Microsoft Japan has been featuring Cloud-girl Claudia to grab the heart of anime-loving geeks.

Their latest campaign offers the limited Claudia doll for everyone who purchases Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN, which price is 173,250 yen (US$2200).

The doll is planned to be 15-20 centimeters(6-8 inches) heights, with serial number.

The campaign will end on June 29th. It is only valid for purchase inside Japan.

via Internet Watch

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Gayle L McDowell’s book “The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company” is translated to Japanese and sold in Japan this month.

The cover image of the Japanese version book posted by a blogger Yumaendo got a huge buzz on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Probably for Japanese market, the title of the book is changed to “How to take a job at Google, Apple and Microsoft”, and the extra cover at bottom says “… and I teach you how to take a job at Rakuten” with Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani’s photo.

Yumaendo wrote that how his photo were copied into other social media without his credit. The popular one on Twitter has “The least wanted extra cover is buzzing on the net” comment.

Generally, Japanese books have a color cover sheet in slick paper. Whilst the book is newly published and/or being promoted, they also have a shorty extra-cover with catches, recommendations by authorities, how many copies sold, etc. In store, shop clerks will offer to set another paper cover for people who want to hide what they are reading on train commuting.

Amazon.com

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Google Image Search with this photo

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Microsoft Developer Network(MSDN) runs a campaign for Japanese developers by featuring its cloud-technology poster girl Claudia. If you are living in Japan, you will be able to receive a Nengajou, new year’s greeting postcard from Claudia and a special guest Hikaru Aizawa, who is another anime campaign girl from Microsoft Taiwan [Zn]. (It is not possible to receive the postcard in Taiwan.)

You need an hotmail account and to give your postal address to the site. The application will end on December 19.

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Microsoft Japan’s Winter campaign of Windows Ultimate DSP version [J] comes with Deanne Cheuk design Touch Mouse and its official poster character Nanami Madobe.

Nanami Madobe (Madobe Nanami in Japanese name order) was originally an unofficial character appeared from an Akihabara shop, became an official later before Cloud girl and Hyper-V girl. Nanami is from Japanese seven(“nana”)=7, and Madobe means “windows-side” in Japanese.

The bundled Nanami Madobe items are;

• original video on which Nanami explains Microsoft Touch Mouse
• Nanami Madobe Windows 7 desktop theme
• 3 Nanami Madobe desktop background images (below)
• 24 Nanami Madobe original sounds

via Microsoft Japan

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KDDI au, who shipped Fujitsu-Toshiba-made IS12T, the earliest shipped Windows Phone 7.5(Mango) around the world last month, made some strange commercial films.

parody of TV shopping program

Even if it is all in Japanese, I think you will get the point as the high-tension on the TV shopping should be universal.

I liked the line how easy “gorgonzola” and “paparazzi” can be typed on its Japanese input method feature.

Japanese hostess customer management and retention

Kyabajo (Kyabakura Girl, a hostess in girls’ bar) explains how she is using contact management app to handle lots of customers’ birthdays, etc. She found her guest drinking around by GPS, calls to visit her.

Gay Bar hostess

By 5 p.m., she works as a salesman and a heavy user of MS Office on WP7.5. She got a claim call from her daytime customer.

via Sumahon [J]

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