From Tech Crunch by Serkan Toto - In Japan, girls are crazy over virtual boyfriends. Webkare (Web Boyfriend in Japanese), a mix between a social network and dating simulation site, is Nippon’s newest web sensation. Geared exclusively towards girls, the site attracted over 10,000 members just 5 days after its release on September 10, racking up 3.5 million page views in the same time frame.

The site is a huge hit over here. Girls sign up and become members of a social network but also users of a dating simulation in cartoon style. They have to try to hook up with one of four male Anime characters (who are the “stars� of the site) through “conversations� and must collaborate with other Webkare members in order to move on in the game. Eventually they conquer the heart of the chosen cartoon boy.

It’s pretty weird but clever. Dating simulations have been popular in Japan for quite a while now, but Webkare marks the first time the concept has been brought online and combined with social networking functionality.

Girls choose between one of four different male cartoon characters they want to hook up with upon registration. They can then “communicate� with their digital crush in cartoon-like sequences to try to win over his heart over the course of the game. It’s also possible to meet other boys later in the story, which uses a virtual high school as the main setting.

Interaction is quite limited, as users themselves can neither type text nor “speak� to the characters. Instead, Webkare will display a short cartoon clip if you click on the boy you like (some of the clips include voice samples such as “What’s up?�, “Do you always stay in the class room until dark?� “Leave me alone!� etc.), driving the love story forward step by step.

Read the rest of the story at Tech Crunch

From The New York Times by Martin Fackler - On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime.

Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.

The wearer hides behind the sheet, printed with an actual-size photo of a vending machine. Ms. Tsukioka’s clothing is still in development, but she already has several versions, including one that unfolds from a kimono and a deluxe model with four sides for more complete camouflaging.

These elaborate defenses are coming at a time when crime rates are actually declining in Japan. But the Japanese, sensitive to the slightest signs of social fraying, say they feel growing anxiety about safety, fanned by sensationalist news media. Instead of pepper spray, though, they are devising a variety of novel solutions, some high-tech, others quirky, but all reflecting a peculiarly Japanese sensibility.

Take the “manhole bag,� a purse that can hide valuables by unfolding to look like a sewer cover. Lay it on the street with your wallet inside, and unwitting thieves are supposed to walk right by. There is also a line of knife-proof high school uniforms made with the same material as Kevlar, and a book with tips on how to dress even the nerdiest children like “pseudohoodlums� to fend off schoolyard bullies.

There are pastel-colored cellphones for children that parents can track, and a chip for backpacks that signals when children enter and leave school.

The devices’ creators admit that some of their ideas may seem far-fetched, especially to crime-hardened Americans. And even some Japanese find some of them a tad naïve, possibly reflecting the nation’s relative lack of experience with actual street crime. Despite media attention on a few sensational cases, the rate of violent crime remains just one-seventh of America’s.

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times

Japanese Space Elevator From Times Online by Leo Lewis - From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality.

Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier.

For chemists, physicists, material scientists, astronauts and dreamers across the globe, the space elevator represents the most tantalising of concepts: cables stronger and lighter than any fibre yet woven, tethered to the ground and disappearing beyond the atmosphere to a satellite docking station in geosynchronous orbit above Earth.

Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables — or flat ribbons — will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies and universities have turned their collective attention.

In the carriages, the scientists behind the idea told The Times, could be any number of cargoes. A space elevator could carry people, huge solar-powered generators or even casks of radioactive waste. The point is that breaking free of Earth’s gravity will no longer require so much energy — perhaps 100 times less than launching the space shuttle.

Read the rest of the story at UK Times Online

From xkcdFrom Tech Crunch by Serkan Toto - Sized at an estimated $5.6 billion in 2007, Japan boasts one of the biggest online advertising markets in the world – a huge potential just waiting to be tapped by foreign social networks. The world’s two largest social networks, MySpace and Facebook, barely register in Japan. As the Google Trends for Websites chart above shows, local social network Mixi is outpacing both in Japan. On Alexa, Mixi is ranked the No. 6 most popular site in Japan, compared to No. 95 for MySpace (Facebook doesn’t even make it into the top 100). MySpace and Facebook are trying - but why are they failing?

Complacency and failure to adopt to cultural differences

Social networks have become integrative elements of modern American youth culture over the last years, shaping social patterns and changing the ways that people communicate. When taken abroad, these services have to deal with a large number of cross-cultural peculiarities by their very nature.

Societal and cultural gaps are particularly evident in the case of Japan. Market entry in this country with a “What works in the US must also work over there�-attitude is going awry for both Facebook and MySpace. It’s not a stereotype that communication tends to be nonverbal in Japan. The society generally puts more emphasis on the community rather than on the individual. Also, security plays a major role in many aspects of Japanese life.

These cultural distinctions largely explain why social networks from abroad have a hard time winning over Japan’s 90 million web users. Mixi, the country’s biggest social network, positioned itself as a tool for communicating at a distance through diaries and communities to meet like-minded members. It doesn’t primarily exist to make new friends (poking is restricted) or as a platform for public self-presentation.

Read the rest of the story at Tech Crunch

From Rare Mono Shop - This heat which continues still. Especially, because the white-collar worker has done the necktie, the wind being difficult to enter in the body, all the more it is hot, it is, don’t you think?.

Such a time, just a little it is introduction of the cool item. Because the USB necktie cooler, when you connect with USB of the personal computer, the fan of built-in turning, sends the air facing toward the neck origin, it makes cool slightly, it is.

With this, pass also while working to be cool the ?? it is comfortably!

Mazda dual-fueled RX-8From 4wheelsblog - Mazda Motor Corporation has announced that the company is to deliver one dual-fueled RX-8 Hydrogen Rotary Engine (RE) vehicle to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) on August 1, 2007. The dual-fuel system enables the driver to select either gasoline or hydrogen fuel with the flick of a switch. METI will use the RX-8 Hydrogen RE in its daily operations.

The delivery to METI will mark the eighth hydrogen rotary engine vehicle to be leased to government bodies and private enterprises and the first time that Japan’s central government has adopted a hydrogen vehicle for its daily operations.

Seita Kanai, Mazda’s Senior Managing Executive Officer in charge of R&D, said, “Based on Mazda’s unique hydrogen technology, we have been advancing research and development of hydrogen vehicles for over 15 years as part of our initiatives for a future hydrogen society. We are extremely pleased to be delivering this RX-8 Hydrogen RE to METI. Hydrogen rotary engines demonstrate the still untapped potential of internal combustion. Going forward, we will continue to develop vehicles for hydrogen rotary engines and improve their performance in order to contribute to the realization of an eco-friendly, hydrogen-based society.”
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An elderly woman walks along a slope near
Tokuyama village before it was flooded in 1995
to make a reservoir. By Tomoko Otake, from The Japan Times - Shortly after being relocated to other towns in the late 1980s to make way for Japan’s largest dam, about 10 aging former residents defiantly returned to the abandoned village of Tokuyama, in western Gifu Prefecture, determined to live there as long as possible. They sheltered in their old homes or makeshift huts; they tended their vegetable fields, peeling the bark from trees to make all-purpose kampo (medicine); and they caught fish with handmade bamboo traps set in a nearby creek.

Photographer Nobuo Onishi visited the group many times over a period of 15 years, and next week his documentary “Mizu ni Natta Mura (A Village That Changed Into Water)” will be screened in cinemas in Tokyo, Gifu and Nagano prefectures — ahead of the multipurpose Tokuyama dam beginning full operations next spring.

Life in Japan has been closely aligned with dams ever since the nation’s first — now known as the Sayama-ike reservoir in Osaka — was built in the seventh century. They serve as a life-saving resource for regions whose people perennially suffer from droughts, and are also a powerful buffer against floods in areas with too much rain. After World War II, dams became a symbol of Japan’s economic recovery and industrial prowess, providing water and electricity to the regions they served. In recent decades, however, they have come to represent wasteful expenditure on the part of the government, which critics say is incapable of scaling back or nixing outdated projects. The media have also spotlighted the impact on the lives of people forced from their homes.

Onishi’s film, however, is far from depressing. He captures the villagers laughing and talking as they freely share the benefits of their life experience with the young director. They are joyful and content, as one elderly woman remarked, while soaking in her old outdoor bath: “I feel guilty for all the happiness I have. I owe my happiness to the ancestors. I am so happy.”

Read the rest of the story at The Japan Times

By Norimitsu Onishi, from The International Herald Tribune - NAGANO, Japan: The two-day mock trial resembled, more often than not, a college seminar with the three judges acting as professors and the six jurors as freshmen. Sitting stiffly around an oval table, they were deliberating whether the defendant had intended to kill a taxi driver in a botched robbery.

Japan is preparing to adopt a jury-style system in its courts in 2009, the most significant change in its criminal justice system since the postwar American occupation. But for it to work, the Japanese must first overcome some deep-rooted cultural obstacles: a reluctance to express opinions in public, to argue with one another and to question authority.

To win over a skeptical public, Japan’s courts have held some 500 mock trials across the country, including six here in Nagano, the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. Still, polls show that 80 percent are dreading the change and do not want to serve as jurors, a reluctance that was on display among the mock jurors here.

They preferred directing questions to the judges. They never engaged one another in discussion. Their opinions had to be extracted by the judges and were often hedged by the Japanese language’s rich ambiguity. When a silence stretched out and a judge prepared to call upon a juror, the room tensed up as if the jurors were students who had not done the reading.

“I think there is also the matter of how much he has repented,” one of the judges said. “Has he genuinely, deeply repented, or has the defendant repented in his own way? What’s the degree? I mean, some could even say that he hasn’t repented at all.”

Hoping for some response, the judge waited 14 seconds, then said, “What does everybody think?”

Nine seconds passed. “Doesn’t anyone have any opinions?”

After six more seconds, one woman questioned whether repentance should lead to a reduced sentence. “The way the defendant expresses himself and such, it could be viewed as someone who’s not good at it,” she said. “So there’s no way for us to know what is the degree of repentance from how he has repented in his own way.”

After it was all over, only a single juror said he wanted to serve on a real trial. The others said even the mock trial had left them stressed and overwhelmed. Under the proposed system, randomly chosen citizens will sit on the bench next to judges, decide cases together and hand out sentences. Supporters predict that the direct involvement of ordinary citizens in the judicial process will have far-reaching consequences for Japan’s democracy.

Read the rest of the story at The International Herald Tribune