Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• Cybridge Purchases Naked Technology From Mixi
• Buffalo USA Ships The World’s First 11ac WiFi Router Which Is 3X Faster Than 11n
• Flipboard Japanese Localization Announced [En]
• Yahoo! Japan Finance To Make Stock Info Realtime – first as a free service. currently it has 20 mins delay
• 2ch Founder Hiroyuki Defends 5,000 Ignored Delete Requests Not From Police but by a police affiliated organization
• Rakuten CEO And Docomo On The List Who Newly Invests Evernote
• 30% Of Japanese Think To Keep Using Facebook, Higher Than Mixi/Twitter Research research by Cross Marketing (n=2043)
• Mixi Amends Some Articles Of Incorporation – to handle money transfer, auction, rental and ticketing.
• Yahoo! Japan Provides Ads For Naver Matome – Naver Matome was banned from Google Adsense before likely because most contents were copied from other sites. Yahoo! Japan, stronger than Google in this country, might not think it is a problem.
• Food Photo Sharing Service miil Company FrogApps Gets 240 Million Yen
• Japan’s Rakuten Wins the Heart of Pinterest in $100M Funding Round [En] by AllThingsD
• Asiajin’s Serkan Toto and Akky Akimoto’s comments on reuters FB news
• Facebook-specific photo package for 6800 yen.
• Crowd Comic Reproducing Project Social Kingdom – redrawing 1,000 frames of the latest book of a popular manga series Kingdom, by fans (and a few professional guests)
• Decopic Passes 6 Million Downloads
• Consumer Affairs Agency officially states that Kompu Gacha violates their regulation [pdf] – 6 Social Game Platformers Announcement On Consumer Affairs Agency’s Release
• Satellite TV Card B-CAS Hacked
• PASMO Closes History Viewer Service
• Quipper Raises $3.6M For Its Fun Take On E-Learning [En] by TechCrunch – a company by DeNA co-founder

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

Japan’s Web News Week 20

“SHIBUYA 109 -StyleCollection-” is a reality based social game coupled with the actual fashion building as the setting.  Users become the manager of a newly opened “SHIBUYA 109” shop, create their own avatar, challenge against rival shops in customer service battles, and together with their stylish staff aim to be the No. 1 shop.  There is now a campaign to commemorate the launch of this service, where all players who visit the actual “SHIBUYA 109” shop will receive an avatar background featuring the symbolic cylindrical building.  You can get it from the touch panel set up on the eighth floor of the building whenever you visit the shop.  As the first part of the plan to link up with popular shops, the number one selling “CECIL McBEE” is featured.  When you actually visit the “CECIL McBEE” shop on the second floor of “SHIBUYA 109,” you receive a limited staff card (in the game) modeling the staff from the “CECIL McBEE” shop, and furthermore if you introduce friends within the game, you can get an avatar with a popular item sold there.  There will also be a collaboration with the major fan festival “Shibuya109 Girls Festival 2012” for girls held at Shibuya Hikarie on May 12th.  Those attending this event will be presented with a one day limited item in the game.  From now the company will be developing various devices to link up the game with reality with “SHIBUYA 109” as the setting.

©Butterfly Licensed by SHIBUYA109

Translation authorized by VSMedia

Shibuya 109 Fashion Social Game Release

On the same day when Rakuten’s investment on Pinterest reported (Rakuten announced it officially on today May 18.), the Japan’s largest online mall also announced another domestic investment.

On May 15, Rakuten and Online pharmacy company Kenko.com (kenko = health in Japanese) jointly announced [J, pdf] that they agreed on business alliance, as well as Rakuten’s friendly take over bid on Kenko.com, which will make Rakuten as a top shareholder, 40.75%. Rakuten group already holds some stock so the total ownership would be about 51%.

Rakuten is planning to send 4 persons to the Kenko.com board on the next shareholder meetings planned on June 26.

Kenko.com, who has been leading health-related products e-commerce in Japan, has been fighting on court against government around online drug-selling regulation. They recently marked a big turn-over win at high-court that the original government regulation banning internet drug selling, though Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry(MHLW) has appealed to the supreme court.

Rakuten To Purchase 51% Of Online Pharmacy Kenko.com

Drecom [J] Has released the new social game application “Monster Arms” for the American App Store.  The support language is English so unfortunately it can’t be downloaded from Japan.

“Monster Arms” is a real time strategy card game where you make an original deck and collect character cards while completing missions.  It has social components such as battling with other players to get treasure, or teaming up to challenge against bosses.

Translation authorized by VSMedia

Drecom Releases American iOS App “Monster Arms”

“I would like to have cat-shaped earphone-jack parts like this.”

She did not expect that so many people liked and wanted it. But the Twitter buzz promptly found a company who offers to make it production. The mock-ups have arrived now.

This design plan “Cat-type Plug Accessory(tentative name)” becomes “this” \(゜∀゜)/

Some people challenged to build at home, too.

Plug-in Cat For Smartphone Is Under Development

The sample text means “Chinese letter’s stroke order”

The font is avaiable here.

via Modern Syntax Blog

Japanese Font With Stroke Order

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

• Amazon Japan Begins Video Games Trade-In. US Amazon’s one is since March 2009.
• Twitter Releases Feature Phone Client [En], 2.5 Years Later For Japan [En]
• “Hello Call” – Laundromat Washer Machine Calls You When It Is Done –

  
  

• Ministry of Foreign Affair Begins Twitter PR Targeting Youth
• Xevious x Sprite Game via Cnet Japan Wired [En]
• The World First Laser AR Head-Up Display(HUD) Car Navigation To Be Sold In July By Pioneer

  

• Hatsune Miku Version PS Vita [En]
• Virtual AR Mixed-sex Bathing App For Android Released

  via IT Media

• “I stole your iPod!”, @qoo9qoo saw when he woke up at school

  

  It turned out to be his birthday prank by his friends.

• Naver Line Takes In Celebrities – Starts With 7 Talents/Units
• NHN Japan’s LINE for Windows Has A Dreadful Bug To Remove Whole “Program Files” On Uninstall – when you had installed non-default folder. Bug fixed days later.
• Some Docomo Androids Listed As End Of Production Only Within A Year including Galaxy Nexus, Android 4.0 reference model
• Idol M@aster On Mobage Releases New Set Gacha After Kompu-Gacha Self Regulations News Rush
• Consumer Agency Defines Fake Reviews By Shopowner (so-called Stealth Marketing = Sutema) Is Bad – still not so restrict like US FTC
• Gree’s Doriland To Become Animation
• Google Bans Nifty’s Android App Which Cache YouTube And Niconico Video For Offline
• Actvila’s subscribers are 520,000
• Bic Camera to acquire majority in Kojima: Nikkei | Reuters [En] Nation’s #5 electronics chain-store purchases #6, becomes #2 next to Yamada
• KDDI Launches Flat-rate Music Service LISMO unlimited for iPhone. The service is not restricted within KDDI iPhone. non KDDI iPhone user can use it as well.
• Social Game Vendor Klab Uplisted To TSE First Section From Mothers – fastest upgrade in TSE history. Klab also announced to buy back 3.27% stocks
• Right To Be Projected On Tokyo Gundam Cockpit At Yahoo! Auction
• Accused Upskirt Photo Taker Eats Up His Memory Card Just Before Arrest, denied the charge

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

Japan’s Web News Week 19

Some social networking competitors, such like Gree and DeNA(who runs Mobage), who had turned over Mixi recent years in number of registered users and corporate values mainly by social games, were being proposed to participate in the bidding secretly, sources closed to financial interest told to Nikkei.

The share to be sold off Nikkei says is 55% of the company owned by the Mixi founder & CEO Kenji Kasahara. He established Mixi in 2004 and soon that becomes a giant business based on real friends network and advertising sales.

On May 5, 4 days ago, Mixi announced a board reshuffling, including Akinori Harada’s steps down from the co-representative director & vice-president, he has been leading Mixi’s recent major measures like Mixi Pages, Mixi Mall, etc.

Mixi promptly issued a short release saying “There are no such truth reported on a certain media.”

See Also:

Asiajin » A Summary of the Latest Studies about Japan & Social Media

Mixi Gives Up? Nikkei Business Report CEO Considering To Sell His 55% Ownership

Apple's Siri is Apple's buttocks in Japan | Technically Incorrect – CNET News

Shiri, not Siri

Paperbooya has released “Dr. Teeth,” their first title, as a game application for iPhone.  Download is free.

Paperbooya is a joint venture company established [J] by paperboy&co.  [J] and gooya [J] in January of this year with the purpose of developing and managing smartphone game applications.  Their release at this time, “Dr. Teeth,” is a game where you frantically tap on germs thriving in a patient’s mouth and kill them off.  Bust out a combo by connecting fellow germs with a swipe, scrub the teeth with a brush when a germ sticks on, and rinse with mouthwash when inside the mouth is full of germs.  There’s many types of patients and germs, and you can collect as you go.

Translation authorized by VSMedia

Paperbooya Releases “Dr. Teeth” For iPhone