Yokohama DeNA Baystars, which became real on December 1st by an acquisition by DeNA, a company runs social game networking service Mobage, announced [J] the new team logo on December 9.

Its "DeNA" part is not so similar with the DeNA's company logo.

The former logo of Yokohama Baystars was this,

Yokohama Baystars was one of few pro-baseball teams which did not have owner company's name (which is TBS, nation-wide TV broadcasting network company). Most of 12 teams have a company name in it and the owners sponsor teams by seeing it as a part of advertising.

See Also:

Asiajin » Mobage Company DeNA Rumored To Buy A Pro Baseball Team, PR Denied

Asiajin » Social Game Networking Mobage Reported To Own Pro-Baseball Team In Japan

Asiajin » Yokohama DeNA Bay Stars – DeNA(Mobage) Agrees To Purchase Pro Baseball Team

Tags: Japan, Social game by Akky Akimoto
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Japan's national carrier Japan Airlines(JAL) announced the world's first digital manga(Japanese comic) service "Sky Manga" on board with one of the nation's largest publisher Shogakukan and digital publishing company eBook Initiative Japan [J]. The new service will be a part of new Boeing 787 debut on JAL.

The service will start from March 2012, 90 comics in total, the first to the third series of each 30 manga-s supplied by Shogakukan. The manga-s are changed each couple of months. The first selection includes following popular comics series (click to Amazon Japan),

Major―Dramatic baseball comic (1)

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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After the unexpected collaboration announcement by Google and AKB48 project yesterday, Japanese Google+ scene is very reactivated.

The word by Google's product VP Bradley Horowitz, who is visiting Japan (likely) for the AKB48 announcement is good how huge it is in Japan,

If you don't know AKB48, you don't live in Japan (or in fact, many other parts of Asia.) They are phenomenon that might be equivalent to the Beatles + American Idol + the Spice Girls + Justin Timberlake... They are a roster of more than 200 hand-selected performers who are the subject of huge media attention, and support from millions of devoted fans.

According to Google+ Ranking by UserLocal, top Japanese Google+ user by number of followers totally replaced with AKB48 girls. UserLocal also set up an AKB48-only followers ranking as it is the biggest interest on Japanese G+.

7 of the top 10(#2, #3 and #5-#9) are now AKB48 members who began Google+ yesterday. 20 AKBs are ranked in top 30. I was at around 25th before AKB but now at 67th after 42 AKBs

In compare to Twitter, where the top rankers boast million followers, the most followed Japanese user only has sub-40K followers. When you think the influence of TV, it is not strange and the ranking will be soon occupied all by AKB48, or other TV celebrities may ride the bandwagon from Twitter and Ameblo.

This Google+'s move with AKB48 definitely let many ordinal people know and join Google+, but I am not sure how much Google expected this beforehand.

5 languages translation

As reported, their messages on Google+ are being translated into 5 languages. It is done by a Google user AKB48 Translator to translating some (not all) of top AKB48 members' messages into 5 (or 6, as it seems to write both in Simplified and Traditional Chinese) languages like this.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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A Tokyo guy whose name is Ryoma Sakamoto complained on Twitter that he had been banned from Facebook as he was using a fake name.

Facebookが突然使えなくなった。「あなたのアカウントは、登録されている名前が実名でなかったため、停止されました。」本名なんですが…。

2011/12/08 14:14:51 via web

坂本龍馬

ryomanow

"I was suddenly unable to access Facebook. 'Your account was suspended because your using name is not a real name', which is not true..."

He tweeted "Facebook is asking him to submit two images of identity, when I could rent a video and buy a cellphone with only one ID."

His employer, a Tokyo-based publisher Shufu no Tomo sha confirmed [J] that he is a real Ryoma Sakamoto and belongs to a sales division on its company PR Twitter account.

Another Ryoma Sakamoto is one of the most popular historic icon in Japan. NHK made a TV drama series on Sakamoto in 2010 with featuring a popular singer/actor Masaharu Fukuyama.

Sakamoto Ryoma, born in Kochi in 1835, made a great contribution to Japan's rapid modernization which marked the end of 700 years of feudal government. The modernized nation he pictured had laws, a parliamentary system and a diplomatic office.

That banned Sakamoto's icon photo is obviously a one in Japanese kimono which disguised the historical figure Sakamoto's popular photo, and his blog [J] shows he is trying to impersonate the great Sakamoto. There are some other "Ryoma Sakamoto" there on Facebook.

Hat tip to @bulkneet

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) announced Wednesday it will elevate Cookpad, a Tokyo-based recipe web service operator, to the First Section from the Mothers Section effective December 15.

Moving from Mothers or the second section to the first section generally means that the company is evaluated better, stable.

Early this year, I wrote how Rakuten chased Cookpad by paying newcomers to write recipes on The Japan Times. At that point, rapidly increased number of recipe on Rakuten seemed that people changed their service by money, however, even there are enough number of recipes on Rakuten, it was only data but users seemed not to migrate.

Cookpad seems not "growing" but keeps steady.

via ITMedia [J]

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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