Japanese telecommunications carrier KDDI will start offering from October 1G bps (bits per second) fiber-optic Internet hook-ups for less than the current price of a connection one tenth the speed, it said this week.

The Hikari One Home Gigabit service will cost ¥5,460 (US$51.40) per month and provide an upstream and downstream connection at 1G bps. Internet-based telephone service and cable TV service can be added to the connection for an additional fee.

It will be available to single-dwelling homes and apartment buildings up to three floors high in the Tokyo area and Hokkaido island in north Japan. KDDI’s current fiber-optic service for such buildings tops out at 100M bps and costs ¥6,615 while the broadly available 10M bps DSL (digital subscriber line) service costs around ¥4,599.

Japanese Internet users already enjoy some of the fastest and cheapest Internet connections in the world. Aggressive investment by carriers in fiber-optic networks and the country’s densely packed cities leave many homes and buildings within easy reach of a fiber optic connection.

As of the end of June subscriptions to fiber-optic Internet services totalled 13 million whereas those to DSL services stood at 12.3 million, according to figures from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Cable Internet services, where speeds of up to 160M bps are available in some regions, had attracted 4 million subscribers to bring the total number of high-speed connections in the country to 29.3 million.

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I love watches and found this great article on watchmaker Haruo Suekichi from Ping Magazine:

For close to thirteen years, Haruo Suekichi has been investing hours upon hours every day to develop watches with a Steampunkflair. Reminiscent of Jules Verne and influenced by manga, hisfinely crafted watches are of a vintage futuristic kind. And what started with an unsuccessful attempt to hawk them at a flea market has turned into an enterprise whose analogue objects of desire are hard to get. PingMag had a chance to sit down with Tokyo’s very own Steampunk poster boy in his studio in Yoyogi Uehara.

By Vicente Gutierrez and Natsuki Yamada
With lovely translation help from Wakako Ito
Photos by Martin Holtkamp

Read the rest of this entry »

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — A product recall may delay Friday’s expected arrival of iPhones at U.S. base exchanges in Japan, a SoftBank representative said Monday.

He declined to say how many phones have been ordered, but said it would be “sufficient” to cover anticipated sales. However, the recall may delay shipping, said the representative, who did not want to be named due to company policy. SoftBank has exclusive rights to sell iPhones in Japan.

“We hope they’ll be there in time, but we’re not sure,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »

Japan Newbie discovers something new.

 

 Kyoteizinc: Play Now | Play in Popup | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What do you think of the video?

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Serkan Toto reports Japanese uber video portal Nico Nico Douga (all posts on Asiajin) recently launched international versions in German and Spanish (Nico Nico Taiwanalso exists).

However, English-speaking fans apparently will have to wait a little longer for Nico Nico to be available in English. The reason for that should be bandwith costs: The service loses close to 1 million USD a month due to high server expenses.

Please follow the instructions given in English in the screengrabs below to register for the site (click on the pictures to enlarge them).

Note: Unlike YouTube, you have to sign up in order to view videos!

Click here for part 1.

Click here for part 2.

The fast-growing site is the king of social networking among Japanese users, and it really rakes in the online ads

Asuka Kosaka joined Facebook this year to connect with her English-speaking friends. But when the 29-year-old wants to share her thoughts and photos with 70 friends and family members in Japan, she heads straight for another site: Mixi.

Mixi (2121.T) may not have the global reach of social networking giants Facebook and MySpace, but in Japan it’s king. The Tokyo company had 15 million users as of June, a 40% gain from 10.7 million a year earlier. No other social networking site even comes close, analysts say. Facebook and News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace disclose only worldwide numbers. “Most of my friends don’t know that Facebook and MySpace have Japanese-language sites,” says Kosaka. Read the rest of this entry »

Softbank Mobile Corp. said Tuesday it will reduce the minimum monthly basic fee for Apple Inc.’s iPhone from the current ¥2,990 to ¥2,324 in a stated bid to counter the latest move by larger rival NTT DoCoMo Inc. to launch new low-charge services.

It will be the second time Softbank Mobile has lowered the minimum monthly basic fee for iPhone 3G users since the company started selling the model in July.

The new basic fee, effective Wednesday, is nearly ¥5,000 lower than the initial charge of ¥7,280.

Here is  a list of Japan’s most popular blogs as of August 2008 according to Technorati: 

1. GIGAZINE
Tech and geek blog
9,756 links from other blogs on the web to this blog

2. Gizmodo Japan
Blog about Tech stuff and the newest electronic gadgets
(Japanese version of Gizmodo)
3,915 links

3. Engadget Japanese
Blog about Tech stuff and the newest electronic gadgets
(Japanese version of Engadget)
3,351 links

4. Kamiji Yusuke Official Blog
Official blog of Japanese actor and TV idol Yusuke Kamiji and the world’s most popular blogger according to Guinness
2,468 links

5. 404 Blog Not Found
Japanese web uber-engineer Dan Kogai’s personal blog
2,179 links Read the rest of this entry »

Professor Kunihiko Takeda, Ph.D., is vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University and one of the world’s leading authorities on both uranium enrichment and recycling. The 65-year-old is also a bestselling author of books with titles such as “We Should Not Recycle!” “Recycled Illusions” and “Why Are Lies Accepted on Environmental Issues?” Professor Takeda should know why: Although a member of just about every prestigious academic and governmental entity, he has stayed independent and made a career out of challenging the establishment. He has never taken any garbage from anyone, not even during his 27-year tenure at Asahi Chemical Industries, where for five years he was director of the Uranium Enrichment Laboratory. He also kept his record clean as vice deputy president at the Shibaura Institute of Technology before joining Nagoya University in 2002. His fresh and original views are clear in his most recent book, “Hypocritical Ecology,” which has been flying off shelves at the speed of 100,000 a month since being published this June..

Kunihiko Takeda JUDIT KAWAGUCHI PHOTO

 

Our future is bright as long as we stop recycling old ideas and things. The new paradigm is always better than the one before: Our air, water and food quality are higher than in previous generations, and our life expectancy longer. There’s no need to worry: Humans are smart.

I am a teacher before I am a scientist. In the first year of university, I talk about the concept of dedication, which students don’t seem to know at all. For them, studying is something they do for themselves, but really it is what we do to contribute to others’ lives.

Recycling is rubbish: It eats more energy and creates more waste than burning our garbage in high-tech incinerators. The most efficient way of getting rid of garbage is burning it all together. Why? Because in raw garbage, plastics turn into their own fuel so you don’t need to add anything else. Aluminum and steel should be recycled, though, as we need less energy for that than to produce them from scratch.

Fear is a very efficient weapon: It produces the desired effect without much waste. Global warming has nothing to do with how much CO2 is produced or what we do here on Earth. For millions of years, solar activity has been controlling temperatures on Earth and even now, the sun controls how high the mercury goes. CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another. Soon it will cool down anyhow, once again, regardless of what we do. Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so. What makes a whole lot of economic and political sense is to blame global warming on humans and create laws that keep the status quo and prevent up-and-coming nations from developing. Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.

Read the rest of this entry »

BT reader, Kikiandlala, informed me that the The Japan Times reported:

” U.S. federal prosecutors have charged a former Japanese citizen who is now a captain in the U.S. Army with conspiring to export military equipment to Japan without obtaining U.S. government approval.

Capt. Tomoaki Iishiba, 34, who served as an intelligence liaison officer at Fort Lewis in Washington state, allegedly conspired with a partner from around 2006 through last February to purchase night-vision sights and gun parts from a firm in Illinois and export them without a license to Japan. 

“Iishiba committed numerous overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy, including purchasing 60 EoTech 553 sights from a business known as Optics Planet, and mailing the sights to coconspirators in Japan without first obtaining an export license. All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371,” according to the indictment.

The prosecutors filed the indictment with the U.S. District Court in Seattle on July 16.

The names of the importers in Japan were not disclosed.

Iishiba, who left Japan in 1993, joined the U.S. Army after graduating from college and obtaining U.S. citizenship.

Iishiba, who participated in military operations against Taliban militiamen in Afghanistan as a member of an army airborne unit, wrote a book titled “A Japanese Lieutenant from the 82nd Airborne” in 2005. In 2007, he wrote a book on the M-4 carbine rifle used by U.S. forces.” LOS ANGELES (Kyodo)

The link to the story is here.

Zurui’s comments: It is possible that the night vision googles and gun parts could have ended up on the streets of Japan, in some foreign country that desires or seeks to improve existing military technology, or even in the hands of terrorists.

It is often said that Japan is safe due to the lack of guns on the streets. Japan has also said that it takes the higher “moral” ground by not manufacturing guns. However, in reality the fact is that Japan actually conducts a thriving small arms export trade. Read the rest of this entry »

James over at Japan Probe has this very interesting article on a potential problem that foreigners may face when buying an iPhone in Japan. He writes:

“Live in Japan and want an iPhone? If you’re a foreigner, you’ll probably have to pay a huge sum of money. Blogger w00kie has translated the terms on Softbank’s website.”

It is reported that some have said that they were able to bypass these rules by using a Japanese drivers’ license/health insurance ID.”

Here is the Softbank iPhone 3G Service Plan announcement. 

Here is the iPhone Apps Store in Japanese and in English.

Read the rest of the story here.

Unlike most countries, Japan isn’t going iPhone crazy at precisely midnight on the morning of 11 July. Instead, the sole carrier there is planning on keeping most customers waiting by holding off until lunchtime that day. Softbank Mobile announced this morning that it would put the new iPhone on sale nationwide at noon on Friday.

Hiroyuki Sano, a graduate student who turns 25 this week, couldn’t think of a better way Wednesday to celebrate his birthday than being the first person in Japan to own an iPhone.

So he ditched class in Nagoya and headed 160 miles north to Tokyo’s trendy Omotesando district, home to mobile carrier Softbank Corp.’s flagship store. Sano arrived at 6 a.m. Tuesday, grabbed the first spot in line and prepared to wait three days and one hour until Apple’s much-hyped handset goes on sale Friday at 7 a.m.

“I’m not sure how popular it’ll be among general users,” Sano said. “But for us die-hard Apple fans, we’re happy to buy the iPhone.” Read the rest of this entry »

Black Tokyo’s post on the eMobile CM has made the Huffington Post. Mr. Earnest Harris in his article, “Mobile Phone Monkey Business: A Japanese Primate Plays Obama” wrote:

“The ethnic tensions stretched taut by the campaign and that have roiled U.S. culture for the last half year rippled across Japan when reports surfaced that a television ad for Japanese cellular telephone provider eMobile starred a monkey as Barack Obama.

“The response from black people in Japan and others, once news of the ad spread, was swift. Cries that the depiction was raw racism and an insult to Obama and all Blacks drew a denial of any knowing wrongdoing from eMobile. Spokespeople for the company assured the press that there was no racist intent on the company’s part and it meant in no way to demean Obama or Black people. The company pulled the ad within hours after the story broke.

One of the first outlets to key on the ad was the website and blog Black Tokyo, which is edited by Zurui, a Black American who has lived in Japan for many years. “While change is good, having the candidate depicted as a monkey is not!” he wrote soon after the ad first aired:

Click here to read the Huffington Post article.

 

 CNN eMobile Story: Play Now | Play in Popup | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I would like to say ARIGATO for the emails and posts submitted by the various bloggers from around the world (thank goodness for Google Translate). Needless to say, I was happy to see that CNN ran the story on my post questioning whether eMobile’s CM was considered racist: ”Obama is a Monkey in Japan?” It would have been nice for the CNN Japan reporter to acknowledge the website though. Speaking of acknowledgments, I would like to give a big shout out to Ms. Vaughn for voicing her concern on Metropolis Magazine’s MetPod. Also, kudos to the concerned citizens that appeared in the CNN Tokyo interview.  

Here is a rehash on what I posted: 

“Obama is a Monkey in Japan[?] (Notice the question mark) Well it SEEMS like the ugly head of racism has reared its big head again on Japanese television. E Mobile’s new cell phone commercial SEEMS to depict a presidential campaign with “red” supporters (red is E Mobile’s corporate color and not representative of the Democratic Party (blue) in this case) in the background holding signs the say “Change.” While change is good, having the CANDIDATE depicted as a monkey is not!” 

I posed the question:

“Am I crazy to think that the monkey is supposed to represent Barack Obama?”

Then a statement:

“Given the track record for COMPANIES in Japan that used monkeys and blacks or monkeys as blacks in advertisements…maybe not!”

Now the responses from the blogosphere were very interesting, if not sometimes ignorant. Ignorant because some bloggers found it funny to correlate monkeys to Blacks while others felt that the Japanese would not understand the “Western” concept of things related to race and racist imagery. Many bloggers believe that my remarks stemmed from cultural baggage, whatever the hell that means.

The most telltale sign that some people were micturating in atmospheric equations of motion stemmed from the numerous claims of Blacks “screaming” of racism. I would like to believe that the voice on Black Tokyo has been reasonable, measured, and raised in a consciousness that reflects the spirit of those that do not need others to validate or approve of what is deemed racist in depiction or culturally insensitive.

Read the rest of this entry »