Lady Gaga’s Japan visit was a sensation, left a lot of news with celebrities including Japanese’ Ophra Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, prime minister Naoto Kan and SMAP, long-time ruling boys unit.

Lady Gaga’s appearance on Japanese TV was estimated 135 million dollars worth [J] if it was advertising.

Gaga is recognized as a celebrity who directly talk to her fans over social media. Japanese, both media and people chased her tweets during her stay.

What happened today is that they noticed that her uploaded video, a TV program hosted by SMAP featuring her, which she had introduced on twitter on 12th, is not watchable. The same movie was posted on Rolling Stone, too.

It was not only that. Lady Gaga’s YouTube official channel has been stopped, too.

The movie was claimed by Media Interactive Inc., which is the same company who mistakenly removed YouTube movie uploaded by a popular Japanese singer Hikaru Utada before. They were her own official movies.

SMAP and its agency Johnny’s Office are well known by their hard-line portrait rights control. It is not easy to find their unofficially uploaded photos, at least on Japanese web. Lady Gaga uploading such movie and a photo over Twitter was worried by Japanese users, because if other Japanese talents did that, she/he will get hard time by that. Actually, no Japanese would post their photos of Jhonny’s Office talents on the web, as they know it would be troublesome.

When SMAP sang in front of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who was visiting Japan, most Japanese media did not post a photo with SMAP, whilst Chinese media did.

I do not embed the photo of Lady Gaga and SMAP here, because I do now want to be cautioned.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
6 Comments »

I wrote “Poo is a magic word for primary-school children. It is an universal motif and will work even 100 years later” before. It does not change even at the disaster in Japan.  A Japanese media artist Hachiya Kazuhiko has explained nuclear crisis in a Youtube video, using the poo and fart.

English subtitles version

At first, he has explained nuclear crisis on Twitter [J], using the poo and fart. Afterward, he drew an cartoon and uploaded it on YouTube. Nuclear Boy(Fukushima nuclear power plant) said, “My tummy hurts…I can not hold my poo any longer…”  and he broke wind a bit.  On the other hand, Chernobyl leaked poo. Besides, it was diarrheal stool and he ran around. It’s unbelievable tragedy!

If everybody is wise, the difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl will be able to be understood. The fart is certainly stinking. However, it is better than leaking diarrheal stool.

Chinese subtitles version

Spanish subtitles version

French subtitles version

Tags: Japan by Chiho Komoriya
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One of Japan’s largest fashion show, Tokyo Girls Collection held its 12th event today at Yoyogi National Gymnasium.   Apart from other fashion events exclusively for fashion designers and apparel buyers, it intends young girls to buy what they want with their cellphone handsets while watching the show on which women celebrities and models present the latest trends of clothing and beauty.   Some news sources reported over 23,000 women and girls are there to watch and buy just right there.

For the first time in their history, this event is available live on YouTube[J], and you can choose a view from three streams such as a runway camera and a zoom-out angle.   In synchronization with the show, pieces that models wear on the runway will be appeared right next to the live streaming screen on the YouTube page, which enables you to buy them so easily just by clicking on what you want.   All the viewers can interact with the show presenters by posting messages on Twitter.

It is scheduled to end today at 9pm Japan Time, and its high light videos are expected to be available on YouTube until the next event.

Meanwhile, in association with Google, they are running a campaign using a widget on which users can enjoy coordinating clothes for either of three beauties.  You can enjoy it via this link[J]. (available only on Google Chrome)    You are recommended to submit a set of pieces in your taste, because the event’s organizer FashionWalker.com[J] will choose the best three sets from the applications including yours, and you may win a chance to get all you have coordinated for completely free.

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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Two male senior students of Tokyo Metropolitan University uploading a series of movies on YouTube under the name of “Dobusu wo Mamoru Kai”(Save The Ugly Girls Club) early this month rapidly called a strong reactions from Japanese society.

June 12th at Tachikawa station, those guys asked ladies few pictures with lying it was for magazine, then unveiled that they were trying to record disappearing “ugly girls”. Of course, the girls protested and demanded to erase the pictures, however, they also record those interaction and uploaded them to YouTube.

By knowing that some raged web users tracked those students personal information and publicized, the movies were withdrawn quickly [J]. But people found that the same group also made another movies such like running fake street donation, secret videoing women on train, under the name of “art” [J]. They told to the university’s inquiry, “We thought we could achieve some expressions by chasing humor happened from unethical behaviour.”

On 24th, the university announced [J, pdf] that those two students are dismissed, a graduate student who assisted video edit is suspended for one month.

[Update 2010-07-08] The university announced [J, pdf] that the associate professor, who was a tutor of those students, resigned under instruction.

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Last week our RSS subscribers passed over 5,000, which is a good milestone. Twitter followers also increased to 400. Following @asiajin also will notify our latest articles. Thank you so much.

Here is the first half of January Japanese IT/Web interesting news links we did not take as a dedicated article. (part 2 is here)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise noted.

• Cellphone Shipments In Japan Drops The Lowest Level In 5 Years – 2009 3Q
• Liberal Democratic Party launches Internet video channel, J-Channel
• Bijin Tokei 2D (2-dimensional, Anime) version collaborated with Pixiv
• Bijin Tokei goes on TV in Kansai, 5 minutes program
• Bijin Tokei Voice Actress Version released
• New Service Namings Name What You Often Experience But Does Not Have Name
• Nippon TV (channel 4 in Tokyo) had Twitter teaching program on new years holiday
• Tweeting National Diet Member (and ex-fashion model) Renho asked how to use Nintendo DS illegal dongle for her son
• Love Plus AR cards were sold by 100,000 yen on Yahoo! Auction
• Ameba Celebrities’ password were posted in Excel on their blogs
• CyberAgent release on their Ameba password leak incident [pdf]
• A maid hair salon was opened in Taipei (Not Tokyo)
• Anime “Eden of the East” AR events are held in Tokyo
• Nippon TV will broadcast a new entertainment program interacts with Twitter users
• Mixi Introduced MySpace-like Personal Page Decoration Feature For PC
• CyberAgent starts illustration mashup community AmebaPACO
• MSN Sankei News starts enabling users to reproduce the news footage pictures on their blogs without permission.
• Rakuten, Yahoo Japan, Mixi and more teamed up for promoting e-commerce industry.
• Motion Portrait introduces HourFace, the iPhone app allows you to see how you will look like when you get older.
• Niconico DVD – NicoNico comments overlay on Your Watching DVD
• A Japan’s real estate portal releases a GPS-enabled iPhone app showing the average price of apartment rent cost classfied by town.
• NTT Docomo started mobile cartoon service for India’s Tata DoCoMo cellphone subscribers.
• Yahoo! Japan phishing suspects arrested.
• NTT Communications invests in Swiss online language learning site.
• Latest i-mode browsers are reported to cause security leak with old-style mobile site
• CyberAgent released the iPhone app allowing you to browse Ameba blog posts.
• Bikini Liquor Shop.
• OGC2010 Web/Game Conference Feb 17th
• Mr. & Mrs. Ukigawa, who are well-known for having invented a Japanese front-end processor(FEP), quit the company they’ve founded and launch a new company to develop user-friendly application platforms.
• Livedoor launched TechWave, an IT-oriented blog moderated by former Jiji Press tech correspondent Tsuruaki Yukawa, and Market Hack, an alternative investment-oriented blog by financial expert Takao Hirose.
• Naver’s Storage Service N Drive
• YouTube announces the grand prix winner of YouTube Video Awards Japan 2009.
• Kenko.com launched an English-language version.
• Contactless smardcard “FeliCa” for the iPhone to be introduced in Japan. Flight System Consulting, Focal Computer and Morphie are jointly developing it. [pdf]
• Flight System Consulting just released the iPhone app enabling your tweet by speech.
• Programmers’ friend Potechi-no-te – magic hands for potato tips
• Ascii-Art assist service for Twitter AA Hoshu
• NTT Docomo announces its own Android App Market for the coming new Sony Ericsson device
• GMO Payment Gateway to start Payment Service for Social Apps
• Navar Japan N Drive adds iPhone and Mac support
• Evernote opens Japanese site and declares Japanese localization is under way
• CoroPura Starts Another Location Based Social Game on Mobage Town
• Taiko no Tatsujin Goes On iPhone
• David Meerman Scott interviews @masakiishitani about Japanese Twitter scene
• Web game company AQInteractive aquires LinkThink(WebKare)
• Yahoo! Japan and others’ guide for children internet usage recommend parents to allow PC first
• iPad page on Apple Japan does not have iBooks

If you want to know any specific news more, but unable to find them in other English blog/media, please let us know.

As you see, we know a lot things to write but contributors time are limited. So we are looking for authors. We will help Japanese research/reading part so do not worry if your Japanese is not perfect.

We also want sponsorship to keep this group blog. Ideal if from Japanese companies because our initial motivation was to introduce them to non-Japanese web. Problem is we only write in English and they do not check English sites If you know them please suggest us to them!

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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