysee - CTO Hironori Tomobe demonstrated how Spysee’s people search engine extracts information about people from the web and provides links that are related to the person organized in a visual search results page with items like their network connections and a summary of articles written by or about the them.  Spysee’s revenue model is advertising based and will offer premium subscription services in the future.

Lang-8 - Founder Yangyang Xi demonstrated his new social networking service for learning a language.  Basically, one can meet people and learn a language all in one site.  A person posts an entry that they want corrected and a native speaker then interacts with you--correcting your writing on-line. Very simple.  Their mission is to help learners with the written nuances of a language, something you can’t totally get from formal classes.  Lang-8 currently has users from 200 countries, representing 80 languages.

Gazo-Pa -  Hideki Kobayashi introduced a unique image search engine which is more of a semantic search using image features like colors, shapes, objects to complete its search to give one a more relevant way of searching for the images you want. Kobayashi said that this product is not only useful for images but can be applied to other typical searches like shopping.  Their project  was developed by funds from by Hitachi Corporation.  Launched just 2 months ago, the service has about 70K visitors a month.

Coopa - Tsutomu Sasaki, President & Yashuhiro Yamada presented an enterprise application development engine using HTML or Java script. It allow for quick development of custom applications to enterprise software like Oracle or even Google apps.  Their development engine allows for quick development of iPhone to Enterprise Software applications for viewing, accessing enterprise software data or using the iPhone as part of an in-line business approval process.

Drrop - Founder Takuro Yoshida and Hiro Kobyashi describes their newly launched social communications site as a new way to say “Hi”.  A “Drrop”, as they call it, is a random message from around the world, that the user chooses to reply to, let it “evaporate” in 24 hour or “wipe” it immediately to move onto the next “Drrop”.   They feel this is a more efficient way to manage the social clutter.  Launched just last month, they are in the testing phase with over 150 users and exploring their company’s growth strategy.

My Gengo - Robert Laing and Matthew Romaine presented a concept which will transform the translation service, called My Gengo.   With My Gengo, you have access to certified translators for as little as 5 cents a word for basic translations which is about 70% less than standard translation services and faster. An API launched in early 2010, is an API that can be plugged into a site so that users don’t need to go to My Gengo to get access to their services.  They have experienced non-linear year-over-year user growth overs its few years of existence and have received seed funding and exploring the next stage of funding.

Brandon K. Hill, CEO of btrax, Inc, the co-organizer of the SFNewTech Japan Night event, said “We were excited to see these Japanese companies present at this event. We feel this event was a great success and hope to do this event with SFNewTech twice a year.”  All in all, it was a great to see a great introduction of Japanese IT technology to the to the SF tech community.

Tags: Community, Event Report, Japan, USA by Shunichi Arai
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Do you have Android mobile? Then let's go to this bar! My friend's @Kabayan opens the hangout "Bar Android"  at Shibuya, Tokyo for Android users.

2F Udagawa-cho 37-14, Shibuya, Japan, 150-0042

There is a projector. And there are power supplies, so it's not necessary for you to mind battery consumption.

Gingerbread Cookie! If you can understand it, you are an android user definitely!

The bar operates 19:00 - 23:30 every Monday only. Drinks and snacks are all 500 yen. Japanese food set meal is 1,000 yen.

Kabayan's comment;

Who can make a place where you meet with others who are interested in Android?

When I met several guys at a bar in Shibuya, I felt that Shibuya is 'the place'. At that time, my friend introduced his friend who owns a bar in Shibuya. He was looking for idea to make his bar popular. So I told him my idea to give a concept for the bar.

I named the bar 'Android', because Android OS being used under many situations to connect people matches with the concept I want for my bar.

The bar space is not my own, but people who are interested in Android will support us, I expect.

Please come to the bar, have a drink and talk with me!

Fortunately, the bar doesn't shut out people who are not Android users. I went there yesterday with my iPhone4

Please also check the followings.

Bar Android Twitter
@barandroid

Bar Android Facebook fan page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shibuya-Japan/Bar-Android/127806547277395
(These are written only in Japanese at present, but English support is available.)

Tags: Japan by Chiho Komoriya
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Google Japan publicized their "Google Japanese Imput Method (Beta) Comic" online, following to its paper version, which was presented to their developer's event recently.

This 42 pages comic by Yutanpo Shirane features some star developers in Google Japan.

There are 8 chapters and each chapter has the following topic;

1. Why Google developed and released its own Japanese input method system
2. Design concept: multi-platform, speed, security and stability
3. Architecture: zero-based design, modular design, dictionary data compression, seamless software update
4. Security: sandbox process
5. Dictionary: made from their search index
6. Conversion Engine Tuning: rank possible words choice by popularity on the web
7. Suggestion: algorithm and interface for better word suggestion
8. Misc: key bind customization, quality assurance, feedback system

Overall, the comic is for engineers, or at least people who do not dislike technical talk. It often emphasizes that Google Japan does not collect information over the internet to identify which user typed what text.

When Google released a comic to introduce Google Chrome, Google Japan made a different Japanese version with the same cartoonist as this time.

Probably Google Japan thought the original U.S. cartoon would not be accepted well in this comic country, however, this Yutanpo Shirane's tone and the comic going from left-to-right (opposite direction of most Japanese manga) look not a typical Japanese manga but rather close to American comics for me.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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