Year: 2009

Mixi Adds New Friends-Making Feature For Shy Japanese

Mixi, Japan’s largest social network service, introduced a new feature around Mai-Miku(=My Mixi, my friends) management, called My List. Your new “My List” is completely private for you, no one can see who is on it. You may add other Mixi users by random browsing, or from recommended users list. Without letting them notice, you… Continue reading Mixi Adds New Friends-Making Feature For Shy Japanese

Japanese Mobile Biz Entrepreneurs To Visit Silicon Valley To Meet Potential Tech Start-ups

Inspired by Geeks On A Plane that was organized by Founder Fund co-founder Dave McClure and took 50 Silicon Valley tech geeks to Japan, Korea and Mainland China to meet up with Asian friends last June, a group of Tokyo-based mobile service entrepreneurs is now planning to visit San Francisco Bay Area at the end… Continue reading Japanese Mobile Biz Entrepreneurs To Visit Silicon Valley To Meet Potential Tech Start-ups

Cellphone To Check Your Golf Swing

Fujitsu announced that Hosei University and they developed a technology to sense your body’s movement during golf swing by an equipped cellphone on your waist. The application will be bundled on Fujitsu’s mobile phones for NTT Docomo, and Fujitsu group’s web company Nitfy Corporation is planning to host a network service to which users can… Continue reading Cellphone To Check Your Golf Swing

WebCam: Tokyo’s New Landmark Is Currently Under Construction

Japanese terrestrial TV transmitting is set to completely turn to digital on July 24th of 2011.   Here in Tokyo, all TV signals are currently being transmitted from the top of Tokyo Tower (332.5 meters or 1,090 feet high), but a new transmission facility located at a higher altitude is required to cover the Tokyo… Continue reading WebCam: Tokyo’s New Landmark Is Currently Under Construction

Japan’s First Twitter Novel Book Is On The Way

A paper book named “Twitter Shousetsu – 140 ji no Monogatari”(Twitter Novels – 140 Letters Stories) is to be published at the beginning of next month, announced by one of ten professional authors, Mika Naitoh [J]. There will be over 100 very short stories in the book. According to her blog, the first Japanese book… Continue reading Japan’s First Twitter Novel Book Is On The Way

Amazon Japan Starts “The Same Day” Delivery Service

Amazon Japan announced their new premium delivery option “Toujitsu Oisogi Bin”, which is not offered by US Amazon, the same day delivery. Of course, some restrictions are applied. To get the product in the same day, you need to see that the shipment option is selectable on the product page. Firstly, not all products are… Continue reading Amazon Japan Starts “The Same Day” Delivery Service

KDDI Running Out of Motorola’s au BOX

KDDI au, Japan’s 2nd largest cellphone carrier, announced that from October 31’st  it will stop accepting new contracts for the au BOX. The official reason given is “we will soon sell the allotted number of units for our au BOX service”. While new contracts are denied, existing customers will be able to continue using the… Continue reading KDDI Running Out of Motorola’s au BOX

Enemies Yesterday, Friends Today: Japanese Major TV Broadcasters Handshake With YouTube

For three years David Eun, Google‘s VP of strategic partnerships, has been working on persuade Japanese media giants to join the team.   The key stations of Japan’s two nationwide private TV networks, TV Asahi and TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) made agreements with Google on Tuesday, and the both broadcasters started distributing their news video clips… Continue reading Enemies Yesterday, Friends Today: Japanese Major TV Broadcasters Handshake With YouTube

Softbank To Cap iPhone Bandwidth

Japan’s exclusive iPhone provider Softbank, the 3rd largest carrier, announced [J] that they will introduce bandwidth limit for heavy users of their data plan from December, to keep network quality and fairness of network usage. In case of using the Packet-Teigaku(fixed rate)-Full plan [J], which Japanese iPhone users usually depends on, if your monthly usage… Continue reading Softbank To Cap iPhone Bandwidth