Orenoyome – Pinterest for Otaku

Oreno Yome wo Jiman suru Saito (A website to boast my wife) is a new Japanese service where to post your favorite photos of “yome”, which literally means wife, but in Otaku context, “ore no yome” means anything but your real human being wife, on which female character assigned, and on which you put your… Continue reading Orenoyome – Pinterest for Otaku

Mixi And DeNA Launches Social Commerce Platform Mixi Mall

Mixi and DeNA announced today that they launch a new social commerce service Mixi Mall As you might know, the two of Japan’s top three social networking services, Mixi and Mobage are run by these two companies. Mixi is the counterpart of Facebook in Japan, Mobage is like Zynga having its own social networking. Whilst… Continue reading Mixi And DeNA Launches Social Commerce Platform Mixi Mall

Yahoo Hoshou: Yahoo Japan Starts “Safety” Service For Online Shoppers

Yahoo Japan, the country’s biggest website, is a major force in the domestic e-commerce sector. The transaction value for their auction service “Yahoo Auction” (by far the biggest in Japan) and “Yahoo Japan Shopping” reached a staggering 950 billion yen (US$12 billion) last fiscal. Reason enough for the company to announce a new service for… Continue reading Yahoo Hoshou: Yahoo Japan Starts “Safety” Service For Online Shoppers

NOTTV: Japan Gets Smartphone-Only TV Channel (Video)

NOTTV – that’s the name of a new mobile TV channel that could one day replace 1Seg, the current TV and broadcasting standard for Japanese cell phones. Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo, the country’s biggest ad agency Dentsu, and a handful of private-sector broadcasters are planning to launch NOTTV on April 1 this year.… Continue reading NOTTV: Japan Gets Smartphone-Only TV Channel (Video)

Kakaku.com Unveils “Tabelog Yoyaku”, Online Restaurant Reservation Site

Kakaku.com, Inc. announced that “Tabelog Yoyaku” that you can make reservation on site at their part of “Tabelog” service. No membership is required and it is for free. “Tabelog Yoyaku” is service that you can check availability and make reservation. By searching dates, area and budget, restaurant can be reserved will be sown up, and… Continue reading Kakaku.com Unveils “Tabelog Yoyaku”, Online Restaurant Reservation Site

Mangajet Makes Your Tweet Into A Comic-style Illustration

Mangajet [J] is a new Japanese service which let you make a Japanese manga-comic style illustration with provided characters, background images, baloons with your text. The generated comic strip can be saved and shared on Twitter. Following to the Japanese manga standard, text will be written in top-to-bottom direction so Western languages won’t fit well,… Continue reading Mangajet Makes Your Tweet Into A Comic-style Illustration

Motto TV: Japan Gets New Video-On-Demand Service

Hulu Japan, actvila, and other existing video content providers are getting competition soon: a total of seven Japanese companies are currently preparing a video-on-demand service for connected TVs that’s scheduled to launch on April 2 this year. Dubbed “Motto TV” [JP, PDF], the service is backed by: advertising agency Dentsu Nippon Television Network TV Asahi… Continue reading Motto TV: Japan Gets New Video-On-Demand Service

Himasere: Geeky Home Screen Replacement App For Android

If you’re an Android user, consider yourself a geek, understand Japanese, and need an appropriate home replacement screen on your handset, consider downloading Himasere. The app was released on the Android Market earlier this week by Tokyo-based tech company Ubiquitous Entertainment. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible to access technology-related… Continue reading Himasere: Geeky Home Screen Replacement App For Android

3-Minutes Video Tutorial Site For Programming Learners "Dotinstall" Launches

Two popular Japanese bloggers, @taguchi[J] and @fkoji[J], launched new video tutorial site called dotinstall[J], which is aimed at ultra-beginner of programming. The site currently provides about 300 video tutorials, ranging from HTML basics to Creating Concentration game using Javascript, all of which last just about 3 minutes long.  All the videos are recorded in Japanese… Continue reading 3-Minutes Video Tutorial Site For Programming Learners "Dotinstall" Launches

Japan Gets Its Own YouTube Movie Rental Service

So far, only YouTube users from Canada, the US and (since October) the UK were able to rent movies, but yesterday, Japan has finally been added to the list, too (the country is the second biggest market for movies in the world). Youtube users in Japan can initially stream content from a total of five… Continue reading Japan Gets Its Own YouTube Movie Rental Service