Have you ever felt ashamed by leaning on to person sitting next to you constantly while on train falling asleep?  Sure, I have.  Often.

LION[J], as a promotion for energy drink Gronsan[J],  released mobile alarm app[J] that could keep you away from this common situation you may find on commuting trains in Japan.

The app is claimed to vibrate and wake you before such situation occurs by detecting your body movement utilizing smartphone's gyroscopic sensor.  Wonder why such app is wanted?  Well, Japanese businessmen including me fall alseep on train so often (average 4.2 times per week!!) that they may welcome and appreciate such app for waking them up beforehand(survey done by LION[J], businesswomen not included).

This app also comes with wake-up call feature which generates "fake" incoming-call from gravure idols and, on answering such fake call, plays wake-up messages by them.

So if you ever encoutered such situation on train or wanted to be woken up by gravure idols, don't forget to give it a try and tell us how it works.

The iPhone app is in Japanese only.  Android version is to be released soon and other unique features should follow.

See also:

App Store - Otsukaresan Alarm[J]

Tags: Android, Company, iOS, Japan by Haruo Nakayama
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Toshima-ku/Tokyo-based Japanese consumer goods brand Muji (Mujirushi Ryohin), who operates about 300 shops in over 20 countries around the world, starts a social game Muji Life on November 15 (release [J]).

You may join the game by either of three social networking services, Facebook, Twitter and Mixi.

You will create your shelf with your favorite Muji products and other items like book, CD, DVD, etc.

You may display your shelf to your friends, give and receive gifts.

At the Muji retail shops around the world, by its iPhone app, you can get special items, music and Muji coins, virtual currency you can use in the game.

On the launch, English and Japanese languages are support. Chinese is planned to be added.

Tags: Japan, Social game by Akky Akimoto
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iPhone's new voice interface Siri is getting kind of artificial personality with human voice and many prepared witty answers. If so, such "virtual person in machine" is of course the Japanese anime/manga people's favorite theme as seen on human voice synthesizer Hatsune Miku and her Vocaloid buddies are followed by a lot of illustrations, comics, dance movie, etc.

Around the social drawing community Pixiv, there are already many Siri illustrations by Japanese creators.

By @michirushiduki

By Bohe(@bhe_bbo)

By Kuuki Satoh. This uses the line that Siri's name sounds ass in Japanese (Shiri).

More on Pixiv [J].

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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"Tokyo Kenchiku Navi/Tokyo Architecture Navigator" is a new English/Japanese bilingual iOS app by real-estate information website R-Store, which covers about 1,000 Tokyo buildings designed by architects like Tadao Ando, Arata Isozaki, Kazuyo Sejima, etc.

The app contains around 3,000 photos of the buildings, information of each building such like the designer's name, address, year established, etc.

By GPS, you can list the buildings around you on map, route guide to a building as well.

The new buildings info are planned to be updated every year. Android version is under development. The price is 600 yen.

via MyCom [J]

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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BCN Ranking announced the statistics of the first week sales of iPhone 4S in Japan. At this new version, the nation's 3rd carrier Softbank Mobile's exclusive distribution since iPhone 3G ends, the 2nd largest carrier KDDI au enters to sell iPhone.

The ranking shows the two carriers' iPhone 4S with three variations of memory-size, 64M/32M/16M, total 6 variations occupied the top 6.

BCN Ranking counted the carriers share only within iPhone 4S [J], Softbank took 51.7%, whilst KDDI au gained 48.3%.

BCN Ranking collected the number of sold units from shops, which it claims to cover 40% of Japanese retails. The retail shops do not include Apple Stores and carriers stores.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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