Asiajin

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 Serkan Toto
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Weathernews Inc., the world largest private weather service company headquatered in Japan, is conducting the 5th year “Sakura Project (Cherry-blossom project)” with involving over 17,000 users around the nation via cellular phone browsers.

People, willingly registering this nation-wide CGM project on the Weathernews mobile site ( http://wni.jp/ , seems only available from Japanese cellularphone), are assigned to become a “Sakura Monitor”, who sets one specific cherry-blossom tree around their home, and send its information such like tree’s “address”, “age”, “how sun shines” and pictures (taken by cellphone).

Weathernews will respond to the infomation sender users to provide the tree’s flowering forecast within 48 hours, as they told. The company boasts that their 5 years collected data contributes to more accurate cherry-blossom forecasting.

In this season in Japan, many of portal websites, individual specialized sites competes to provide cherry blossom viewing spots info.

See also:

Yahoo! Japan category “Hanami”(Cherry Blossom Viewing) [J]

Tags: Japan, Service by Akky Akimoto
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Ishinokoe (means “voice of stone”) K.K. announced their newly designed tombstone series “Kuyou no mado” (”commemoration windows”), which has QR Code (Japanese 2D bar code) inside.

This QR Code, enhanced version “Design QR Code”, developed and trademarked by IT Design, can have small extra images in the code, which does not prevent proper code scanning. In this case, the QR Code has the word “Kuyou no mado” at the center.

Visitors of the graveyard will be able to take a picture of the QR Code by cellphone, to access to the deceased person’s memorable photos and profiles.

The site is also planned to have a log feature that records who visits when, then families and relatives can share the history in future, as they said. They are also developing a plan to provide virtual grave visiting by celler phone for young generation’s convenience.

I am sure that this release hits also Japanese media, as this concept is weird even for Japanese people, however, this product also shows that how QR Code are commoditized in Japan. They are now flooding over typical usage on train ads, business cards and coupon flyers.

via Impress K-tai Watch

See Also:

Mobile barcodes:Huge success in Japan so far. | Asiajin

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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In April last year, Japan’s first so-called Cyber University opened its virtual doors.

The university is private and headquartered in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyuushu. It is run by a nonlisted stock company called Japan Cyber Education Institute which is mainly controlled by Japanese Internet telecom giant SoftBank.

As of now, approximately 1,900 students are enrolled who can graduate with a Bachelor degree in IT and business or world heritage. All correspondence-type courses can be accessed via the Internet.

While this is a cool idea especially for homemakers, ambitious people with stressing day jobs and retirees, it’s not really new. There are many universities offering academic material online and Japan’s Cyber University is not even the first fully online academic institution in the world.

Courses via the mobile phone

In November last year however, the Cyber University took its concept one step further by expanding it to -you guessed it- mobile phones! The first cell phone course is entitled “Mysteries of the Pyramids”.

The mobile version of the PC site is naturally stripped down concerning contents and appearance and can be partially viewed here. What’s missing is the actual course which is available as a combination of streaming video of a power point presentation and the professor’s audio. It can be accessed using SoftBank 3G phones only (via their “S-Appli” function). Interestingly, no tuition fee is charged for this particular mobile course and users do not have to be enrolled in the university.

Opportunities and dangers

The concept has pitfalls some of which are obvious. Offering courses online only means that interaction among students and professors is restricted to emails, electronic forums or social networking platforms. It is also impossible to ask questions to improve one’s personal understanding and actually change the way classes are held.

Moreover, the Japanese Ministry for Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology issued a serious warning to the Cyber University over possible cheats just in January this year. The ministry criticized the university’s handling of student identification and said it must improve measures to prevent the use of ringers.

Overall, this is really a cool and innovative concept even though the class on pyramids is still considered a test by the university. The cell phone is the ubiqitous platform for Japanese people when it comes to accessing the web so it is no wonder that the first step was made in this country.

We can surely expect to see the concept taken over in other countries in the future.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Serkan Toto
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Japan’s largest social network Mixi announced that a total of three mobile phones made by Sony Ericsson and Softbank/Nokia have integrated direct access to its mobile version. These are the Cybershot SO905iCS, the Cybershot W61s and the Nokia N95. The Nokia model is delivered in Japan as the SoftBank X02NK.

It was announced that users can upload pictures taken with the Cybershot models directly to their Mixi blogs from the camera menu screen.

The “Share Online” function of the SoftBank/Nokia phone makes it possible to automatically resize pictures to fit into Mixi blogs. They can be then directly sent to the service as well. Moreover, owners of the SoftBank/Nokia model can access Mixi Mobile directly from the standby screen with just one click.

[Via CNET Japan]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, Service by Serkan Toto
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