Social Networking Services (SNS) have been one of the most distinctive phenomena of web 2.0, and their popularity seems to be on the rise; MySpace’s 140 million user base is just an example to prove that this rampage won’t be stopping any time soon.
As for Japan, competition seems to be a whole fiercer than the US and the rest of the world, since MySpace decided to take the 6 million users local Mixi head on.

MySpace Japan has to take into consideration several factors specific to the Japanese market: copyright issues as a threat and mobile phone support as an opportunity.

According to a Yomiuri Daily article, MySpace Japan think that the Japanese market is promising, and has yet to be explored, as Mixi only has 10% of the market share. While Mixi says it’s too early to judge whether MySpace Japan will actually be one of its main competitors among the 1,200-1,500 SNSs in Japan. The article cites as well the strengths and weaknesses of each of the two:

Part of the attraction of MySpace lies in being able to upload video and up to four mp3 music files in addition to profile and tour information. Like other SNSs, users can write blogs and build a community of “friends,” but MySpace offers extra freedom to customize the look of pages, too.

In comparison, the content available on Mixi is for the most part much simpler text-based material. But Mixi has introduced weather and news sections, as commonly seen on Internet portal sites, and is working on adding rich content to its service, with the introduction of video an aim for the spring. The SNS already offers links for listening to samples of music at Apple’s iTunes Music Store and Label Gate’s Mora Win.
Mixi’s main strength seems to lie in its ease of use for creating communities with very close interests or connections.

In order to succeed, MySpace has to promote the service among Japanese artists, as cited above, one of the most attractive features of MySpace. But it seems like some copyright issues will be harder to deal with.

“The copyright issue is very difficult in Japan, or should I say different from what it’s like in the United States,” Ando concedes. “Artists do not necessarily have the right to put up whatever they want.”
This means that while users in Japan can access some sound files on MySpace Japan, they still cannot access video, which means the SNS cannot make use of one of its principal attractions.

[...]In the case of MySpace Japan, though, Watanabe says JASRAC has already reached an agreement with the SNS about the use of music that involves a screening process by MySpace Japan and a percentage share of the relevant advertising revenues for JASRAC.

So agreement is possible. But it’s not just a case of reaching agreement with JASRAC, Watanabe points out. A video file of a TV program showing an artist performing involves not just the publishing rights of the songwriter, but the performing rights of the artist and the broadcasting rights of the TV company, he explains.

In my opinion, no matter which SNS will prevail in the upcoming years, the real winner is the Japanese netizen who will benefit from a wide range of free features to choose from. Then, this is the obvious conclusion of every situation of competition…

Apparently there’s one topic above all others being discussed on the internet in Japan right now — that Shiga schoolgirls “wear the skimpiest uniforms of anywhere in the country.”

And what did the schoolgirls of Shiga have to say about this when asked by the press?

There’s nothing wrong with wearing a short skirt,” an irate Shiga schoolgirl tells Weekly Playboy. “What’s wrong are those perverts who deliberately look at our panties. Why should we have to change our fashion just because of a bunch of perverted old men?”

Why indeed. The authorities have noted the problem, but there’s something slightly odd about the following statement:

We are fully aware that some of our students have very short skirts,” a spokesman for the Shiga Prefectural Board of Education says.

A news portal site carrying stories from a total of 52 newspapers across Japan opened today. The website, 47NEWS, carries Japanese-language news written by about 10,000 reporters of the 52 newspaper companies in Japan’s 47 prefectures. This is the first online news site of such a scale in Japan, enabling users to search news from most domestic newspapers on a single website.

This is an example of cooperation among the previously mostly insular newspaper sources. We often hear that Tokyo is not all of Japan and here in Canada, especially at election time, we find that most of Quebec is not Montreal and they have a substantially different perspective outside the big city. So this is a win-win development both for the prefectural papers and those in the big city who now have easy access to a more national perspective.

The home page shows a map of Japan along with the most recent headlines. The map, which can be enlarged, is the key navigation for clicking to see local news by pointing to the various locations. The map navigation can also be combined with the category search that is also available. Categories include the usuals food, entertainment, arts, etc. Photo and video content is also included.

Another interesting feature of the site is keyword ranking that shows what is the most written about daily topic. By clicking the word, users can see a series of news reports related to the word. Examples of the first keywords included Christmas, norovirus, ski resort, and children. By clicking on the word “children,” for example, related news on the date of search was shown from a variety of member newspapers.

Kyodo News will provide overseas and major city news for the top news section, and local newspapers will provide news stories from their prefectures. In the near future, 47NEWS will also be available in English and Chinese, according to Press Net Japan.

Via Kyodo News

Google Japan has published its top 10 search rankings for the year and revealed that generic searches outnumbered those for specific topics in 2006. The top generic searches were maps, translation, dictionary, and video. Other generic search terms included weather forecast, price (for comparison shopping), and postal code.

The first focused search term was for “Aki Hoshino,” a model and TV personality well known in Japan for her busty figure. She ranked in sixth place and was joined in the top 10 by only one other person: singer “Kumi Koda,” who became Japan’s most popular pop artist during the year and was ranked tenth … The most searched for food-related query was “McDonalds,” the top beauty-related search was for cosmetics company “Shiseido” and the top financial keyword was “lottery.”

Google didn’t release information about the number of searches performed on each keyword and mobile searches weren’t counted. Also, searches might have started with Google but didn’t necessarily end up there. For example, with “maps” a sample search revealed that rival services from Mapion, MapFan Web, Yahoo Maps and local search engine Goo all ranked above Google Maps in the search results.

In fact, and as most of you will know, Google is not #1 everywhere. Although it may dominate Internet search in many countries, Google has only just broken into Japan’s Internet top ten, according to NetRatings Japan. The search engine and its associated sites attracted 17.4 million users in September, up from 12.1 million in the same period a
year earlier and enough to give it tenth spot.

Google sits just behind Amazon.com’s site, which garnered 17.5 million users and well behind top-ranked Yahoo Japan, which 23.6 million visited during the month. In fact, by far Google’s chief competitor is Yahoo Japan. According to Digital World Tokyo, Google launched its Japanese service in September 2000 but has been frustrated in its push
to achieve the same level of popularity that it achieved elsewhere.

Via Webwereld

The guys over at Boing Boing posted an interesting link to an online album by photographer Misty Keasler of shots from love hotels.

The collection can be seen at the photographer’s site, as linked above, or at Photographs do not bend.

More and more Shinto shrines in Japan are starting to go online, selling amulets and even allowing virtual visits. Online shrine services are becoming so widespread that Jinja Honcho (Association of Shinto Shrines) has issued warnings to shrines against such practices, with the statement, “No Shinto god exists on the Internet.”

One shrine offering virtual services is Shingu Jinja, which is located in Nankoku, Kochi Prefecture.

Virtual visitors can click “Internet visit to the shrine” on the shrine’s Web site to fill in a form with their name and address and other details, as well as their wish by clicking “Please make my wish come true.” Their information is sent to the shrine by e-mail, and the shrine will pray for them free of charge.

Hideo Morikuni, the shrine’s chief priest, said, “[With this service on the Internet] those who live some distance from the shrine and can’t come to visit us also can feel close to the shrine.”

Morikuni said many such virtual visits to the shrine have resulted in actual visits.

During the New Year’s holiday period, the shrine receives dozens of such e-mails from virtual visitors from around the nation every year, Morikuni said.

Such arguments do not impress Jinja Honcho, however.

[T]he association took the unusual step of issuing the notice to shrines across the nation calling for them to refrain from the online worshipping service, saying, “Such a service may denigrate the sanctity of worship.”

Yoshiya Senoo, chief of the association’s research division, said, “Shinto gods are enshrined in a place and space of a shrine, and therefore it’s fundamental for worshippers to actually visit the shrine.”

“We approve the efficiency of the Internet, but if the virtual and pseudo aspect [of worshipping] becomes too commonplace, the primary form of faith will fall apart,” he added.

…This was the title of an online survey conducted by Livedoor Research, inquiring people about the number of New Year’s cards they are willing to send to their loved ones for 2007, the year of the boar, or “Inoshishi Doshi”.

The results were as follow:

Less than 10: 16.13%
Between 11 and 20: 11.39%
Between 21 and 30: 11.13%
Between 31 and 50: 13.75%
Between 51 and 70: 8.04%
Between 71 and 100: 6.59%
More than 101: 8.32%
I don’t know: 4.86%
I am not sending any New Year’s cards: 19.78%

Number of votes: 4277

If you ever check out the links in the blogroll in Japundit’s sidebar, you may be a reader of Miklos Fejer’s blog, Miyakonojo.

Aside from his day job, Miklos is also a member of the local volunteer fire department down in south-eastern Kyushu. If he wasn’t a local celebrity before, he certainly must be now since NHK took their cameras down to Miyazaki prefecture and interviewed him.

Fame and fortune is one thing, but as Miklos himself explains in an earlier blog entry, it wasn’t all plain sailing.

Japanese health vice-ministers to blog their girth reduction.

You can take a gimmick too far, you know.

Said blog is here.

I give you… the DPRK Top 20 singles chart.

‘Juche Farming Method is the Only Method’ by The Farming Collective of the Northwest crept up five places to knock Latoya Jackson off the top spot, but Bananarama vs. Kim Yong Yok’s ‘Juche In The First Degree’ is up two places.

(via Marmot’s Hole)

Found this image over on a site with the self-descriptive name Asian Nude Daily (which has not posted anything since November 9th, so it’s really not a daily. . .)

What Japan Thinks reported about a recent survey conducted by Goo, the Japanese search engine. According to the survey almost 70% of the people who took it responded that updating was too much of a trouble, whereas 21% think that they had enough with it and decided to quit. It is important to note that 17% quit blogging in favor of SNSs,social networking services, such as Mixi, because they think that they are more fun. What really caught my attention is the 16% who responded “ran out of things to say”!!! and the 9% who stopped because there weren’t enough visitors!

In case you haven’t noticed, we are running a new ad for Japan Forum in the red sidebar to the left.

With lively forums devoted to specific aspects of life in Japan, Japan Forum is a great place to go to discuss the latest happenings in the world of Japanese entertainment, anime, manga, music, fashion, video games food, art, and more.

NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster is putting plans together to update its free streaming news service.The current service features a live radio broadcast that is accessable for free here and is available a multitude of languages.

Personally I have always been a fan of NHK News and its great to listen to it while working or on the train when I’m leeching internet signal from people sitting beside me. Oh come on you do it too! Sorry, back to the idea at hand…

Plans are being put forth to feature a free Video Stream of its World News to replace its current Radio service. The video news service will be defaulted at 720×480, much larger resolution then regular video podcasts. No date for when the service will be online has been announced but hopefully by end of year is what I’ve heard.

If you haven’t checked out the Radio Japan Online (and you’ve already listened to the Japundit Podcast for this week), check it out.

Check out the Mainichi Daily News site called Manglish: Manga in English, which displays manga with the original Japanese intact. Simply mouse over a balloon and the corresponding English appears.

Supplementary notes provide interesting background information about expressions, puns and cultural background and enhance understanding of what is happening in the panels.

Great for manga fans and those interested in studying Japanese.

Via Sparkplugged

Some of you may have noticed that many (if not most) of the videos that were posted on Japundit in the past no longer work. This is because YouTube has deleted almost 30,000 videos at the request of copyright-related rights organizations broadcasters. The request was submitted by 23 businesses and organizations.

YouTube has become very skittish about copyright issues since it was acquired by GOOGLE.

Even though it is called “The Last Word“, I always check that feature first on every weekly issue of Metropolis Magazine Online. Marie Iida , an editorial assistant at Metropolis , has written about the disappointment of Japanese women when the government discarded Junichiro Koizumi’s proposal to allow female heirs inherit the Throne, following the birth of Prince Hisahito to Princess Kiko and Prince Akishino last month. But what really prompted me to comment about her “last word” is this assertive, and somewhat worrisome, passage:

It’s true that the ladies of Japan haven’t been doing too badly these days. We’re doing markedly better career-wise—you can bet that all those high-end brand stores in Ginza are not being built for men. We can even choose to stay single forever and leave Japan childless instead of opting to marry manga-reading worker bees. And after years of being randomly fondled by strangers, we have won the right to group all different kinds of women into a body odor-free train decorated with hot-pink flowers, the Japanese metro’s nod to grrrl power.

It does say much indeed, albeit not necessarily true. Actually I couldn’t fathom her irony, nor understand in what way a shrinking society could be considered “not too bad”, as far as Japanese women concerned, or is it that driving the business in Ginza is enough to consider that “the ladies of Japan” are scoring a point?

And suppose Prince Hisahito had never been born, would female imperial successions be a giant step in post-feminism in Japan? or would it merely hide a much different reality of Japanese women, or to say the least, much different from their Western counterparts?
I’d like to hear your say on the topic, I am still perplexed by that passage!

Check out Sharpblades.net, a new site that we added to the JAPUNDIT blogroll recently.

Sharpblades covers just about everything you’ve ever wanted to know about swords and swordmaking, including myths and facts about swords, metals used for making swords, different types of swords around the world, and even advice on giving a sword as a gift.

Of course there is plenty of information on the Japanese katana. The following are some recent topics covered at Sharpblades.net.

• Taking Care of Katana
• History of Katana: Manufacturing
• Muramasa vs. Masamune
• Ninja Sword
• Japanese Long Swords

Sharp!

As I always say, humour is the greatest weapon in our arsenal.

We’ll be knocking back sake in Pyongyang yet, you mark my words.

I just came to stumble upon this funny, yet rather revealing website where users submit questions about daily life trivialities, and vote to define “the way typical Japanese act and think”. Actually the site’s name is “Nihon no Hyoujun“,that can be translated as “What is standard in Japan”. The results are by no means scientific, since the votes are submitted online, and only concern people who are familiar with the website. However it might be interesting to check out the results, just out of curiosity!

There is a wide range of topics, concerning different aspects of daily life, but I think that the ones concerning toilet habits are the most interesting:

Do you wash your hands in the stream of water that comes out of the toilet tank ?
Yes: 73%
No: 27%
Total votes: 133

Do you lock the door when you use the toilet?
Yes, always:24.8%
Only when I sit: 18.4%
It depends: 27.6%
No, never: 29.2%
Total votes: 141

Do you pull up your pants before or after you flush the toilet?
Before: 73.4%
After: 26.6%
Total votes:132

When you sit on the toilet, how far do you pull your pants down?
To above my knees:29.2%
To my knees: 20%
To below my knees: 50.8%
Total votes: 65

When you take a pee, do you use the opening in your underpants?
Yes: 45.5%
No: 54.5%
Total votes: 79

How do you fold the toilet paper when you use it it?
Roll it:22.8%
Curl it:17.3%
Fold it back:52.1%
It depends:1.2%
Mash it:3.3%
Fold it irregularly:3.3%
Total votes:92