Nabla-Zero [J] has released “AR Tsunami Camera,” an iPhone application for disaster prevention education. Download is free.
“AR Tsunami Camera” is an application which layers a display using Augmented Reality over the actual scenery as seen through the iPhone camera, indicating “How far will it flood?” in case a tsunami hits. At the request of the municipalities massively damaged by the great earthquake of East Japan, this app was developed for the purpose of using for disaster prevention education at schools. By utilizing this, it becomes possible to see in the actual scenery “If a tsunami of a supposed height hits, how far will the flood reach in my vicinity?” and as for disaster prevention education, it simply brings out “true feelings regarding a tsunami.” An Android version by the same company is in the works, and they are also developing an application for simulating the experience of “the actual tsunami’s height” at the scene of the area struck by the tsunami at Ofunato, Rikuzentakata, and Kizennuma Cities.
The 10 web services joined and asked for their readers to vote are Biglobe, Goo, Ameba, Mobage, Nico Nico Douga, @Peps!&Chip!!, Gadget Tsuushin, JustGiving Japan, iza and Jinriki-kensaku Hatena.
He was known by its unconventional, funky tweets as an local government character, which usually make boring messages. However, when a person behind the Twitter account, someone in the PR company worked for the town started making political, WWII related tweets, it caused severe backlash and the town shut down the Twitter.
Sukasuka Osechi
“Sukasuka” is a Japanese onomatope which describes how things are spacious, spongy. It was the first buzzed news on Japanese web in 2011. Groupon Japan selling very poor traditional new year food set resulted in its US CEO’s apology.
Popopopo-n
3/11, Eastern Japan Disasters with earthquakes, tsunami and nuclear power plant problems of course affected Japanese web a lot.
Most of companies wanted to stop its TV commercials for weeks after the quake in a mood of voluntary restraint of commercial activities, non-commercial organization’s enlightening videos were aired endlessly. The one annoyed people the most is this,
A line in a Japanese magic girls anime means “Please contract with me and you will be a magic girl!” caught many anime watchers heart this year. The line told by a small animal whose name is QB comes from magic world were used a lot on the web by changing “magic girl” with many other words.
National team of women soccer winning the FIFA World Cup 2011 was the first World Cup win by Japan national team, was of course told a lot on the web.
“Nadeshiko Japan” is an official nickname of the team. Nadeshiko is a Japanese name of a flower pink, which is often described ideal Japanese women in Japanese. (Twitter trouble with one of players only few days after the World Cup)
Buhiru
“Buhiru” is a newly coined Japanese verb which came from pig’s calling sound “Buhi Buhi” so “buhiru” means “to sound like a pig”. This is used when anime freaks describe themselves loving anime characters in self-deprecatory way. Japanese image for pig is dirty and greedy so it implies that they are accepting well-calculated kawaii character design even though they are aware of being looked down on by creators.
Yashima Sakusen
Yashima Sakusen (Operation Yashima) is an web movement occurred after the big earthquake, which appealed people to save electricity under power shortage around east Japan. It came from an operation in a popular Japanese anime Evangelion.
Anaroguma
Anaroguma(Analog + Kuma=bear) is an web-born anti-official character against Chidejika, which proceeded to replace new digital TV broadcast system.
#edano_nero
Another meme from the earthquake. Yukio Edano, Japanese cabinet’s chief secretary at the disaster time, as a government spokesman, was worried by netizens by his too long appearance on official reporting programs. “nero” means imperative form of “to sleep” so Edano Nero means “Sleep Edano”.
Japanese train announcements sometimes have strange accent which you never heard in your regular conversation. Some people say that it is intentionally invented and spoken to transfer the information under special noisy situation like on train or in platform, though I do not believe it.
“Daashieriiesu” comes from “Doa ga Shimari masu”(doors are going to be closed) and that is said to be used in Keikyu Railway company which connects Tokyo and Yokohama/Yokosuka. The strangeness was buzzed on the web.
Maru Maru Mori Mori
“Marumo no Okite”(The rule of Marumo) is one of the most popular TV drama in 2011. This “Maru Maru Mori Mori” is a name of its main theme song and a hook-line chant. Two kids singing and dancing with the song became a smash hit, ranked the highest sales as singer who born in 21 century.
Iine!
“Iine!” is a Japanese translated version of Facebook “Like!”
At the beginning of April, I was almost writing up an article about how the Eastern Japan earthquake affected social media battle. Since the end of 2010, Japanese traditional media had been in great favor of Facebook as “the next big thing from US”. Their endless coverage was very similar with what was done with Twitter in 2009-2010, and eventually, Twitter’s appearance on mass media became rather small.
However, the disaster changed the game. Facebook might have been a good platform with its real-name policy if Japanese Facebook penetration was not about 2% of population. (Although the real victims in the disaster areas could not use any social media by black-out,) Twitter was the cure for tens of millions people who wanted to confirm their friends safety under disconnected phone. Twitter also helped that people who had to walk back to their home at the night of the earthquake in greater Tokyo. Many raw information (, false rumors and corrections as well) were circulated on it for weeks.
A blogger Edgefirst summed up that how Japanese newspaper companies utilized/opened their Twitter accounts to cover up their stopped and delayed distribution. Twitter accounts of some Tohoku region newspapers added 500-700% followers. National paper’s official accounts got notable gain, too. Generally speaking, Japanese newspapers are anti-internet with fear for losing their readers, but this disaster seemed to encourage web amiable factions.
Non-Japanese residents’ English activities were huge on Facebook. Many support from overseas were discussed on Facebook as well. But in Japanese language, there were less activities happened from Facebook, if you compare them with Twitter and other web services.
Here is the population graph of Facebook Japan users recorded by Socialbakers after the quake. Screenshot on April 4th.
The number of Japanese Facebook users were sharp rising around the release of the movie “The Social Network” in early January, then, March 11th quake completely stopped the trend. The graph above is from April 4th.
Then, on April 5th, something strange was observed on Socialbakers (and Facebook’s ad tool, as Socialbakers is only recording numbers from it).
In Japan, as Serkan Toto pointed out on his blog, half a million user joined Facebook in a day. That made over 3 million users, Facebook population increased 20%.
In China, ReadWriteWeb showed that over quarter million Facebook users disappeared on the same April 5th.
I checked other countries in East Asia. South Korea lost 100,000(2.5%).
Taiwan lost one million active users(10%) on the same day!
So it seems as if massive users moved out from Taiwan and China to Japan. If it was opposite way, it could happen as some people evacuated from Japan to other Asian countries. (still the number is unbelievable high, though)
There were no campaigns like “changing your location to Japan on FB (for showing support or something)” as far as I know.
Teotsunago (=we shall hold hands) is a new project which many creators gathered their popular characters, to encourage people who suffered the East Japan Big Earthquake.
The big list includes some very popular characters such like Doraemon, Miffy, Shimajiro, Domo-kun, Cheburashka, Elmo, Toro, etc.
We are holding our hands hoping to deliver smile to everyone in Japan from small children to all the grownups fighting for survival in and also out of the disaster area.
“Project: Holding Hands” is a special project just launched to encourage people in Japan, especially children directly or indirectly affected by this recent disaster. Hope we can make you SMILE.
Please deliver our image to everyone, especially to where the children can see it.
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications(MIC) announced [J] that they had requested four Internet related organizations to delete “false rumors” on online bulletin boards “to keep safety and peace of mind in disastrous area”.
On the request [J, pdf], MIC stated, “false rumors around the Eastern Japan earthquake and the nuclear plant accident are circulated over word-of-mouth, e-mail and online bulletin boards”, and asked web site owners “to take voluntary action such like erasing information violating the laws and against public order and morals.” Interesting thing is that the request says “please take prompt countermeasures with due considerations to freedom of expression“. So they are at least aware what they are requesting.
There are, of course, immediate reactions on web. Some said that government is taking advantage of the disaster to gain control over the internet. But there are also opinions that Japanese government is so confused and too naive, unskilled on the Internet to expect that this kind of order will have any meanings. I feel that might be true, though it cannot be excused.
