Asiajin

On Friday, Japan’s very own video portal and geek paradise Nico Nico Douga announced a partnership with this country’s most influential web site, Yahoo! Japan.

First, Nico Nico decided to expand its “ichiba” (market place) offering by adding a Yahoo! Shopping button beneath all of its videos. Users can alternatively click on an Amazon button to see merchandise which is somehow related to the videos they are watching. Moreover, it is possible to download music and ringtones.

Picture: New Yahoo! Shopping button

Picture: Search results from Yahoo! Shooping

It is about time Nico Nico Douga made a move. While the site is wildly popular especially in the otaku community, Dwango (Nico Nico Douga’s parent company) is said to lose around 100 million Yen a month due to high server and other costs.

Further moves announced

Also, Yahoo! Japan now integrates videos from Nico Nico into its search index (under the video tab). This is the first time Nico Nico shares information with outside parties. Users still need to login in order to actually view the material though.

As a third result of the collaboration, it is planned that users owning a Yahoo! Japan ID can soon login to Nico Nico without registering to the video service (probably by OpenID).

If this collaboration doesn’t help Nico Nico to further expand its user base and sales, I don’t know what will.

Tags: Japan, News, Video by serkantoto
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The Japanese government is planning to legislate regulations of “harmful” Internet content. Now, Liberal Democratic Party’s Sanae Takaichi is preparing to pass an Internet censorship law.

Now several groups are acting against the legislation.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Rakuten, DeNA, and NetStar made an official statement against the legislation. One of the leaders of this action is Masanori Kusunoki (@masanork or mkusunok at hatena, both in JP), a deputy CTO of Microsoft KK.

MiAU (JP) (Movement for the Internet Active Users) is a vocal political NPO acting against the abuse of copyrights and Internet censorship. They are acting against the law too.

WIDE project made a statement in English too. WIDE is a leading Internet research group in Japan.

Tags: Community, Japan by shunichi arai
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The Japan’s biggest conference on Ruby, RubyKaigi 2008, will start to sell tickets from 10th of May 10:00 JST (GMT+0900). Ticket will be sold out immediately (in few hours, probably).

The conference will be held from 20th-22nd June, but talks are planned only on 21st and 22nd. The venue is Tsukuba International Congress Center in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki, Japan, 45 minutes from Tokyo.

RubyKaigi 2008 is a less international conference than YAPC::Asia 2008. Most talks will be given with Japanese, but still a few talks in English are planned at this moment. If you are living in Japan, or East Asia, it is worth considering to join.

Ticked can be bought at Lawson convinience store chain in Japan. If you are living outside of Japan, you have to contact them by e-mail.

I’m going to talk at the conference too. See you there.

Tags: Community, Japan by shunichi arai
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I noticed that the animation gif gallery on Niconico Douga is on del.icio.us popular.

Some people may think what the hell it is. It is not a free-icon gallery.

As the page is a kind of secret page, there are no explanation on it. The page title means “No Title” in Japanese. These icons have been made (and still increasing) for Niconico Douga’s top page, where these animation icons are randomely displayed. If you are a registered user and logging it, you will see them.

So what is the purpose of them? Nothing. It seems that the people inside originally made them just for pleasure. Sometimes that space also shows ad animation GIF recently.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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The Japanese are known to be one of the most fashion-conscious people in the world. And rumor has it they are the busiest. Their purchasing power is very high. Moreover, Japan boasts one of the largest markets for print magazines in the world.

Combine these elements and out comes a web site like nekore.

The service is presumably unique on a global level: Consumers are able to order items they stumble upon in fashion magazines without getting in touch with manufacturers or retailers! All they need to do is to register at nekore.com, email the page number of a magazine (the list is here) and location of the pants, jacket, pair of shoes etc. on the page and wait. A mobile site is also available.

Picture: nekore home page (main menu points translated in red)

Picture: Selection of magazines

Employees of the service investigate if the item in question is available, (if yes) wait for the payment and then complete the whole transaction by delivering a package to the customer’s door! Customers can choose between credit card payment, COD, bank transfer and payment at convenience stores.

The delivery is done by nekore’s parent company Yamato Holdings. Yamato is a huge Japanese logistics company but primarily known as a parcel delivery giant in this country. It established nekore in November 2004 as the first service of its kind. Similar sites include magaseek and Love Fashion! JO.

Although Yamato can use its own transportation infrastructure, pricing is rather steep. Depending on the value of the order, nekore charges at least 3,800 Yen (36 USD/23 Euros) for the transaction. For some strange reason, the minimum price for orders based on finds in magazines for men is 1,000 Yen higher. The site seems to be doing OK though. It became profitable in March last year.

nekore’s offering is ideal for people who don’t have the time or nerves to search for specific items on their own. Moreover, customers in rural or remote areas might be in the target group as well.

While the business model makes sense in a way, I am sure a web service like nekore would fail in Germany, for example (where I hail from). This is simply because most customers there would feel the prices are too high.

How about North American and European (Non-German) customers?

Tags: Japan, Service by serkantoto
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Today’s launched MySpace new feature, MySpace Karaoke, seems inaccessible from Japan, as you know, the birthplace of karaoke.

We apologize, but this content is not licensed in your region, and therefore, cannot be played.

We are working on launching international sites soon so please be sure to check back with us.

Sing your heart out!

MySpace Karaoke team

Well, not a big deal, actually.

• MySpace Japan exists so they may have different service plan, as the blocking page implies.
• MySpace is not popular in Japan, anyway. Mighty Mixi might be thinking similar service
• music copyright processing tends to be restricted by country border (sigh)
• No Japanese songs, I assume (cannot check from here!)

On Japanese internet, there are several paid internet-karaoke services (Paso kara hodai, karaoke@dam, Internet Songbank, etc.), but they are not “social” services but just audio (without vocal) download services.

Another example of regional restriction, Pandora, the popular internet radio, is not usable from Japan.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Recently a dangerous method of commiting suicide became a phenomenon in Japan. The method involves using a bottle of cleaner and bath salts to create lethal hydrogen sulfide gas.

This method was spread through the notorious ‘2ch’ bulletin board system. It is assumed someone explained the suicide method on some board, and many people copied and pasted it into many other boards.

This suicide method endangers family members and ambulance team because large amount of hydrogen sulfide gas are generated and the gas will last for hours.

The Products needed can be easily obtained at local drugstores. It’s obviously a serious threat to public safety. It is really sad that the Internet community kills people.

If you search a name of bath salts at Google, Google suggests ’suicide’ as a related keyword. Amazon recommends a ‘complete suicide handbook’ (完全自殺マニュアル) for bath salts.

Some people say the major coverage of mass-media worsens the situation. Historically, there were many suicidal phenomena in Japan. The media should be really careful when covering suicide incidents.

In the 18th century, Chikamatsu Monzaemon wrote a play called ‘Sonezaki Shinju’. The play had generated a big shinju (double suicide) boom in Edo (later Tokyo).

Around 2000, there was a phenomenon which involved people committing suicide with coal briquettes. They burned briquettes inside a small room or a car to generate carbon monoxide. This method was also spread through the Internet and mass-media. Sometimes people commit suicide with people they met in Internet communities focused on suicide. This is called ‘Net shinju’ (ネット心中).

A partial list of hydrogen sulfide suicidal incidents:
* 2007 July, a college student killed himself. His mother and brother died by gas.
* Feb. 29th, a grad school student killed himself. His mother and grandmother were hospitalized.
* March 12th, a highschool student killed himself. His mother died by gas.
* March 27th, a part-time worker killed himself. His family member were hospitalized.
* April 24th, a junior highschool student killed herself. 20 people living in the apartment were hospitalized, a woman is in serious condition. 50 are evacuated from the apartment.

See also:

• Asahi.com article: Girl uses hydrogen sulfide in suspected suicide; dozens sick 

Tags: Japan, News by shunichi arai
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Kendo is the Japanaese martial art of fencing.

A niche magazine for Kendo “Monthly Kendo Jidai (Age of Kendo)” has released a blog widget and made a shattering blow among Japanse blogsphere.

The latest issue of Kendo Jidai

Kendo Magazine Official BLog Widget

Once you set up this widget on your blog and push “Fight!” button, the samrai stands up and make a bow. Then he cuts a negative keyword in the blog article into pieces by the sword to smash your negative spirit.

The Samurai finds out a negative keyword and starts action…

Then cut the negative keyword into pieces….

Here is an English demonstration page to check with your own eyes.

Sample Weblog (English)

Terminate every negative keywords on your blog and reshape your spirt with this Samurai widget!

Thanks to idea*idea for suggesting us to write this in English.

Tags: Japan, Joke, New Service by hiroumi
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We found it. Anyone can switch your twitter to Japanese menu (and advertising!) from [Settings]->[Account tab]->[Language drop down]-[Japanese]. Or if your browser’s language settings precedes Japanese, you will see Japanese interface on twitter.com

Here you are,

At top of the sidebar, you can see an ad box, which is planned to be backported to English version.

The JP domain - twitter.jp -, which we expected a Japanese version, is merely forwarding to twitter.com . Whether it is owned by twitter or not is unknown. (confirmed that twitter Inc. owns twitter.jp [J])

Top page before login also can be switched to Japanese,

What kind of ads?

Now I’m seeing following ads on Japanese twitter.

• Toyota
• en-Japan (outplacement service company)
• two twitter guidebooks (kind of “twitter for dummies” books)
• twitter API guidebook

Toyota’s ad takes you to the page which encourages you to follow their portal Gazoo.com.

See Also:

twitter Japan launched … where?

Press Conference on Ustream [Live]

[Update]

Press Rrelease by Digital Garage [J]

Official twitter blog (English) mentioned

Digital Garage founder Joi Ito’s blog

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Nikkei Shimbun wrote that twitter, Inc. (San Francisco, California) starts its Japanese localized version on 23rd (already today in Japan, JST = Japan Standard Time).

Digital Garage has been working on this localization. Japanese tweets (messages on twitter) are gaining about 20 % of all twitter users, and its interface are expected to be translated for expanding to regular internet users.

This Japanese version is said to have advertisement from beginning, hoping to be profitable. This advertisement method is planned to be exported back to original English version, as the news said.

twitter’s Japan domain, http://twitter.jp/ is still showing “not found” error page then redirected to English version. We will report when we found it on.

[Updated] we’ve found it.

via Nikkei Net

See Also:

Twitter Japan dev team showed some plans

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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