Just in time for late Steve Jobs' birthday (January 24th) this year, Apple has announced the name of its new campus 'Apple Park'. And just in time for late Steve Jobs' birthday this year, SEIKO and Japanese clothing retailer, nano・universe have announced to reproduce "SEIKO CHARIOT" watch originally introduced in 1982 (and have become a long seller) and will make it available in Japan in March.

It is an old watch but even the younger generations might have seen one, if they had a hardcover English version of Walter Issacson's "Steve Jobs." The back of the book shows young Steve Jobs wearing the watch. As a matter of fact, if you do a simple Google Image search for "Steve Jobs 1983" or "Steve Jobs 1984", you will find out how it was part of his lifestyle back in the early 1980s. He was wearing it even at the introduction of original Macintosh: one of his milestone event.

(C)Nobuyuki Hayashi

The Legendary Intro

10 years ago from now, Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone.
I was luckily covering the event onsite. It was an unfortunate year for many of the other consumer electronics journalists who have chosen to attend Consumer Electronics Show; as one US News reporter described it on a TV report: ‘the biggest news of CES 2007 was from a company that didn’t even have a booth.’

At the stage of MACWORLD keynote Steve Jobs declared that “Apple reinvents the phone.” In a few years, the world learns it had not just reinvented the phones but the whole digital eco-system for that matter. Within five years, it was so natural for Apple to become the world’s most valued company.
On January 25, 2007, right after iPhone's introduction, I wrote a series of article (in Japanese) titled “iPhone is the first tree that would start a new forest.’ I was right. But I couldn’t imagine it would have been forests this big.
A decade has past since the legendary intro. So much of what we have been taking for granted today wasn’t the way it was in 2006. So let me summarise it from my own perspective.

The Obvious

First there are some obvious changes.
If it were not for the iPhone,
- there hasn’t been Angry Birds, Puzzle & Dragon, Instagram, Evernote, Line or WhatsApp and 2 million more Apps on the App Store
- Many companies that we hear often today like Uber, Snapchat, Rovi wouldn’t have existed
- Many business around the popular apps (such as Angry Bird the movie or LINE sticker store, or the LINE character retail shops) wouldn’t have existed
- emoji hadn’t become this popular
- programming with Objective-C nor Swift had become this popular
- there might have been Android but it may not have been as good as how it looks today instead it might have been a Windows Mobile like device operated with built-in keyboards and stylus

Thanks to the App economy, there are Apps to do almost anything. Below you will see an installation from “NOSIGNER: REASON BEHIND FORMS” exhibition which shows how much tools have been integrated into iPhone; NOSIGNER is a Japanese design firm.

The above list can go on and on. But here on my blog, I would like to focus more on the fundamental changes.

The Divide

Before iPhone came along many other people were worried about ‘digital divide.’ After Internet became popular with Windows 95 and iMac, the world was divided in two: those who have & can operate a PC (or Mac) and search the Internet and those who don’t. By the time, iPad came out in 2010, I have realised that we are no longer hearing that term. Perhaps, in this area, the more affordable Android devices made a bigger contribution; but cost to access to Internet has dramatically decreased thanks to the smartphones. Before smartphones, we had to buy a PC and a router, install DSL or fibre optics and sign up for an ISP. But smartphones made it simple. Even for the rather expensive iPhones, the ‘cost of owning Internet access’ has dramatically decreased compared to PC-era.
The Internet population is growing at tens of millions per year; and most of them start their life on the Internet on smartphones.

Speaking of the ‘digital devide’ after 2010, I started to see reverse phenomenon. Of course, those white colour workers who had the Internet before iPhone also make some progress with iPhone/iPad such as having better access to the corporate network from outside, etc.
But bigger leaps were happening in industries which didn’t take advantage of PC revolution such as people in Primary Industry (farming, fishing, forestry, etc.), tourism, education, fashion, medical field, etc., etc.

(c)Nobuyuki Hayashi

The Sushi chef that made Steve Jobs Wait for 30 min.

photo coutesy of Hitoshi Hokamura: click to reveal his other photos taken in Kaygetsu

Despite my extensive research about Steve Jobs' affection to Japan, I am not sure when he began to like sushi.
But Jay Elliot, one of Steve's mentors, told me that Steve already liked Sushi when they visited Japan together back in 1983.

While Steve's first sushi chef remain as a mystery, in Japan, three of his top sushi chefs are very well known.
Below is the story of Toshio Sakuma, the ex-owner and chef of a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner restaurant 'Kaygetsu (桂月).'
This is where Apple Board often held their dinner. And this is where Steve Jobs made a surprise birthday party for his wife.
'Kaygetsu' is the place Steve Jobs loved the most and Toshio, perhaps, is the chef Steve had known the longest.

You might have heard Steve Jobs was very impatient. But if it were for Toshio's sushi, Steve could wait for 30 minutes.
Steve visited this place almost weekly. While he was very sick in 2011, he sent Mona Simpson, his biological sister, to pick up Japanese sweets.

Recently, a book about Toshio Sakuma, 'Steve Jobs' Chef' was published here in Japan; it provided a very interesting perspective to the history of Silicon Valley. After all, it was not just Steve Jobs who loved this restaurant.

The story of Toshio making Steve Jobs wait became so famous after a notice put beside the entrance of 'Toshi's Sushiya,' Toshio's second restaurant (preceding 'Kaygetsu').

The notice was titled 'Please wait to be seated.' The latter half of it was an FAQ, and item 2 there looked like this:

The actual sushi served at Kaygetsu (courtesy of H. Hokamura)

A Quarter Century Relationship

Steve had been eating Toshio's sushi since 1987 or 1988. And Toshio's restaurant, 'Kaygetsu' was one of the last restaurants he had eaten.

'Toro', 'Salmon' and 'Hamachi' were Steve's favorites.
'Five toros and five Hamachis' were his regular order.

On his last visit to Kaygetsu, he ate 'Negi-toro' and 'shrimp tempura.' Toshio also prepared 'Pumpkin tempura' but Steve wasn't in a condition to finish it.

Steve loved the place so much and often visited there alone for lunch (as spotted in picture above by Hitoshi Hokamura of Evernote).
Seat No.1 at the counter (shown above) was his favorite seat and even when he visited without reservation, he seemed upset when that seat was taken.

He often brought Jonathan Ive or his wife, Laurene Powell.
Steve held a surprise birthday party for Laurene back in 2000 at 'Toshi's Sushiya' with just the two of them. And another one at 'Kaygetsu,' in 2004 with 25 of his best friends including Larry Ellison.

Steve couldn't be away from Toshio's taste that he once sent his house cook to Kaygetsu, so he can learn how to cook better Chazuke and Spinach Goma-ae.

The Restaurant for Apple's Board Dinner

Steve shared his meal not just with friends and families.

Apple's board has decided to have their regular board dinner at 'Kaygetsu' after Fall, 2006; that means Al Gore, Bill Campbell, Mickey Drexler, Arthur D. Levinson and Eric Schmidt all gathered in Toshio's not-so-big Japanese restaurant.

Steve visited 'Kaygetsu' after almost every major product launch.
One exception was the iPhone launch and he missed it because Toshio was having a vacation.
But when Apple finally shipped the original iPhone in June of 2007, Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive visited 'Kaygetsu' just to show Toshio how it works.

Now Served in Apple's HQ

Toshio Sakuma might have had a special karma with Steve Jobs.

He worked in Silicon Valley for 26 years running three Japanese restaurants.
By 2010, Toshio started to look for a change. 'Kaygetsu' has become too famous in Silicon Valley; Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and Douglas Leone of Sequoia Capital were among the other regulars there.
Toshio wanted to keep the quality of service high but he was almost 60 years old.
Then there was Lehman Shock and in March 2011, Tohoku earthquake hit Japan and Toshio's birthplace, Fukushima was in big trouble.
But one day, Steve Jobs visited Kaygetsu for lunch bravely without reservation.
He was taking a medical leave from Apple's day-to-day operation but he was well enough to make the visit to Kaygetsu.
Steve Jobs knew Toshio had been trying to sell Kaygetsu and told him that he had a 'crazy idea.'
That idea was to hire Toshio as a chef for Apple's own cafeteria.
Toshio accepted it.

October 7th, 2011 was officially the last day for Kaygetsu.
But as a token of gratitude to his regular customers, Toshio has decided to make the last four days (i.e. October 4th to 7th) as 'special days' and take reservation from regular customers only.

Jonathan Ive's secretary called Kaygetsu and made a reservation for October 6th, 2011.
Jonathan's secretary told Toshio that he will bring a special guest with him.
Toshio thought that guest would be Steve Jobs.
But the night before the reservation, Toshio heard a very sad news: the passing of Steve Jobs.
On October 6th, Toshio receives an e-mail from Jonathan's secretary canceling the reservation. And Toshio replied it in sorrow.

That very week Toshio had to say goodbye to two of his best memories: Kaygetsu and Steve Jobs.

But thanks to that crazy ideas by Steve Jobs earlier that year; today, if you go to Caffè Macs (i.e. Apple's cafeteria), you can enjoy the sushi, Steve Jobs loved for quarter century.

The Departures of Kaygetsu and Steve Jobs

This article is based on this book published Fall/2013 in Japan

All this and so much more are revealed in the book called 'Jobs' Chef' by Nikkei BP published last fall only here in Japan (foreword by Hitoshi Hokamura).

Kaygetsu was not the only Sushi place Steve Jobs loved.
There is another Sushi restaurant Steve Jobs loved in Palo Alto called 'Jinsho' a much bigger restaurant where Steve held a farewell party with his dear friends.
Another one is in Kyoto, and is called 'Sushi Iwa.' Steve told Masayoshi Son of Softbank that he had the best meal in his life there.
But perhaps, I can talk about them on a separate blog post.

More stories about Steve Jobs and Japan

This is episode 5 of my "tales of Steve Jobs & Japan."
You will find my older posts here:

1. Mr.Floppy disk
2. casual friendship with Sony: (How Steve Jobs Wanted to Put Mac OS on every VAIO)
3. Yukio Shakunaga, Steve Jobs' Favorite Porcelain Artist
4. Woodcut by Goyo Hashiguchi on the face of original Mac

External Links:

- LinkedIn profile for Hitoshi Hokamura: http://www.linkedin.com/in/hokamura
(Thank you for proof-reading and contacting Mrs. Sakuma for the sushi photo)!
- Kaygetsu on Yelp
- Caffè Macs on Yelp

The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation
	<font size="-1">Jay Elliot William L. Simon Vanguard Press 2011-03-08 See details at Amazon</font><font size="-2"> by G-Tools</font>

The original book in Japanese: ジョブズの料理人 寿司職人、スティーブ・ジョブズとシリコンバレーとの26年
	<font size="-1">日経BP社出版局(編集) 佐久間俊雄(取材協力) Author: Nikkei BP Editorial 日経BP社 2013-12-05 Amazonで詳しく見る</font><font size="-2"> by G-Tools</font>

When 3.11 (i.e. Great East Japan Earthquake) took place three years ago, Google was very quick to respond.

A few Googlers started working on localization of Google Person Finder; it was up and running within 106 minutes after the earthquake. That was when Google has opened and announced first version of Google Crisis Response page in Japanese.
Six hours after that, the team found out, most people were still using feature phone (back in 2011) and couldn't access the web page, so they have modified Person Finder and made it accessible via Japanese feature phones.
(FYI. after Typhoon Yolanda hit Philippines in 2013, Person Finder also became accessible through SMS).

Google Person Finder will let you search (or report), if your friends/family are ok after a disaster. Click the image above to try it out in test mode.

Another group lead by Kei Kawai started to prepare satellite photos and aerial photos of the area of damage; Kei did so after the advice of Kevin Reece, who had experience in responding to a big natural disaster and who knew aerial photos will be very important.

Before I explain further, perhaps, I need to clarify the difference between Satellite photos and aerial photos. As the name implies Satellite photos are took in space (by the Satellite) while aerial photos are taken from the sky by airplanes. Because the distance between the ground is greater, satellite photos are good enough to recognize landscape and bigger architectures, but it is not as clear in detail as aerial photos.

Satellite image (left) vs Aerial Photo (right)

The Google team asked Japanese government for permission but they was not as cooperative as Google expected, so it took a while until Google was able to provide the first aerial photos.

In order to prevent this kind of mishaps, I will explain why you would need it.
The aerial photos are, of course, very useful for the victims and those worried to recognize how severe the damage was.
But it is not just that.

It will be used among the rescue team to recognize how they can approach the area of severe damage (e.g. which shore, which road, which landing points, etc.).
It will also be used among those rescue team to mark which areas are searched, etc.
Aerial photos can also be used by those people who are planning to build shelters.

Satellite photos may also help. But it is best, if you have clearer aerial photos.

Kawai has made a custom map with links to Satellite photos shared on Picasa

After the earthquake in 2011, Kei Kawai in Mountain View was perhaps, one of the first Japanese to receive GeoEye's satellite images of Tohoku after earthquake.
By then, Google was receiving request from Japanese media for satellite images of Fukushima, but he couldn't help himself from checking the image of coastal town in Minami Soma; his wife was from there. He was so surprise to see the coastline have shifted so much but was able to recognize her wife's house was still there after the tsunami.

These images were later used used on Google Earth but Google Earth is a gigantic complex system, and it will take time to update image, and it will take further time until everyone will be able to see the image.

But Kawai, knew some people want to use the images as soon as possible. So he picked some of the best satellite images, uploaded them to his Picasa image sharing service, then created a link on his Google MyMap.
This approach was invented by some Googlers in the UK, but Kawai took over their effort.
If someone click an area on that MyMap, the web browser would display the picture shared via Picasa.

Uploading the image to Picasa had a nice side effect. People concertned about particular area was able to form community through the comment area of Picasa exchanging information or even leaving a 'thank you' note to Google.

Because it would take time to update Google Earth and Google Maps, Kawai has uploaded Satellite photos on Picasa

Although Google wanted to take aerial photos immediately after the earthquake, because the Japanese government was not as cooperative, they had to wait for two weeks until they finally were able to start taking aerial photos; those photos were shared through Google Earth and Google Maps on March 31st, and the world saw how big the damage was.

While Kei Kawai and other Googlers were working hard to get clear photos of the damaged area in Tohoku, a Japanese car manufacturer, Honda was trying to spread an important information.

Honda has an advanced telematics services for their cars called Internavi since 1998.
One of the interesting feature of Internavi is that it can share the probe information with other Internavi users; i.e. you can share information about where your car is and how fast it is moving. With this information, driver of cars equipped with Internavi will know the average speed of cars on each streets across Japan.

Back in 2004, there was a big earthquake near Niigata Prefecture (Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Earthquake ) and Honda's Internavi team found another interesting use of car probe information; it will visualize which roads are not working.
If you have a big disaster, roads will be closed for landslides, for fallen trees, for tsunami, etc.
And those car heading to rescue the victims will waste great deal of time figuring out how they can approach the damaged area.
But Internavi team knew which roads are dead and which roads are alive because if a road is closed there will be no records of car probe on that road.
So in 2011, Internavi team of Honda has compiled a car probe data gathered from Internavi, compiled it as a KML file (a geographical data that can be overlayed on Google Earth) and shared it via Twitter.

Many people tried to connect the guy from Honda to people at Google (I was among the many who tried it). Later, they found each other and started a joint effort and ultimately, it has become part of the many Google Crisis Response service unique to Japan.

Honda Internavi car probe data mapped over Google Map (and offered as part of Google Crisis Response)

This information was so useful. One of my photographer friend check this info on his iPhone and drove all the way to Tohoku.

Kazuma Watanabe is a head of an NPO who helped so many after the earthquake; Kazuma arranged a few cars full of goods heading toward coastal area where Tsunami hit. In the mean time, he stayed in Sendai and was checking the probe information and directed which road his staffs should take through phone calls.

Let me walk through how these information can be useful in action.

Let's say, you are heading to Shiogama city through a coastal highway and check Google x Honda probe information. And then, you find people are avoiding the area around Sendai Airport and Natori river.
So I would open Google maps or Google Earth and check what's over there.
And you find the bridge over Natori river were taken down by the Tsunami and gone.

You found via probe information people are avoiding Natori River; you check the area with satellite image to find the bridge is gone

European Union, wake up!
It is 21st Century.
So don't spread bad design such as USB. It would create another century of plug/cable mess.

You shouldn't let computer manufacturers and chip manufacturers design connectors and cables. They just don't bother practicing a good design. USB is one example of that.

Before USB, we had FireWire (IEEE 1394) designed by Apple and Sony (the two exceptions of the bad-design industry). The connector of FireWire has a very distinctive shape, so the user could tell the orientation just by touching it (in the dark or behind the PC for example).

FireWire (IEEE 1394) designed by Apple+SONY had distinctive shape, so you can recognize the orientation just by touching

On the other hand, if you have a modern PCs with USB ports, you know what I mean ...
Maybe some of you have the super-power and never pushed the USB plugs up-side-down, but even if so, ask friends/family around you.
I am most certain that they keep repeating the same mistakes even as we speak now thanks to the carefully mal-designed USB plugs.

Of course, everybody person and organization makes mistakes, and you should give a chance to vindicate.
But in the case of USB? Haven't we done enough of that?
I think USB has produced generations of bad designs.

From the very first version of USB, you always have to look at the connector to tell which side is up.
Perhaps, the best design in USB history is the mini-USB port whose shape was a bit easier to distinguish.

mini USB port was perhaps the best design in USB history

And maybe because USB organization doesn't bother hiring a good designer, for the micro-USB, they just shrink the mini-USB design. But size 'does' matter. That design worked for mini-size but not for the micro-size.

Now it is a global habit for hundreds of millions of people around the world to waste time figuring out which side is up and which side is down; and thanks to the bad design, even when you are holding the cable in the correct orientation, sometime, it doesn't plug-in as smoothly as the lightning cable.

Apple, Inc. (with good designers) knew as the connectors become smaller, it would become hard to distinguish the orientation by the shape of connectors; and that is why they invented the 'lightning' cable which you can plug-in without bothering the correct orientation; you can hook the cable either way and it works.

Android users and Apple-hater should at least try the 'lightning' cable; you can still keep hating Apple, but I want you to become fair enough to distinguish a 'good design' in the area where 'bad design' has most penetration.

The mess with micro-USB doesn't end in the thoughtless connector shapes.
If you are an high-spec Android phone user, perhaps, you must know by now that you have to have a correct AC adapter and a correct cable to charge your phone.

While some old wall adapters only support 1 Ampere, to charge some of those high-spec Android phone, you have to have more than 2 Ampere (which by the way, is also a requisite to charge iPads).
And when you do that, you also have to have a correct micro-USB cables.
There are so many micro-USB cables that just doesn't charge those high-spec Android phones.

I wanted to write this article for so long but keep forgetting it, but today, I have decided to write it for two reasons:

1) yesterday, I had to bought a micro-USB cable because I needed to use my Android phone and it was out of battery. And that micro-USB cable didn't work.
2) in my friend's Facebook wall, I found a new Japanese gadget for those troubled by this charging problem

The gadget is called 'CHARGE DOCTOR' and if you hook it in between your charger or PC and microUSB cable, you will know if the cable is transmitting sufficient amperes (i.e. if that cable works).

beware manufactures claim there's cheaper copy product which shows incorrect measure

It is a perfect example of 'necessary evil' created thanks to the bad design of microUSB.

I don't want to anger the Apple haters, but if you allow me. In order not to create this kind of mess (with bad quality cables), Apple put a chip inside the 'lightning' plug and certifying proper cables with 'Made for iPhone' and 'Made for iPad' logo.
This is how you protect the good experience of your customers.

The connectors and cable todays are not the cables and connectors of the 1990s, it is transmitting incomparably high amount of data and electrical currencies and you need careful control of it.

But USB gangs are just defining the spec and let the other manufacturers create a mess; well, to be fair with them, there is also a 'certified USB' logo, but the USB created a culture where their distributors and customers go for the cheaper cables, etc.

I still hope, USB will do a better design job with their next generation connectors and cables, but re-creating the customer culture and brand recognition is not as easy.

European Union tries to standardize on micro-USB

Now, there is a third reason that I had to write this article.
European Union seem to have passed a law to force all manufacturers of smartphones to stick with the micro-USB port (they are not giving USB.org to try a better design) after 2017:

geek.com: Apple will be forced to use micro USB chargers by 2017

In the beginning of this post, I wrote 'you shouldn't let computer manufacturers and chip manufacturers design connectors and cables.'
But before that, we shouldn't let government or political union regulate 'connectors and cables.'
I know European countries had made a huge mistake by making the power plugs in Europe a chaos. And perhaps, this traumatic mistake leads to this new regulation for 'connectors and cables.' But don't!

Today, the market economy will decide the standard and it is more difficult to create another mess like the European power plugs. As a matter of fact, if you look at the smartphone market, there are basically two big standard setters: Apple and USB.

If you insist in regulating it, you have to go to Apple's design because EU includes UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and other countries that care for 'GOOD DESIGN."
But it is very unlikely, that Apple would open their standard. Even if they did, it will be awkward for Apple to certify competitors' phones. That's why you should 'not' regulate.

I believe designers in European countries should unite and fight this non-sense law.

A week from now on March 11, 2014, we commemorate the 3rd anniversary of Great East Japan earthquake.
I still remember how I was in the depths of despair only three years ago. Before the earthquake, Japan was anxious that GDP of China will finally surpass that of Japan; the TV news was repeating that neither Japanese population nor the GDP will be on the uptrend again.
Then, on March 11 came the earthquake.

Above is the vieo, I took. I was in Shibuya, Tokyo. Tokyo is about 375Km (or 233 Miles) away from the seismic center: about the distance between Manhattan to New Hampshire (i.e. passing over Boston) or between Paris center to Stansted airport in the north of London. It took a couple of minutes until the tremor hits Tokyo but still it had this much power. And this was only the starter. We had uncountable aftershock after the first wave, how could we not think it was the doomsday?

Above is an animation I found on YouTube that shows all the tremor that happens in 3 days between March 11th and 13th, 2011; wait until the counter hits 2011/3/11 14:46 and imagine being in Tohoku where most of the electricities and the phone lines were gone.
We could hardly imagine that Japan would play a key role in world economy again.
But most of Japan except for Tohoku has recovered since then. There is still a long way ahead for Tohoku and even longer way ahead for some areas in Fukushima.
That is all thanks to people around the world who supported Japan and I think Japanese ought to share some of the lessons we have learned in that earthquake.
After all, I believe that earthquake was one of the most digitally archived natural disaster in human history. And not only Japan, but the whole world can learn so much important lessons from it.
You may ask how digitally archived it was.
Well, first of all, there are so many YouTube video, Flickr, Picasa and mixi photos of the earthquake and tsunami because smartphones and digital cameras have large penetration all over Japan, so we had the mean to archive the real disaster.
Then, there was Twitter which perhaps became the most used IT service after the earthquake.

Twitter: the Communication Tool for Natural Disaster

Actually, Twitter had been the tool communication tool for earthquake even before the big Earthquake on 3.11. You know, in Japan, we have earthquakes more often than many other countries; even in Tokyo, we have at least three or four earthquakes that we can feel plus more than a dozen smaller ones that we don't feel; perhaps, there were less before 3.11.
In anyway, even before 3.11, whenever an earthquake happens, people using Twitter would have immediately launched Twitter App on their smartphones and check if it really was the ground that was shaking or if s/he was just feeling dizzy and tweeted "shaking!" (in Japanese.)
Many people in Japan understand the real time value of Twitter so well that they didn't type long words, so sometime, we could visually witness how the seismic wave transmits. For example, if I see a guy in Shizuoka city tweets "shaking" and then, another friend in Kamakura city tweets "shaking" 30-40 seconds later, I would feel the earthquake and tweet "shaking" about 20-30 seconds later, or something like that.
There are also many (ro)bots that would automatically tweets information about earthquakes.
Facebook and mixi weren't as efficient in spreading and gathering info of so many people in such a timely manner because they are optimized for communication within closed groups and because it would let you describe so many other things with more than 140 character that by the time, you finished writing, everybody would forget about the earthquake and moved on to the next topic.
Also, because the thing you can do with Twitter is so limited, it was so easy for newbies; many people in Japan heard, Twitter is helpful right after the earthquake, and those people started using Twitter as one of their first internet communication tools after e-mail (e-mails on feature phones had been a very popular tool for a long time even before Smartphones came along). Today, Google+ may come after Twitter for the ease of setup & ease of use; but I think Google+ is too complicated (you can do too much) for novices, especially for elderly people (people in the tech industry should understand more feature = more to learn before you can use it).

So when 3.11 happened, Twitter was the natural communication tool of choice for the many. And although the connection over major phone operators were too congested, many business people had portable Wifi connections that they could use.
They used it to share/find out what's going on around them; there had been tons of amazing conversations going on from a girl asking for help from under the collapsed brick wall to cafes in Shibuya opening up their space as temporary shelter, etc.
As one of the recommended users of Twitter chosen by Twitter, Inc., I have 200,000+ followers on my Japanese language account @nobi and I had gone thru some amazing conversations but I will pick those up sometime in a later post.

In this post, I would like to focus on some of the most important lessons, I have learned.

Tracing Back the Info

Under a catastrophe, people panic and tweet info that would only cause confusions.
For example, I saw a Tweet by a girl shouting "big Tsunami is about to hit Sendai!"
(I may be making it up a little bit because I can't find the original).

@SomeJPGirl: big Tsunami is about to hit Sendai!

That Tweet had been retweeted so many times that even though I was not following her, the tweet came into my eyes.
It was way after the Tsunami took over the Sendai airport; I was shocked to hear the Tsunami is hitting Sendai again.
I took a careful look into her Twitter account to see if she is in any danger.
Then, I realized right after that tweet, she was tweeting "I have to find a way back home (in Tokyo) from Shibuya station (also in Tokyo)."
So she was not even in Sendai. She was stuck in Shibuya station and was watching the news of Tsunami hitting Sendai on a public TV.
She has done nothing wrong and she didn't intend anything harm, but the context will become very important in such circumstances.
And because the influence of information is so big under catastrophe, IT literate people shouldn't just respond by reflexes, but rather take some moment for careful investigation before tweeting or retweeting.

Time Stamps

People were exchanging information about the aftershocks, update info by government and public services; that day in 3.11 (and for at least two weeks after that), there have been too many of those.
And every time, an aftershock hit their cities or every time an important announcement has been made, people tweeted. And many people retweeted.
Later, there were too many similar tweets that people started to get confused which is the latest info, especially Twitter would only show approximately how many minutes or how many hours ago, that tweet was made.
So many people started to suggest to put a time stamp within tweets, so people can tell which info is more recent; actually, today, you can bring your mouse over the Twitter's official time stamp and it will tell you the time and dates, that tweet was posted.

Today, if you move your cursor over the Twitter's time stamp, it will reveal the exact date/time.

Importance of Official RT

In the English and other languages using phonetic alphabets, you can express so little in 140 characters.
But in Japanese, we use a mixture of phonetic alphabets and ideographs (a character is worth a word in English or sometime, it has more than one meaning). Because of this, we can express so much in 140 characters; the laws of physics (or linguistics) are totally different in English Twitter-sphere and the Japanese Twitter - sphere.
Gengo.com, a Japanese startup that provides multi-lingual translation services, used to translate tweets of famous figures in Japan into English and vice versa. My English twitter account @nobi_en belonged to them until January 2014 and all of the tweets there prior to that date were translated by their services.
Matt Romaine of gengo.com, once told me a full 140 characters tweet in Japanese would translate into three to four English tweets.

And because of this, we often nested a few tweets in one (i.e. Embedded a few tweet-quotes within a single tweet), so we can share the conversation with many more people.
Even some English speakers are doing this today by adding "MT" (stands for Modified Tweets) before the quoted tweets.
But these modified Tweets will cause a big confusion under catastrophic situation.

First of all, it will kill the "time stamps."
Let's say you saw the tweet by the Tsunami girl in Shibuya (my prior example) and felt the urge to warn friends in Sendai.
With your habit of modifying a tweet, you might tweet:

@SomeJPBoy: Friends in Sendai, please evacuate! MT @SomeJPGirl: big Tsunami is about to hit Sendai!

By this tweet, the traceability of the tweet has moved a step further.

There was a girl under a collapsed wall whose only mean to cry out for help was the twitter app on her cell phone. Her tweet has been retweeted so many times (I've retweeted her, too).
A few hours later, I saw modified tweets about her was still circulating around.
It looked something like this:

@SomeJPBoy: if there is any rescue team near XXXX city go rescue her! MT @SomeJPGirl: Help me! I am under collapsed brick wall near XXXX, I can't move!

"Woman Combing Her Hair" by Goyo Hashiguchi exhibited until May 25, 2014 at "Fascinating Japanese Woodcut Print" exhibition at Yokohama Museum of Art

Old Mac fans may recognize the picture in the middle.

It's "Woman Combing Her Hair," a woodcut print by Goyo Hashiguchi which is exhibited right now at Yokohama Museum of Art at their 25th Anniversary "Fascinating Japanese Woodcut Print" exhibition (ends May 25, 2014).

You recognize this picture because it was used as the face of the original Macintosh.

It was one of the first pictures to be shown at introduction of original Macintosh:

It was also used on the cover of the manual for MacPaint, of course.

FREER | SLACKER Gallery, the Smithonian's museum of Asian Art even has picture of Steve Jobs pausing on a Mac with this picture on it (according to the blog post on the gallery, Jobs visited the gallery each year):

Click to jump to FREER|SLACKER Gallery's article "Japan: the Apple of Steve Jobs’ Eye?"

"BEYOND LINE" was they key concept for their annual press event

In a press event titled "LINE 2014 Showcase," LINE executive team announced they will redefine three of their core services.

"LINE is in good shape" said Takeshi Idezawa, COO of LINE. During a recent outage of WhatsApp, downloads of LINE has surpassed that of WhatsApp.

"As of today, 360 million users are using LINE. We are confident that we can reach 500M by the end of the year."

LINE COO, Takeshi Idezawa says, they will pass 500M within 2014

As chief strategy and marketing officer, Jun Masuda took over the stage, he said "LINE has succeeded beyond people's expectation. It has expanded beyond the expected user base, beyond the national boundary (of Japan) , etc... Just like that , we kept shifting our shape. We believed that we kept evolving. However, users and media began to form a fixed image about what we do. Today, we are changing that. And we are doing it with three new services. The keyword that bond them all is 'beyond LINE'."

1st of the three announcements was their signature "Stamp" service.
While most of the other messaging services are designed for text-based communication (with a little bit of emoticons), LINE, from the ground up, is designed to help intimate communication full of emotion, atmosphere, sense of timing with friends.
In doing so, they used what's Japanese are good at: MANGA (cartoon)-like character stamps.
Using these stamps, younger generation (and those people with younger hearts) can exchange their feeling without a single word and pass a really good time while they are distant away.

Here is a correspondent (fee inquiry) between me and a friendly editor Ms.Nanjo

There is LINE Stamp store that distributes both free and paid stamps.
LINE fans are willing to buy (or gift) stamps that his/her friends might not know; and this was creating a healthy business model for LINE.

Partner companies of LINE were selling stamps to promote new goods, new movie, soccer team (such as FC BARCELONA and REAL MADRID). Even Paul McCartney was using line to promote his live performance in Japan.

But today, LINE is going 'beyond LINE' and changing that.
Up until now, only selected few companies were able to provide original stamps; but today LINE is opening up an International "Creators Market" for their stamps.
It is just like the AppStore or GooglePlay but they will only sell stamps (i.e. graphics. minimum set of 40). LINE will charge 50% of the sales.

LINE executive believes this will create a whole new market for illustrators and cartoonists.
Jun Masuda, also believe this will help LINE's growth in countries other than Japan.
He said every country has its own culture and own way of expressing thing. LINE had worked hard to do the best in Japan and that served many international customers alike. But as of today, creators around the world can help make LINE a better communication tool for their countries via LINE CREATORS MARKET.

Registering for the creators is free and open at: creator.line.me

It is well-known that Steve Jobs is a Japanophile.
It is also well-known that Steve Jobs admired great artists and craftsmen.

Among the many artists he loved was Yukio Shakunaga, a porcelain artist based in Toyama prefecture, Japan.
Jobs found the work of Shakunaga while he was having a vacation in Kyoto.

Shakunaga's atelier is in Toyama prefecture, 330Km (or 200 mi) away from Kyoto but he was having a week long exhibition in a gallery in Kyoto.
"Etchu Seto-yaki" is the kind of porcelain Shakunaga makes; Etchu is the old name of Toyama prefecture and "Seto-yaki" is the kind of porcelain he makes.

Jobs just walked in the exhibition with his wife, Laurene Powell; he liked Shakunaga's work so much and bought several Japanese tea cups and flower vases. More over, he visited the exhibition three times during the one-week exhibition.

It was still in mid-'90s. Steve Jobs still worked for NeXT, Inc. and Shakunaga had no idea who Steve Jobs was but was impressed by two things: Jobs' searching eyes and deep interest into his works.

After Steve Jobs has passed, Shakunaga's daughter, Yo Shakunaga, has posted an anecdote by an author, Shizuka Kanaki:

Yo's blog: Steve Jobs and Etchu Seto-yaki

According to that story, Shakunaga's niece was there to help the exhibition and she was the only person who recognized Steve Jobs.
She was explaining to Shakunaga that "having Steve Jobs visit the exhibition is like having John Lennon purchase a tea cup there. And uncle, you've even talked with Steve Jobs for so long. That is so amazing!"

According to that blog post, sometime, speaking and hearing didn't work for Jobs and Shakunaga, so they relied on pens and papers. But Jobs kept asking so many questions.
And most of Jobs' questions were about the clay used in Shakunaga's work.

Shakunaga explained to Jobs that he used "Hakudo (White Clay)." Jobs was so curious about this "White Clay" that he almost visited Toyama. But then, he reallized it will take three hours just to get there and gave up.
Although most porcelain artists buys clay, Shakunaga starts his work by digging his own clay. Kanaki believes that sort of craftsmanship may have impressed Steve Jobs.
And Jobs' strong interest impressed Shakunaga.

The correspondence between the two continued even after the exhibition.

It is well-known that Steve Jobs is a Japanophile.
It is also well-known that Steve Jobs was a big fan of Sony.

In the book, "Insanely Simple" by Ken Segall, the godfather of "iMac" disclosed how Steve Jobs wanted to name that product "MacMan" mimicking "Walkman."

Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony was not featured in the 'Think different.' ad campaign but he has always been a hero for Steve Jobs.
I remember Jobs giving condolence on his passing.

Steve Jobs giving condole sense to Morita at iMac DV introduction/Click to watch video

Steve Jobs and Akio Morita

While Jobs adored Morita, Morita also adored Steve Jobs.
"There are actually two American youngsters Morita was particularly fond of and took good care of: One was Michael Jackson, and the other was Steve Jobs" recalls Kunitake Ando, the ex-president of Sony, Inc. According to him, Morita, often invited them to Sony and gave them personal tours.

Because of this close relationship between Jobs and Morita, Apple and Sony was in a special relationship all along the way. The two companies had been very close even during Steve Jobs' absence. The two companies have worked closely on some projects. For example, Apple's QuickTime team had helped Sony develop their ATRAC audio file format. And ex-QuickTime architect directed some of Sony's Cybershot digital camera projects.

The relationship between Apple and Sony became even stronger when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and it continued on, perhaps, until iPod became such a huge success and Howard Stringer took control of SONY.

Mac-compatible VAIO