Asiajin

When browsing Japanese websites, especially user-generated ones like BBS, you may see a lot of “w” letter at the end of lines on Japanese text. Such like,

“Blablabla www”

Do you know what they are? Those “w”, “ww”, “www” or longer consective “w”s mean laugh, laugh out loud in Japan.

i share Inc. recently researched how people recognizes “www”, with 472 internet users. The result is that 61.2% of ２０’s Japanese thinks “www” as big laugh, against the rest 38.8% think it as “the world wide web”.

The origin of the “www” is, probably,

(笑)

which means “(laugh)”, pronounced as “warai” in Japanese. Then, people who do not have much time to type in Japanese (well, it takes time to type in phonetic codes first, then convert them into Kanji, Chinese origin letters in Japanese), who were on online-game chat and/or instant messengers, started “(warai)” without Kanji conversion

(warai)

shotened,

(w)

later, closing brace was omitted

(w

At last, even the opening brace was erased, as you can distinct them from main text easily, because usually main text are written in Japanese letters. So we now have

w

If you would like to show your laughing more, double it,

ww

If it is LOL, you may want to type three times,

www

So if you see a sentence like “Oh yes, I am serious. www” in Japanese, it means s/he is not serious at all. www

[See also]

(Warai) on Wikipedia Japanese [J]

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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Japanese Web Marketing Information Portal “Web Marketing Guide” and market research company Net Asia conjointly conducted a study on the use of mobile videos and digital TV in Japan.

At the end of last month, 345 people (172 female, 173 male) aged between 15 and 49 were surveyed. The results show that more and more Japanese users accept the concept of watching videos and TV on their handsets.

The companies found out that 57.6% of the people asked watched videos on their mobile phones (up an impressive 13 points from the last survey in April 2007). Moreover, 36.3% said they watched TV via the OneSeg digital tuners built in their handsets (up six points).

In more concrete terms, 69.4% of users watching videos said music is their favorite content. This is followed by videos made by themselves or friends (37.7%). Movies (19.1%), Anime (18.6%), TV series (18.1%) and news programs (18.1%) are also popular.

Asked via which services were used to watch mobile videos, 40.7% responded MyTube. Nico Nico Mobile is second with 22.1%. Another Japanese web video service, CM site, is a close third with 21.6%.

More details can be viewed here [ja].

[Via CNET Japan]

Tags: Japan, Trend, Video by Serkan Toto
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Can you regulate the Cyberspace? Should you?

It seems some forces in Japan think it’s possible and you should.

There has been a lot of efforts by the Japanese government in the last few weeks to regulate and censor the Internet in various ways.

2 weeks ago, Japan’s National Police Agency hinted it may soon require dating sites to register with public authorities for better control. It is estimated that there are about 5,000 different dating sites competing in Japan. The agency also tries to control crimes like child prostitution by introducing stricter age control verification systems. It said about 85 percent of all crimes related to online dating involve minors.

Activity in December

Earlier in December, the Ministry for Internal Affairs and Communications proposed a new law which will lead to regulation of any online content in text and video form. This will include newspaper articles, TV broadcasts and even private blogs.

Starting December 10th, the same ministry also required mobile phone carriers to establish effective age verification systems to keep underaged users from accessing unsuitable mobile sites. Affected services include again dating sites in particular. Mobile sites with communication functions such as chat, forums or social networking are affected as well. Access to sites in question can then be granted only after receiving a guardian’s consent.

Also last month, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology (MEXT) held a meeting with the purpose of possibly revising Article 30 of the Copyright Law. With this initiative, lawmakers aim at regulating downloads from websites and P2P platforms. If the revision becomes reality, downloading of copyrighted files for private use will become illegal. Currently this as well as copying works (i.e. music files) for personal use is permitted in Japan!

Japanese right holders represent the main force behind this initiative claiming downloads of audio and video material from the Internet seriously endanger their business. However, the MEXT received over 7,000 comments (mostly negative) from the public. It is believed the revision may eventually lead to outlawing access to content available on video sharing Web sites as well.

Survey supports the government

It seems Japanese people generally agree with the idea of filtering online content, at least in the light of child protection issues.

Last Saturday, the Japanese government published a survey it conducted among 3,000 citizens in November 2007. More than 76 percent responded it is right to regulate the Internet in order to prevent minors from accessing unsuitable dating or adult-oriented sites.

If the government implements these ideas development of the Japanese Internet industry will be heavily constrained within its own territory. Also, a serious setback in international competitiveness must be expected.

Tags: Japan, News, Trend by Serkan Toto
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Japanese television broadcaster Yomiuri TV has found a novel new way to recruit young new employees to their company. They utilize Skype chat and video to conduct the interview.

The thinking behind the process is not to only demonstrate how “hip” they are to new technologies but also to provide an opportunity for many applicants to appear before the interviewers without taking on the cost of taking a bullet train ride to Osaka… perhaps a large expense which may not even yield a job.

Though the positions applied for DID have an IT connection, the ability to use the online chat inherently demonstrated at least a minimal required knowledge of new media technology.

It’s interesting to see traditional, established “old school” type of companies attempt these types of technologies. Normally, only tech related companies have done so in the past. Let’s hope we’ll see more companies around the world do the same.

[Via RBBToday]

Tags: Japan, News, Technology, Trend by Robert Sanzalone
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* Numbers of job openings in USA and Japan were taken from indeed and Jobdirect, respectively. C language is omitted due to the technical difficulty.

Do you have any idea why C++ is popular in USA and PHP is popular in Japan?

* This article is reproduced from “yukoba no nikki” by Yu Kobayashi with permission.

Tags: Japan, Technology, Trend by shunichi arai
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On Tuesday, the monthly Tokyo2point0 event in Omotesandou/Tokyo was held for the 8th time. The venue was really packed. Andrew Shuttleworth (the organizer) told me he would love to see more people to RSVP before coming. Also, companies can contact Andrew directly for sponsorship to help the volunteers currently running the event.

You can sign up directly on the Tokyo2point0 site itself, go to Tokyo2point0’s Facebook group or get some information on Mixi.

Besides the (very important) networking part, the event mainly focused on three presentations. Two of them were English only. Judging from what I have seen, the Japanese people present were able to follow the speakers without problems though.

1) HTML 5
Michael Smith from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) delivered a detailed speech about HTML 5. Mike talked about the changes the fifth major revision of the Web’s main language will bring.

(all pictures in this posting courtesy of my friend Professor Ichinohe)

The core issue HTML 5 addresses is the problem of interoperability between browsers. The W3C is working to determine conformant user agent/Web browser behavior to overcome one of the biggest obstacles Web developers are faced with nowadays.

The new HTML version is still a draft. Michael was expectedly not able to predict precisely when all advantages HTML 5 delivers will come into effect.

(This presentation was off-the-record so the video will not be published.)

2) ONGMAP
Yuki Naotori from Open Associates/7ns presented his Award-winning Google maps mash up “ONGMAP”.

ONGMAP is thankfully also available in English. The service is describing itself as being the sum of “Google Maps+Web API+Tons of Geo Data”. Yuki said he wanted to create a very easy-to-use Web site.

Users can click on an area of interest on ONGMAP and the service scrapes various info about that particular place from external sources. Depending on the country, this info may include:

- weather
- WiFi spots
- local events
- hotels, restaurants, schools, convenience stores, beauty salons (!) and much more
- videos
- etc. etc.

Yuki also talked about his new project called “Japaaan”. In essence, Japaaan is a social network for people interested in discovering Japan’s “hidden” and cool tourist spots. Moreover, members will also meet offline and actually travel to selected sites. Gaijin and Japanese people are invited to join.

You can view Yuki’s presentation slides here.

Watch his presentation here.

3) Trendmap
My Swiss friend Oliver Reichenstein from Information Architects caused a great stir last year in the Web world with what inititally was a joke. His company basically used the Tokyo metro map as a design background to display the relationship between Web services worldwide. Oliver told me he wanted to use this idea for the company name cards and later was overwhelmed by the huge international interest in his concept!

The map illustrates popularity, success, importance and other factors of about 200 Web sites from all countries. You can download the second version (from July 2007) here for free (PDF).

Oliver explained the yet-to-be released third and updated version of the Web trendmap. This time, Information Architects decided to go for an isometric approach.

Watch his presentation here.

Tags: Community, Company, Japan, Person, Technology, Trend by Serkan Toto
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Q: What is the favorite notebook brand with Japanese developers?

MacBook? maybe.

Vaio? no.

It’s Toughbook.

Toughbook business laptops are marketed with ‘Let’s note’ brand in Japan. This ultra-light notebook has a surprisingly large share amongst Japanese developers. If you are looking for light (940g~1.5kg. 2lbs~3.3lbs), tough (water resistant) and long battery life (>6hours) notebook, it’s the answer.

Well. Why Toughbook? Japanese people tend to move with public transport. So, heavy notebooks are real pain. I think it’s a very good choice for every Asian people, especially for women.

Probably they should use another brand name than ‘Toughbook’. They should have read Al Ries.

Coincidentally, Asiajin founders are using same made-to-order burgundy-red Toughbooks:)

See also:

1. An Engadget article.

Tags: Japan, Trend by shunichi arai
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