About Us
Asiajin is a weblog focused on Asian startup companies, websites, and technology communities. Our mission is to provide timely articles about Asian Internet in English.
Asiajin staff
“Akky” AKIMOTO
Akky is a founder of Book-reading community by Twitter I’vRead and Comparison Chart Communiy Narabe.
For 3 days per week, Akky is working for Cybozu Labs as a professional blogger. He is one of the first pro-bloggers in Japanese websphere, and received the Alphablogger Award which is given to Japanese web A-listers.
Besides being a blogger and entrepreneur, he has a software engineering background and loves manga.
Shunichi ARAI
Arai is a president of software consultant company mellowtone Inc. He lives in Fukuoka, Kyushu.
The Japanese government called Arai a ‘genius programmer/super creator’[pdf] in its famous software engineer support program “Mitou Project.” He is also known by his blog and social activities for software engineers.
Shunichi Arai has studied Korean language in Seoul for 4 months. Shun loves Korean culture, food, and people.
Serkan TOTO
Serkan is a German based in Tokyo. Like us, he is passionate about introducing Japanese IT to the rest of the world. Currently, Serkan is a PhD candidate researching at Keio University in Tokyo.
He is also an author for mega tech blog TechCrunch/CrunchGear, covering Japan-related technology and web trends. All of his TechCrunch articles in English are here, the Japanese translations here.
Follow him on Twitter here.
Masaru IKEDA
Masaru has co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms in Tokyo. He has been contributing serial columns to nationwide newspapers and IT periodicals, also he’s currently serving as tech consultant for several web companies. See this for more bio.
His private blog is here.
Hiroumi MITANI
Hiroumi is working at the international development office of Rakuten. He is the first guy who contacted us about joining. He is also well-known for his Japanese blog.
Andrew SHUTTLEWORTH
Mobile consultant and the hub of Tokyo expat communities, Andrew has been helping Asiajin a lot. He is the organizer of Tokyo 2.0 and several other events.
Wataru YAMAKI
Young student/IT Consultant who is graduating from Keio University. He is interested in working abroad to become an international entrepreneur.
Sean O’HAGAN
Sean is a Canadian based in west Tokyo. Sean runs an English school and in his spare time, he writes, edits, and plays with code. He has appeared on mega tech blog TechCrunch exactly one time.
Satoko HIBI
We are asking for her profile.
mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka ERLEWINE)
mitcho is a linguist and coder now in Boston at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began proofreading and editing for Asiajin while he was living in Tokyo working for Mozilla Labs. You can visit his website and follow him on twitter.
Others
We have contributors who are researching in Japanese, native speakers who revise English for clarity. Thanks Andrew, Tokuriki and Robert.
How we started
Asiajin is founded by two Japanese bloggers, Akky AKIMOTO and Shunichi ARAI. The official launch date was December 13th, 2007, though we had been preparing some articles before the public release.
We need your help
The Asian Internet community is disconnected. The language barrier is a big problem when we communicate with people from other countries. As such, Asian startups are not well known outside of their own countries.
We want this to change.
We want to create strong ties between Asian countries and Internet communities.
We want to give them a chance to gain international attention, funding, and chance of acquisition.
If you are living in Asia and want to help us, please tell us about your country’s famous websites, charming startups, or active technology/business communities. Asiajin welcomes your articles!
Please send us your tips and info on interesting internet trends and services at 
.