Japan has a plethora of TV channels, but the biggest battleship is NHK [JP], the country’s national public broadcasting organization. NHK itself operates a number of different channels, and one of them, NHK World TV, has just released an English app for the iPhone/iPod touch [App Store link].

NHK World is the international broadcasting service of NHK, offers programs in English and is primarily aimed at the overseas market. Their free app enables you to watch NHK World live, meaning you can access the channel’s entire program from anywhere in the world on your iPhone or iPod touch. (There are some exceptions for reasons of copyright.)

Just fire the app up and you can instantly start watching the program. This works even over 3G, even though you (obviously) get better video and sound quality via Wi-Fi (the app’s official description says that up to about 9.5MB of data can be received every 10 minutes via 3G). The app itself is just 2MB and includes a program schedule.

Japan’s large industry is notoriously anti-web, but NHK has been cautiously opening up to the web in recent months. It was the nation’s first major TV network that started putting contents online on an own channel on Youtube (NHKOnline). More recently, the broadcaster also announced it will live-stream events from the upcoming Winter Olympics NHK doesn’t show on TV on a dedicated website.

NHK World TV iPhone app: English TV programs on Japan in your pocket

Different language, different application. That is not an exclusive phenomenon for web services like Facebook against Japanese big 3. The most popular P2P file sharing software on Japanese web is not BitTorrent.

First, it was western WinMX follower Winny. When Winny network caused chaos on society by virus (which uploaded private and enterprise files under Windows’ “My Documents” from companies and government organizations) and arrests.

The development of Winny was stopped, and P2P users migrated to Share. After some allegations by uploading copyrighted movies on Share, Perfect Dark, which began at end of 2006 and boasts its higher anonymity, has been taking the position of the former two.

screenshot by a blogger shinn_asuka_impulse

On January 27th, the first person who distributed copyrighted animation films over Perfect Dark network was arrested in Saitama prefecture. [J]

From the beginning of this year 2010, downloading illegal contents became crime by revised copyright law. Until 2009, only uploading side was illegal. However, this accusation is not by this extended download, but by upload.

First Arrest by Perfect Dark, the Latest P2P Client

NICT(National Institute of Information and Communication Technology)’s Master Project, which stands for “Multi-lingual Advanced Speech and Text reseARch Project” are running an experiment on multilingual (Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean) real-time translation system.

NICT has an English and other language pages to explain the whole experiment, which are and will be done in 5 different regions in Japan.

All of those tourist areas offer real time (1-2 seconds delay at most) machine translation in speech-to-speech, speech-to-text and text-to-speech services for foreign visitors for free.

At one of them, Yamanashi prefecture’s experiment with NEC and JTB Global Marketing & Travel Inc., not only offers “Handheld mobile type” and “regular PC set” but also provides “Scouter type” with which you can wear on your face and see the translated texts.

I am not sure how practical both voice recognition and Japanese-English machine translation, because even text-to-text machine translation gives me very bad results (for example). I want to try it if they come to Tokyo.

[Update 2010-02-08] Just one and a half days later, Google is reported to be developing speech-to-speech translation service on cellphones. So is this Japanese system years ahead? (I think both systems are and will be so limited, especially between distant languages like English-Japanese.)

See Also:

NEC’s release on the Yamanashi experiment [J]

NEC’s “Tele Scouter” product page [J]

ITPro’s report [J]

Real-time Translation Scouter Is Tested In Yamanashi, Japan

Japan’s legendary reality television show comes back with heavy usage of Twitter.

Denpa Shonen 2010 (Denpa Shonen = Radio-Wave Boy), a successor program of the Susume Denpa Shonen, which started in 1992, is running their new program under the same producer (Producer T).

The program name is “Denpa Shonen 2010 – Hito-wa Tsubuyaki Dakede Ikite Ikeruka?” [J]. The subtitle means “Can people live on Twitter alone?”.

It started on January 25th and will continue for 2 months. On the game, two commanders direct two pair of comedians to drive around Japan, to take points to win under some rules.

All commands and communications should be done by Twitter. This scene is when one pair gets the next command on Twitter.

The rule of the game, which is subject to change, is posted here [J]. The basic rules are,

• You lose if you violate traffic laws.
• Cover all living expenses by Twitter.
• No cash is allowed to have.
• The team gets more points win.

Additional rules provides how to get points. For example, the first one to be able to take a photo of Toyota dealer in the directed city acquires 500 points. (Toyota provides 2 corolla as a main sponsor)

There are more and more rules added every day to avoid possible problems, such like not recording copyrighted music as background, because broadcasting will be restricted by them, etc.

Hashtag #denpa2010 seems to be used a lot by those directors, competitors and TV watchers.

See Also:

Reality Television on Wikipedia

Susunu Denpa Shonen (sequel of the first one) on English Wikipedia

Twitter Featuring Reality TV Show Begins In Japan

(photo by airgap)

This may not be really web/IT for regular Asiajin, but fuel saving is supported by IT, and car and software may be hot topic around US Toyota incident, too (thanks for link Paul).

More than 10 foreign car brands including Hummer H3 V8 were added to the government’s “Eco Car” tax reduction program which encourages people to replace their current cars with more environmental friendly ones.

Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced that they expand their tax reduction program for eco-friendly cars to more foreign brands [J, pdf].

Foreign car vendors and importers have been protested that governmental stimulus packages mostly help Japanese cars.

We are very happy about how we appreciate that the Japanese government announced yesterday that they have, I guess after listening to our arguments, amended those regulations to the extent that foreign cars can more easily prove compliance with those requirements, as far as fuel efficiency requirements are concerned.

comment by Chairman of JAIA, Japan Automobile Importers Association

via Sankei Shimbun [J]

Hummer Is Certified As “Eco Car” By Japanese Government

Suddenly in Japan, small shop owners start thinking Twitter as a guerilla marketing tool. Ashton Kutcher could have eaten over $40,000 worth sushi in Tokyo if he knew it.

The first one was a board game shop Sugorokuya(@sugorokuya) [J] at Koenji of west Tokyo, which offered “discount by number of your Twitter followers” campaign [J] from January 25th.

That was rapidly spread among Japanese Twitter users. Within a week, at least three popular blogger/Twitter users, who are followed by over 100,000, visited the shop, @akiyan (report), @taguchi of 100shiki and @kotoripiyopiyo of Gizmodo Japan.

All of those big names, however, used very small chunk of their massive followers power. On their report, all of them got one inexpensive game for free, and purchased another. Instead they wrote a report on their blog and all of them were in hot topics.

They could have bought $2000 boardgames, but the shop’s condition is to tweet about the purchase. So person who already took fame may not want to dump their reputations. It seems working so far.

Their discount will last until February 7th, unless their campaign budget exhausts (this condition was added by advises on reply tweets).

The second follower is a sushi restaurant Saisho in Shinagawa, Tokyo.

On their twitter, “discount by number of your followers” day was announced, which was today February 4th.

There are some really popular Twitter users appeared,

• ksorano – Japanese Amanda Congdon (not recorded but live streaming) (10,943 followers)
• Hamachiya2 – individual web security enlightener (9,579)
• otsune – well known “web watcher” (8,201)
• yteppei – tech blogger (116,810)
• gothedistance – blogger (3,123). his report
• kansai_takako – Retweeter (4,176)

and more.

Inside of the sushi restaurant was broadcasted both on Ustream and TwitCasting which was just released yesterday. Total viewers of them passed 1,000, though it was not known who would show up.

There is a hotel offering the same “number of followers” discount in Mie prefecture. Takoyaki restaurant in Kagoshima prefecture announced “1/10 of your followers discount”.

Twitter Followers Serves You Free Sushi, Boardgame And More In Japan

Yahoo Japan released 16 free iPhone Apps simultaneously at Japanese iTunes Store. By locating each app on the screen correctly, like solving a number slider puzzle, you can depict a face of the most famous character in Japan, Doraemon.

Each app icon is designed to be a part of the face of this character. Usually, iPhone app icons have a unique gradation effect  common to all, but icons of those apps don’t have such kind of effect on them.

These apps were released as a part of the campaign to promote the animation movie of Doraemon. Apps are comprised by 11 comic book  apps, a battery level checker app, mini-game apps and etc.

Currently, 16 apps are all ranked in the top 20 free apps in Japanese iTunes App store.

16 Free Apps To Depict Character’s Face On Your iPhone

Yesterday’s big news around live streaming was Ustream raised from Japanese Softbank. Today, another mobile video streaming launched from Japan (the service is English/Japanese bilingual), TwitCasting by Sidefeed.

http://asiajin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/twitcasting.png“>

A free iPhone Application side of TwitCasting is a Twitter client with video broadcasting which boasts low latency (0.1 sec to 0.3 sec within Japan, as they say). On Sidefeed CEO’s blog [J], the CEO Yosuka Akamatsu recommends to use iPhone 3GS for the best experience, though the movie’s frame rate are adjusted with your environment.

The broadcast movie can be viewed on TwitCasting website by standard web browsers (on Flash) and iPhone/iPod Touch (QuickTime).

Here is the introduction video (Japanese audio/English subtitle),

SideFeed is known by its spin-off service Joker Racer, which got the Grand Prix at WISH 2009 startup event in Tokyo last year.

TwitCasting – Free Twitter+Videostreaming iPhone App

I have just read the breaking news that Softbank invests $75 million to Ustream Inc., live video streaming service. When Softbank will exercise all option, it will be the lead investor with over 30%.

Yesterday, Softbank announced that they would broadcast their third quoter results report over several different channels like follows,

• Softbank Website
• Yahoo! Japan’s BB Broadcast (only mentioned in Japanese, could be restricted inside Japan)
• Twitter (hashtag #sbIR3Q)
• Ustream, and dedicated free iPhone viewer
• Cellphone broadcast (only mentioned in Japanese, sounds like only in Japan)
• Cellphone (Toll free from Japan)

When I saw this announcement, I wonder why Softbank added two new channels, Twitter and Ustream, which they did not use at former broadcast. Especially Ustream, because Softbank has Yahoo! BB Broadcast and some other broadcast services they can use. Now I know why Ustream is there.

The broadcast will be done both in Japanese and English, starting around 16:30 February 2nd, 2010 Japan Standard Time, which is just 1 hour from now.

See also:

Softbank’s release on Ustream, Inc. investment

New Ustream Investor Softbank 3Q Results Briefing Starts On The Web Now

GAME by Perfume

According to ITMedia [J], Internet Watch [J], Asahi [J] and more coming, 11 songs of Perfume’s album “Game” are found to be sold on iTunes store, which turned out to be unauthorized copy by unknown fake company.

Perfume is a popular Japanese girls techno unit broke through as a star from the internet, by blogs and huge number of unauthorized mash-up movie on NicoNico Douga.

As the label Tokuma Japan Communications did not sell other Perfume songs on iTunes for years though despite many fans’ request, some fans have been talking why only those 11 songs (11 out of 12 songs on the “Game”) are sold there.

The label of the seller on the iTunes Store was misspelled as “Tukuma Japan” instead of “Tokuma Japan”.

Tokuma Japan announced that they never uploaded any Perfume songs on iTunes, and the next day (yesterday) they have been removed form iTunes store. Apple Japan PR said that they are investigating.

In this case, Perfume is well known on web and the misspell might made detection easier. But could it have been found if this was done with minor songs by unpopular artists more carefully?

By knowing forging a dummy company to sell pirated music on iTunes, concerns of music labels and copyright holders may grow in Japan. Apple Japan’s explanation is being waited.

See Also:

A Perfume fan’s site in English

iTunes Selling Bootleg Of Japanese Techno Star Makes Labels Worried