Shiro Suzuki is a famous Japanese announcer. However, it has emerged
that he's also an expert at action game Resident Evil (Japanese title
“Bio Hazard”) produced by Capcom. He received a Nintendo console as a
gift at the end-of-year party for one of his TV programs many years
ago, and has been hooked on gaming ever since.

You can see his video here.

On January 8, Suzuki appeared in a gaming program on Japanese video
sharing site Nico Nico Douga, and was asked what he thought of the
Xbox360 game “Mass Effect 2″.

He said, “I think that fighting and winning are natural human
instincts.” He also referred to the book “Grand Theft Childhood: The
Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do" by
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, saying “Youth violence and sexual
crimes decreased at the same time that games became popular in the US,
so I think that gaming can have a good effect on repressing people's
desire to do evil."

Suzuki went on to say that games have had a good effect on his health.
“On the action games I have to concentrate when driving a car, and
have to respond instantly. Real cars are less responsive, so I found
it easier to drive real carss after getting into games. I hope more
young people play games to train their minds.”

Suzuki turns 73 next month, on February 10.

The archives of Nico Nico Douga's program are here. (In order to get
access, you need to have a Nico Nico Douga account. See our article on
how to register and use Nico Nico Douga).

(proofread by Adam Walls)

See also these articles:

Nico Nico Douga News [J]

Kotaku Japan [J]

Tags: Japan by Chiho Komoriya
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Earlier this week, Japanese mobile social gaming juggernaut DeNA added a new pricing plan to its super-popular Mobage-town platform (which currently boasts 22 million users): users can now pay for virtual items through a monthly pricing plan.

This first so-called Premium Course on Mobage consists of two offerings, one for the hit game "Kaitou Royale", and another one for avatars (by which each Mobage member must be represented).

Users subscribing for the first course can choose between four options (monthly cost: US$6 and up) to get items for use in Kaitou Royale, and what's interesting is that some items in the game can't be obtained in any other way. Monthly prices for the avatar-related plan, dubbed Aisatsu Premium Course, start at $2.40 (six options).

The obvious motivation for DeNA for adding subscription plans to per-item purchases (which are still possible for both Kaitou Royale and avatars) is to make spending money on Mobage easier for its members. The Premium Course is only accessible to NTT Docomo and KDDI au customers though: SoftBank subscribers and those visiting Mobage through their smartphones are left out at this point.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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(Continued from the previous post.)

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Category 7: The Most Remarkable Apps From Outside China

Twitter (In Chinese, "推特" Tui-te) is a social micro-blog service.  Its unique and simple architecture have highly contributed to the development of social network services.

Kik Messenger is an app of social messaging services for multiple smartphone platforms.  The app cannot handle pictures nor attachment files, but is highly evaluated with its simplicity and easy-to-use interface.

Foursquare is a location-based mobile service and keep your friends update with your realtime location. Using the service, you may "check in" at locations such as hotels, shops and homes of your frinds.  You are allowed to announce your location on popular social network platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

PopCap Games is a series of tower defence games of Windows, Mac OS X and iPhone OS.

Groupon is an origin of "deals of the day" site.

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Category 8: The Most Remarkable Start-ups

Xiaomi.com[C] (小米科技) was founded by talented people previously working with Google, Microsoft and Kingsoft, and has been developing smartphone apps and hot mobile services since last April.  The company fundraised from well-known angel investors, Venus Software (启明), Hong Kong-based VC firm Morningside Group.

Anguanjia.com[C] (安管佳) is a set of smartphone security management software having features like virus protection, cloud protection, system optimization, traffic monitoring, system management, privacy protection, phone and information filtering and thief protection.

ShuCang.com[C] (书仓) gives you a great user experience of arranging your text, making it a story and publishing it as an e-book.   ShuCang.com is a virtual private study designed for every user, and allows him/her to create e-books/e-newspapers online and share them with the other users.   You can get them export in epub, mobi, chm, pdf and doc formats, and upload in txt, umd and epub formats.   The user can read content online from his/her virtual library with PC or mobile.   The iPhone users are required to install Stanza for browsing the content, and the PC users have to install FBreader.  Those using other platform smartphones have to install Mobipocket.  ShuCang.com is developed and operated by Epubsys Inc.[C]

42qu.com[C] (42 区) is a C2C dealing platform for professionals where users can offer pay-per-hour consultation on various topics according to their expertise.   The website currently focuses on IT areas, as of September 2010, more than 70 specialists offer the services in programming, website design and product operation.   Each member of the "think tank" team of 42qu.com is introduced with portraits, profiles, contact information (such as Douban.com (豆瓣), Twitter and Google Buzz), areas of expertise, rates of on-line consultation and information for appointing off-line consultation.    The specialists currently bill their customers USD 7.60-760 (CNY50-5,000) for a case according to their tariffs.   Their clients can pay it online by Alipay.

Wiyun[C] (微云) is a China-orginated globally leading platform serving Chinese-speaking mobile app and game developers.   The platform includes WiAd (ad services), WiGame (game services) and upcoming cloud services.  Wiyun is well-experienced in operating mobile resource platforms.

Dianxin[C] (点心) is a China's smartphone OS designed for the Chinese and has an independent intellectual property from those of other smartphone platforms.

Quick-pai[C] (Quick拍) is a smartphone app for generating and scanning QR codes.

Qiumi.cc[C] (球迷网) is China's largest innovative community for authentic soccer fans.   It provides discussion forums, info about soccer events, virtual reality services for PC and many smartphone platforms.

Qieke.com[C] (切客网) is a location-based service by Shanghai-headquartered and NASDAQ-listed Shanda Interactive Entertainment (盛大互动娱乐).  It allows you to tell your friends where you are and to share experiences happening in your entire life.   With the app, you can check in at every location, record it, become a virtual landlord of it and earn travel miles.

Jiankongbao[C] (监控宝) is a free service by Beijing-based Yunzhihui (云智慧科技, meaning "cloud knowledge tech"), and allows you to monitor the uptime of your servers and websites.  When it fails to connect to your servers or websites, those administrating them will be warned by e-mail or SMS for decreasing the downtime as short as possible.   Furthermore, you can track speeds of accesses that have visited your website from every corner of the country.

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Let me say again, Chinamode 2010[C]'s award-presenting ceremony will be held in Beijing on the 24th of this month.  I'm looking forward to it, and I'll try to make a write-up covering the event.

Via: Social Beta [C]

Tags: China, Company, New Service, News by Masaru IKEDA
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Two Tokyo-based startups, social commerce site Flutterscape and human translation platform myGengo, have announced a partnership that will make it easier for Japanese Flutterscape users to post product discoveries on the site. The way Flutterscape works is that the site lets any individual living in Japan sell any cool product they have seen somewhere to people living outside the country.

Once a product is purchased, Flutterscape takes care of much of the heavy lifting for the seller (shipping from Japan, payment etc.). So far so good, but since those international buyers usually don't read Japanese, sellers must explain their product discoveries in English: in other words, sellers with no command of English are left out.

Through the partnership with myGengo, these sellers can now order translations of product titles and descriptions into English when they post new items - right on the site itself (through myGengo's human translation API). One character costs $0.03, with myGengo saying that most product listings should be priced at around $4.

Both companies have apparently been doing pretty well well in recent months. Flutterscape, which launched in January last year, currently counts 1,500 sellers and around 50,000 international buyers. myGengo says it has has doubled revenue each quarter over the past year and boasts a number of big-name investors from Japan and the US.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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A group of three guys including an ex-Yahoo Japan employee introduced Mimiuchi[J] (meaning whispering in someone's ear), a new Twitter service that allows you to confirm mutual love with someone you are interested in only with his/her Twitter account and without confession.   Of course, for making a result, both you and someone of your interest need have their own Twitter accounts and complete sign-ups for the Mimiuchi service.

Someone of your interest will not learn you are interested in him/her unless the service confirm mutual love.   Your Twitter followers never know it, neither.   The both will receive Twitter DMs when the service confirm mutual love.

You are allowed to register a single person (a single Twitter account) as someone of your interest, and to change it once in 24 hours.   A mutual love is confirmed every seven minute, the group says.  They expect to have it raise up to Japan's current frequency of marriage registration, which is a new marriage happening every 1.5 minute.  They also plan to launch an English version of the service soon.

[Update: Feb 6, 2011]

Mimiuchi launched its English version.

See Also:

• Hitomebo: Your Cellphone Helps Inducing A Coincidental Meet To Dating

Tags: Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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