This week's Japanese Web/IT related news which we did not write as a dedicated article.

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• Jean Reno Plays A Popular Kids Sci-Fi Robot Doraemon On Toyota's "After 20 Years" Commercial Series

  

  from this

  crazy strong yen!

• Middle-aged Social Hobby Network Debang.jp Opens via
• Softbank Begins Music Service For Its Androids - Softbank Music Box
• Nico Nico Douga Begins Movie Distribution Service With 100 Movies
• A Mixi Engineer Tries To Work On New Sony Headmount Display HMZ-T1
• A Japanese Book Explains 30 Social Media Enjou(flaming incidents) In Last 12 Years
• Karaoke Music Provider DAM Releases An App Makes Your iPhone A Song Input Controller
• Softbank Mobile, Credi Saison, Amex Starts Android NFC Payment Experiment
• Docomo To Export Low-Cost Osaifu Ketai System For Other Asian Markets
• Kayac's KoF iPhone App Available On More Countries - UK/Canada/Australia/NZ and Soon In Korea - Japan version
• Ameba Pigg Reaches 10 Million Users, English Version Pico 4 Millions
• Bra Unhook App For iOS

  

  via ITMedia

• Sharp Announces New Galapagos Tablet
• Cocktail Personification Coterier Book, Polymorphic of Cocktail
• Panda+Gundam=Pandam

  

  via Nuruwota ga Kiru

• Docomo Starts D-Menu and D-Market For Smartphone, To Transfer i-Mode Paid Contents Subscribers
• Gaiax To Establish A Subsidiary GaiaX Asia In Phillipine to provide multi-language Facebook page watch and internationalization support for smartphone apps
• A Twitter Account To Make Semi-private Tweets Gets 20,000 Followers Without Tweeting I did not know this @itsumonoTL. It relates the March earthquake, maybe Japanese-ish
• NHK Reports iTunes Store Troubles That Non-Purchased Apps/Songs Were Charged

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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Docomo started to sell Regza Phone T-01D [J], Fujitsu-Toshiba Android phone November 18, but in the afternoon it stopped selling and announced that the handset has malfunction [J]. Docomo had been selling 5,200 of T-01D until 17:00, and 245 of the purchasers reported issues that they could not call or access the web.

via Ketai Watch [J]

[Update 2011-11-23] Docomo announced [J] on Nov 22 that the issue was that you can not turn on the handset when battery is charged less than 5%. Software update will be distributed as soon as becoming ready.

Tags: Android, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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In Japan, Starbucks Coffee, Subway Sandwich and Ramen Jiro are the shops which make many first visitors feel scared by their mystic words to order.

Custaba is a Japanese Android app on which you can simulate coffee ordering at Starbucks.

The generated order in the screenshot above is "Tall vanilla two-percent caramel source dark Mocha chip frappuccino" in Japanese notation.

The developer's note says,

"It seems difficult to order at Starbucks coffee shop. I have no idea what to order in what way. If you make up your mind before visiting shops on this app, you will be able to buy in a fluid motion" [J]

Sutaba Kowaina (Afraid Of Starbucks) is another Android app

"This is an app to make you order coffee smoothly and precisely at Starbucks Coffee. Now you are not afraid of Starbucks any more!" [J]

Sutaba Kowaina developer says that he was inspired by a Japanese manga "Nichijou"(Daily Life) depicting a scene in a coffee shop. Here you can watch the Anime version of it with English subtitle.

You will see how some people are afraid of ordering with those magic Western words.

Custaba has been downloaded over 100,000 times. Sutaba Kowaina is over 5,000 downloads. Those people practiced how to order at Starbucks on them.

via Netolabo: Iced Double Tall Double Hazelnuts Extra Formy Latte

Tags: Android, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Yahoo! Mobage, a joint social game networking service for PC run by Japan's largest web service Yahoo! Japan and mobile social game giant DeNA, starts a present campaign celebrating its 6 million users registration.

If you play any games on Yahoo! Mobage first in time, and purchase anything on selected stores on Yahoo! Shopping, you will get 1,000 Yahoo! points, which is worth 1,000 yen for shopping on Yahoo!.

Yahoo! Mobage passed 3 million users in March, 5 months after launch, so their adding latter half of the 5 million took 8 months, which is slowed-down. However, the pace is still higher than Facebook, as its active users are around 5.24 million according to SocialBakers (which is not super precise though) currently.

Indeed, people pay lots less on PC social game if you compare with Japanese feature phone social game, but Yahoo! Mobage is taking up a firm position with people who play social game on PC based social network in Japan.

Tags: Japan, Social game by Akky Akimoto
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Takafumi Horie, an ex-Livedoor CEO who is in Jail since June 9 this year in violation of the Securities and Exchange Law, aka Horienmon, was announced to start a new manga series on fortnightly mahjong (wikipedia) comic magazine Kindai Mahjong [J].

There are two mahjong-only comic magazines in Japan. People playing mahjong is decreasing, but that shows how it is still popular.

The December 1st issue forenotice above features this new series "Horie Senki K24S Episode1"(Horie's War K24S) with most of its space. The ad has phrases like "The biggest impact on this year!!!!", "New Series from jail now (-now is a popular Twitter jargon in Japanese)", "In year 1991, Horiemon first got on mahjong when he moved up to Tokyo", etc.

So this comic will be a story which young Horie, who entered the nation's top university, The University of Tokyo, plays mahjong. Besides his many business essay books, he already wrote two novels, which are fiction but strongly models him and around.

After he left the company, the Livedoor was broken into a stock-holding company Livedoor Holdings, which was already disbanded, and the portal company Livedoor is going to be merged into NHN Japan next January.

He still keeps influences to many people by Twitter(@takapon_jp [J])( and a paid newsletter, both are updated via his agents.

See Also:

ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie’s Last Nude! Before Imprisonment

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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