Business daily The Nikkei says it learned that Amazon Japan, the country's second-biggest e-commerce company, is planning to finally offer its e-book reader Kindle to Japanese customers.

According to the paper, Amazon is expected to launch Kindle devices in April this year "for less than 20,000 yen" (US$257). Apparently, the Kindle Touch will be positioned as the flagship model, while there is no word on how or if the Kindle Fire will be introduced, too.

For the 3G connection, Amazon has chosen mobile carrier NTT Docomo as its partner. Just like in other markets, Japanese Kindle owners will be able to download books over 3G for free, provided they decide to go for Kindles offering both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Rumors about Amazon Japan entering the domestic e-book market have been circulating for a long time. In November/December 2011, for example, The Nikkei speculated that the company was ready to start offering e-books by the end of 2011 (which obviously didn't happen).

In an interview with the paper from November 2011, Yoshinobu Noma, president of major publisher Kodansha, said that he estimates Japan's e-book market to be worth 65 billion yen (US$837 million). Noma also said that 90% of sales in this segment come from content distributed to cell phones - a number that will surely change when the Kindle becomes a hit in Japan, too.

In Japan, the Amazon device will go head-to-head with other e-readers and tablet hybrids like Sharp's Galapagos, Sony's E-Reader, Toshiba's BookPlace, Panasonic's Raboo, or Fujitsu's Flepia.

Report: Amazon To Bring Kindle To Japan In April

Japan's largest mobile marketing and advertising firm, D2 Communications (D2C), has acquired a 0.9% stake in Tokyo-based Ubiqituous Entertainment (UEI). D2C acquired a total of 400 UEI shares - other financial details of the deal, which was officially announced [JP] today, weren't disclosed.

In April last year, the two companies started a program called 9leap [JP] for young game smartphone game designers (our previous coverage).

With the capital partnership, D2C and UEI plan to continue the program, co-develop HTML5-based web services and mobile ad solutions, and use the latter company's knowhow in the gaming field to create new applications and content.

Founded in 2000, D2C is said to be not only Japan's largest but also oldest mobile advertising company. D2C's parent company is the country's biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo - other shareholders are Dentsu, Dentsu Digital, and NTT Advertsing.

D2 Communications Acquires 0.9% Stake In Tokyo-Based Ubiqituous Entertainment

The smartphone location sharing service Foursquare has added the “Sakura Badge,” limited to the Tokyo area.  This is the first appearance of a limited badge from Foursquare in Japan.

The conditions for opening a “Sakura Badge” are to follow the “Sakura Badge List” [J] with 62 spots carefully selected by Foursquare within the capital, and then check in to 5 of these 62 spots.  By the way, last year Shibuya Station and Shinjuku Station were popular spots, ranking 2nd and 3rd in the world respectively for Foursquare check-ins.

Translation authorized by VSmedia

Let’s Get a Foursquare Limited Tokyo Badge!

Twitter added more choices of cities on its trending keywords in Japan on February 2. There were only all-Japan and Tokyo rankings before.

6 cities, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kyoto, Fukuoka and Sendai are the new ones.

View Twitter Trends On New Japanese Cities in a full screen map

There are many bigger cities than Sendai, but most of them are satellite cities of the largest ones (Yokohama, Kawasaki, Saitama, Chiba for Tokyo, Kobe for Osaka) so they were probably selected to make geographic balance. Hiroshima, which has slightly more population than Sendai, could have been chosen though.

I am unsure if different cities will make much difference on trends. We will report if there are anything interesting observed.

Not Only Tokyo – Twitter Japan Adds 6 More Japanese Cities On Trending Topics

Koei Tecmo [J] has made a contract with Taiwan’s Cayenne Entertainment Tchnology and have announced that they will develop their currently offered social game “Nobu-nyaga’s Ambition” for Yahoo! Mobage and Mobage in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.

Koei Tecmo has also until now been developing joint service under management license contract for “Age of Discovery Online” and “Dynasty Warriors Online” with Cayenne in the same regions.  This time Cayenne will handle the management of “Nobu-nyaga’s Ambition” on location.  Already a Teaser Site [C] and a Facebook Page [C] have been opened, and the cat generals appearing in the game and game system are introduced.  Furthermore the Chinese version title of “Nobu-nyaga’s Ambition” has been adapted for language using Chinese characters only as “信猫之野望.”

Nobu-nayaga’s Ambition walkthrough guide Cat Book of Heraldry [J]

Translation authorized by VSmedia

Nobu-nyaga’s Ambition Steps Into Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau

CyberAgent [J] announced on December 30th of 2011 that the number of users of their “Ameba” [J] community has topped 20 million.  To commemorate this momentous development of the “Ameba” service, they held the 20 Million Member Breakthrough! Thank You Campaign [J] between January 10th and 23rd.

Since the Ameba service opened in September of 2004, focused on blogs, they have expanded their various service develepment and features such as the virtual space “Ameba Pigg” and the miniblog “Ameba Nau,” and they have been steadily expanding their base of users.  Particularly their “Ameba Pigg” service, which opened in February of 2009, reached 10 million users in November of 2011.  Also in 2011 use from smartphones increased, and in one year, monthly page views grew by more than 10 times, continuing their rapid growth.

As for the “20 Million Member Breakthrough! Thank You Campaign,” plans in the works for various services offered by “Ameba” are being developed for PC, mobile and smartphone.  For “Ameba Pigg,” limited items are on sale for 20 Ame-Gold, and for 4 popular “Ameba Mobile” titles, each are giving away limited campaign items.  Also, during the campaign, 20 Million of the virtual currency “Ame-Gold” is being uniformly returned and distributed to all users who have purchased “Ame-Gold,” and various other plans are in effect.

Translation authorized by VSmedia

CyberAgent’s “Ameba” Tops 20 Million Users

JKT48, the Indonesian sister band of ultra-popular Japanese girl group AKB48 (Asiajin), is promoting Rakuten Belanja Online, Rakuten's joint venture with Jakarta-based media powerhouse PT Global Mediacom, on Indonesian TV.

In the 30-second commercial, various members of the group can be seen wearing different clothes and accessories and using gadgets - and apparently all items can be bought on the site.

Rakuten Belanja Online was first announced back in December 2010 and began operations in June 2011.

Here's the JKT48 TV spot:

Video: Girl Band JKT48 (AKB48′s Sister Band) Promoting Rakuten In Indonesia

Pixiv, the most popular of Japan's many social drawing services, announced [ENG] it hit an amazing four million registered users last Saturday (January 28).

It took the site, which launched on September 10 in 2007, exactly 1,602 days to reach that milestone. That's about 2,500 users per day - not bad at all, especially for a niche site, over such a long period.

Pixiv got its first million users in June 2009, reached 2 million users in May 2010 and hit 3 million users in March 2011. With 4 million users, roughly 4% of Japan's online population have now registered for the service.

Users are generating 2.8 billion page views per month and have submitted a staggering 24.5 million works so far.

You can read more about Pixiv in TechCrunch.com's recent article, on Asiajin, or over on Wikipedia.

Registration in English is possible here.

Social Illustration Service Pixiv Hits 4 Million Members

Twitter Japan official blog announced on January 23 that they added a feature to find friends from your Yahoo! Japan mail address.

Twitter Japan supported Gmail and Microsoft Hotmail and Messenger address books to search your friend on Twitter.

Twitter Japan Add A Function To Find Friends From Yahoo! Japan Address Book

Hulu Japan, actvila, and other existing video content providers are getting competition soon: a total of seven Japanese companies are currently preparing a video-on-demand service for connected TVs that's scheduled to launch on April 2 this year.

Dubbed "Motto TV" [JP, PDF], the service is backed by:

• advertising agency Dentsu
• Nippon Television Network
• TV Asahi
• Tokyo Broadcasting System Television
• TV Tokyo
• Fuji Television Network
• NHK

What's especially interesting here is that not only five commercial TV networks are taking part, but also NHK, Japan's national public broadcasting organization.

NHK alone is ready to contribute a total of about 4,000 shows to the 10,500 programs Motto TV will start off with. Users will need to own compatible TV sets that are expected to go on sale from April.

Motto TV programs can be selected via the remote control, for example anime shows, TV series, or comedy programs. Fees vary, depending on the program itself and the station that's broadcasting it.

Users can browse through the content by selecting different genres, entering key words, or accessing rankings from the menu.

Motto TV: Japan Gets New Video-On-Demand Service