On the day when all we are permitted to wag the dog, many companies devoted themselves to create attractive pranks on their websites. I wrapped up what had happened on Japanese web scene.
For pursuing the journalist’s perspective to be honest on the facts, we Asiajin report no prank nor joke, but do the fact covering what people have made. We appreciate your understanding.
| Company / Website | Main Business | Pranks & Jokes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Tsuburaya Production |
A well-known movie production for its special effects, and the father of Ultra-Man | Kanegon or coin monster, which is appeared in Tsuburaya’s TV serials, restarted blogging. | ||
 Impress Watch |
Japan’s oldest e-mail newsletter covering IT business matters | The company started publishing a daily newsletter called “Cat Watch” that day. | ||
 Daily Portal Z |
The editorial team introduces useful tips for our daily life on the country’s popular portal site every day. | The editorial team investigated the following supervisions.- A mermaid can be seen when you have the eyes opened in bath water.- In order to receive the appropriate signal from the radio station far from you, and to listen to your favourite program more clearly, how do you assume a pose to use your body as an antenna? | ||
 Irem Software Engineering |
A famous pachinko game developer | The secret society called “Black Irem” jacked the company’s website. | ||
 |
Unnecessary to explain | A senryu or a humorous Japanese poem may be inserted to some search results. The popular children’s TV program characters, Gachapin and Mukku were invited to GoogleMap advisory board[J]. | ||
 Six Apart |
The world’s famous blog platform developer | It showed an interview with Yaruo, the ASCII art character born on the “2ch” BBS, and asked him the reason why he had upgraded his blog platform to Movable Type 4. | ||
 Mag Mag |
Japan’s largest e-mail newsletter distribution platform provider | The website’s top page turned to be a Google-like. | ||
 YouTube |
Unnecessary to explain | Some videos are seen upside down. | ||
 Nico Nico Douga |
Japan’s popular video sharing site | Subtitles overwrapped on the video run through much faster than usual. President Obama will join the program. | ||
 Kokuban.in (blackboard in) |
Draw a picture on the virtual blackboard with your mouse, and share it with the other users on the illustration SNS | The title has been changed to Sukebu.in, meaning “sketchbook in”. | ||
 Pixiv |
An online illustration community for artists | The company’s office is registered in Tokyo, but their data center facility is reportedly located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which causes reponse delay for browsing the website. | ||
 Yahoo! JAPAN |
Japan’s most famous search engine and directory service | Planning on-the-spot filming of Evangelion drama movie, which is originally known as an animation. | ||
 Hatena |
Japan’s most popular social bookmark site | Hatena has the service allowing its users to give rewards to interesting blog post, which is called “star”. Inspired by the supplementary income payments that Japanese government distributes to the national, the company also distribute “star” to all the Hatena users as to give it to their favorites. | ||
 Kayac |
Developing a number of entertaining and weird websites and projects | As the substitute to the supplementary income payments, Japanese government will distribute Kayac’s product encouraging your fidgeting. | ||
 Interlink |
ISP, web hosting provider and domain registrar | President Obama applied for “.obama (dot obama)” domain. | ||
 Himote SNS |
An internet forum for unpopular people, in response to the torment caused by St. Valentine’s Day | The forum founder Ega-chan got his girlfriend finally, and he shut the website. | ||
 Vector |
Japan’s largest library having shareware and freeware applications | More than 100,000 software titles are available for free of charge. | ||
 eiga.com |
The portal site introducing new movie lineups | The top page shows you no listing of movie titles, but a bunch of stupid news. | ||
 Lolipop |
A famous website hosting provider | Their business has been changed to an Indian curry restaurant. | ||
 Web-kare |
A role playing game on the website, for having dates with your virtual boyfriend | Web-kare (web boyfriend) has been changed to the e-commerce shop selling curry (web curry). | ||
 Good Smile Company |
The company making and selling a number of cartoon character clay works. | It shows you the preview of a movie titled Nendoroid Deka, a story about the detective girl with a clay doll. | ||
 MyNet Japan |
Running a “Digg”-like social news site and mobile site integration. | Their power source turned to naturally generated type, and the employees need pedaling bikes to keep their servers running. | ||
Web-kare sold a fake product of “web curry” retort pouch on the website.
Good Smile Company made a fake announcement that they intend to release a movie of the detective girl with a clay doll.
MyNet Japan CEO & employees couldn’t stop pedaling bikes for generating power to feed their mission-critical servers.
The following two tabs change content below.
Masaru IKEDA