Prefecture Congress Man commited suicide because his blog flared up

June 25th, Mr. Koizumi, Iwate Prefecture congress man, found dead at the lake side near from his parent's house. Mr. Koizumi wrote on his blog on June 5th, about his experience when he went to prefecture owned hospital for his health check. He wrote; 'I was called by number 214. Is this place a jail? Call me with my name. I was very angry, so didn't pay the fee and came back home. Still, I'm upset. Hi, dear readers of this blog, Am I wrong?" So, his blog immediately flared up, (炎上;Enjou)and got tremendous access of accuses. Many were the severe criticisms such as; 'You don't know calling a patient by number is common way in many hospitals these days to protect patient's privacy?" 'You didn't pay the bill and came back home? That's criminal regardless wheather you are right or not. Pay first!" etc. He immdeiately held press conference. He said " My blog got many access and got so many accuses from nation wide. It was way beyond my imagination." "I apologize and I am regret to recognize that the things I wrote in my blog remain forever." Then, a lot of media give alert that There are a lot of TV commedians recently who intentionally flare up his/her blog by writing controversial opinion. But once oridial person's blog flare up and excessive accuses come along, the he / she may be pushed to commit suicide. So, we have to be careful when someone's blog flare up. I don't post the pic of this congress man at a press conf.

How much would you pay for Wedding Party?

According to the survey done by Zexy, oneo f the largest Bridal informtion comapny, now Japanese couple would pay JPY 3,440,000 on average for their wedding party, which is 6% increase from previous year, .

One of outstanding recent trends of the wedding party is the increase of the percentage of the cuople that prefer to hold wedding party at restaurant house with beautiful garden from 4.3% in 2003 to 23.3 % in 2012, while wedding party in banquet room at hotel decreased 42% in 2003 to 27.0% in 2013.

Wedding market is now estimated as two trillion Yen. With the average age of marriage s getting older, now there are more couples that can afford this high expense for one party.




This is the promotion video clip from the company of the Wedding Party cordinator.

Osprey landed on Japanese SDF's vessel first time

The joint drill with U.S. Marine Corps and Japanese Self Defense Force(SDFJ) was broadcasted through major news media today, and video which shows the scene that Osprey landed on the SFDJ's vessel is widely broadcasted.

Though Osprey has been controversial in Japanfor years, it seems a lot of people, at least people show up in the internet cyber space, made a lot of positive comments on this drill.

Especially, Oprey's high capability to deliver materials with long range flight are perceived arguably first time positive this time around, after knowing that Osprey can land on the SDFJ's vessels, people could first time perceive that Osprey would be helpful for the disaster-relief services, like East Japan disaster in 2011, when all of the transportation systems on the land were completely destroyed, and many victims of the Tsunami were isolated and died due to the lack of the oils to get warms under severely cold winter cirmstances.

This opinion is getting a lot of people's understanding. And it seems that they feel comfortable if SDFJ buy this Osprey for its own. (With this news, we now knew that SDFJ is requesting the Japanese Cabinet to secure budget to buy this hellicopter.)

Although it was a bit surprise to know that SDFJ already has vessels (Hyu-ga type vessel) which enables Osprey to land on it.

Campaign for the election for Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly has just begun

On June 14th, the official camaign for the election has just started. Last election was four years ago when Democratic party had won and occupied the majority of the assembly, followed by the historical victory for the lower house of the national election done one month after the Tokyo assembly election. This time, how many seats Democratic party can keep occupying is what people are looking at, after the desaster of the national lower house election held last December. The election date is July 12th. The result is expected to bring significantly affect to the upper house election which is also expected to be hold on July,too/ Untill then, you'll see a lot of speeches done by major politicians, standing on the campaign cars, particulary in front of the train stations.

Square Mobile Payment will face the difficult situation

***Updated on June 25. Information of situation in West Japan added

There are a lot of companies that are successful to open up its first overseas operation in Tokyo, such as McDonald, Starbucks, Yahoo!, you name it, despite of its odds predicted before its opening.

But this time may be different. Square's effort to go into the payment market in Japan will face difficult situation. Because so many consumers in Japan are now using NFC payment card, typically issued by railway company.

1) Suica issued by JR East

 One of the most prevailed payment card is 'SuiCa', issued by JR East. The number of the issued cards has reached to 42 millions, and you can use this Suica at more than 200,000 retail shops. (as of Jan. 2013) So, Square may beat credit card. But credit card is not so much used in Japan in the first place.





Suica once tried to become Mobile Suica about 7 years ago. But it became obvious that people love credit card sized NCF payment card, which you can put in your wallet.


2) ICOCA issued by JR West

JR West also issue the NFC cards which is called ICOCA, similar to Suica for JR East. ( ICOCA sounds 'Let's go!' in Japanese.) They have issued 7.44 million cards as of Dec 2012.
(I found this is way smaller than Suica.)



JR group used to be government owned railway company.

3) PASMO issued by private railway companies

Private railway companies also issued NCF cards, called PASMO, which also has been isseud 20 million cards as of May 2011.

Must watch TV drama on next Sunday; Yae no Sakura

**************************************** **********************************
Updated: June.17 2013
Yesterday's broadcast was good, as I expected in advance.
It was the story of the battle of Shirakawa (White River) and Nihonmatsu (two pine tress).
Next Sunday's story is going to be a famous boy Samurai soldiers story, which ended up as a true tragedy of the series of the battle.

***************************************************************************


Next Sunday, June 16th is the day 'Yae no Sakura' comes to one of its first climax for its yearly broadcast.

'Yae Sakura' is a kind of Sakura blossom which has more flower petals than Somei Yoshino, which is the kind of Sakura planted in Washington DC.

 And heroine's name is Yae, who actually lived and got married with Joe Niijima, who later found Doshisha University.

Next on-air story is for the battle of Fukushima Pref.(Aizu) and the ally of Kagoshima Pref (Satsuma) and Yamaguchi (Cho-shu), at the Fukushima castle.

It was the last and fierce battle at the end of Edo era, and can be said the last battle between authentic Samurai armed with Japanese swords, and lower class people with state-of-the-art weapons like rifles.

Actually, Yae was born and raised in the family who taught how to use rifle for generations in Aizu han. And yet Yae was a young woman back then, she actually joined the battle at the Aizu castle (Tsuruga castle.)and shot the gun against her enemies.

What good about this broadcast is the realistic scene taken with full of computer graphics.
So, it must be interesting to watch even if you do not understand Japanese language.

So, set the channel to NHK, channel one(1), at 8:00pm Sunday

Mixi; Struggling once market dominate SNS company in Japan has changed its CEO

The CEO of the once most popular SNS company in Japan has changed its CEO from Kenji Kasahara (37 years old),the founder and CEO of the Company to Yusuke Asakura (30 years old).

The new CEO's carrer is very unique. He once became a jockey of the horse race, but he quit at the age of 16, and pass the examination of the top of the universities of Japan, Tokyo University and graduated.

He joined the consulting irm, Mckinsey Company Inc. Japan. Then in 2011, he joined the Mixi.

His favorite quotes is from Mark Twain's.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe horbor. Catch the winds in you sails. Explore, Dream. Discovery."

Asakura puts this quote on his mobile phone's screen, and he makes it a rule to read this quiote time to time. Now, there has been noone who could turn around the Internet Service comapny so far.

While other SNS companies have been trying to become Social Gaming Company, Mixi refused to become heavily relying on the revenue from gaming.

That directions helped Mixi to avoid the blames for the excessive bills to teenage game lovers.
But also, made Mixi to struggle to find new revenue sources.

Asakura admitted in the press conf that it is quite difficult to fight agains FaceBook etc, because of the scale of its businesses.  He expressed that Mixi will put focus on the expansion to asian countries, while they create new applications.

It is quite interesting to see if he could turn around the company.


(Left: ex-CEO and founder; Kenji Kasahara (37)
 Right: new CEO Yusuke Asakura.)

Miku Hatsune is more famous than I thought. Is she?

I didn't know that Toyota used this Miku Hatsune in its TV commercials for U.S.
Then, she must be more famous than I thought. correct?
I knew her when she first came out 7 years ago, but did not know she became such famous.

Now she has gotten a lot of friends, or rivals.

I just wonder if there is a chance for Michelle Obama to dance this peace.
The theme of this song is to love vegetable juice.
So, this may be best suit for her campaign purpose.


This is also cute.

Most popular idol for teenager in Japan now

You may have heard AKB48, or Perfume. Or more older one, Morning Musume. Those are for kids in elementary school. Now the most popular idols for teenagers (and Otaku) are actually not humanbeing. They are anime idols, called voal andoroid. Teenagers call them 'Boca-rou' in Japanese pronounciation. If you don't know Naruto, probably you don't have any interest in these clips. But try to watch them. Those are the ones that are understandable for non-teenagers generations. or They held a concert in Tokyo Dome and a lot of fans gathered. Holding a concert in such a big stadium is not something ordinal singers can do. (for instance, when Beatles first came to Japan in 1960's, they held a concert in this stadium.) Wao, it seem they really like her.

840,000 New graduates has joined to work

New fiscal year for 2013 has just started in Japan! April 1st is the first day for new fiscal year in Japan.
At the same time, it is the day when all newly hired employees get together in one place and are given welcome speech by their own ceo, or chairman in their each company.
This year, the number of the new employees in total was estimated 840.000 people, who have just graduated from thier school this March.
So, I would express my welcome to those new fresh men and women to the real adult world, where you will be able to make a contribution in a responsible way.
Probably, you will have a lot of things while you are in a work place. But all of those will make your life. So, don't give up, and find your way to associate with this world.



0:15 welcome speech by Mr.Niinami, CEO of Lawson
1:00 welcome speech by Mr.Toyoda, CEO of Toyota
1:15 welcome speech by Mr.Tsuga, CEO of Panasonic
1:40 Welcome speech by Gov. Inose, Govoner of Tokyo metropolitan Gov.
2:07 Welcome speech by Gov, Hashimoto, Govenor of Osaka City

Young Woman Entreprenuer Who Cares About Stool

I found the article which describes the story of Ms. Yoshimi Ui, who is a young woman entrepreneur who graduated Chiba Institute of Technology, founded the venture company which develop a censor to analyze stool for elderly who needs a help from caregivers. Her motivation to develop such censor came from her youth days, though she is still 24 years old, when she was in junior high and high school. Back then, her favorite grandmother started suffering from severe depression, and her all family members were really gotten exhausted to care her grandmother,

She really felt back then, that there is a limit for human being to give continuous care for years. So, she though she would be great if she could develop something that will help caregivers to reduce their workloads.

She joined Future Robotics Faculty of Chiba Institute of Technology, and went out to a lot of care facilities and repeatedly conducted  researches about what technology can really help caregivers to relief their workload.

One of the sincere request is to analyze the stool of elderly, without opening diapers. After some trails, she developed censor that can detect the smell outside of the diaper, and analyze the stool to find out if such person is in good health condition. To find out business partners, she joined couple of business plan competition and won the reward from Chiba City Business Competition, in 2012, and also awarded from the competition sponsored by Development Bank of Japan.

She might be still young to understand what the real business is. But I think it is great if she could get from experienced business leader, and her dream really come true, which is to create robots that is affordable for the caregivers for their daily operations.

'LINE' gets 100 Mil users within 15 months

Free mobile call software 'LINE' acuquired 100Mil. subsribers 15 months after its first release. The subsribers are not only from Japanese market, but also from asian countries. IT's a good momentum, because the not many software developed in Japan are not accepted in other countries.

10 workers were killed in the desert of Algeria

Finally, despite of the hope for the safe come back for the Japanese civilian workers, it turned out 10 workers at oil plant in Algeria were found killed by the muslim extremists. After the WWⅡ, this is the worst case of the murder of the civilian in other countries. I have many muslim friends, but extremist are not forgivable. Japanese Gov. special airplane (usual commercial airplane but dedicatedly leased to Japanese Gov.) is going to depart for Algeria to bring the victims back to Japan.

Cost comparison for LTE service in Japan

There are only three mobile phone service companies in Japan. There are many Wi-Fi service providers. But the number of the mobile phone operator is limited. When you want to use mobile phone in Japan, you need to subscribe one of those three network carriers.

The bigget provider in terms of the market share is NTTDocomo. However, NTTDocomo does not provide iPhone series. Now recent research in 2012 found that the number of the Docomo subscriber decreased, while subscribers of AU by KDDI and Softbank mobile increased.
 
Softbank is famous for providing iPhone service menus from the beginning that increased the marker share of the SoftBank a lot. Therefore, KDDI determined to add iPhone service menu from 2012.

Now, the number of the net increament of the subscriber comes SoftBank as No1, then followed by KDDI, and Docomo as the last. 

We have an image that SoftBank service is cheap but does not secure substantial connection speed, while Docomo is expensive but provides high quality service.

But that image is becoming outdated, since Docomo can offer inexpensive price menu. And SoftBank is heavily investing to improve its connectivitiy. In case you are in a big city area, you may not recognize the difference of the qualitiy.


1. Cost for NTT Docomo
1) Basic Monthly Fee: 1,095Yen ( Basic fee: 780 Yen. + SP Mode: 315Yen)
2) Packet Transmission Fee;
    a) Pake Hodai Lite Plan: 3GB maximum JPY 4,935/ Mon
    (For the communication beyond 3GB, the internet speed will go down to 128Kbps.)
      or
    b) Pake Hodai Flat Plan: 7GB maximum JPY 5,985/ Mon
    (For the communication beyond 7GB, the internet speed will go down to 128Kbps.)

2. AU by KDDI
* Plan for Android Smart Phones
 1) Basic Monthly Fee : 1,295Yen ( Basic Fee 980 Yen. + LTE Basic Fee: 315Yen)
 2) Packet Transmittion Fee ;
     LTE Flat: 7GB maximum JPY 5,985/ Mon
    (For the communication beyond 7GB, the internet speed will go down to 128Kbps.)

   *3GB Plan is not available like NTTDocomo
* Plan for iPhone 5
 1) Basic Monthly Fee : 1,295Yen ( Basci 980 Yen. + LTE Basic Fee: 315Yen)
 2) Packet Transimission FEE
     LTE Flat: 7GB maximum JPY 5,460Yen/ Mon)
   (For the communication beyond 7GB, the internet speed will go down to 128Kbps.)


AU's iPhone service provides more cheaper service than SoftBank.


3. SoftBank
*Plan for iPhone 5 and SmartPhone
  Basic Fee : 1,295Yen ( Basic Fee 980 Yen. + Internet Basic Fee: 315Yen)
  Packet plan; LTE Flat: 7GB maximum JPY 5,460/ Mon

*SoftBank have been keeping its speed limitation unclear with their 4GB Plan.
  From the end of January 2013, SoftBank will stop to make new contract with 4GB plan and
  will provide 7GB plan only, which is slightly expensive than KDDI plan,

New technology to create plastic out of Euglena

For the last couple of days, there came a lot of news from CES held in Las Vegas. Especially, at a time how Japanese electronic electronic maker can regain its momentum is the big concern for many Japanese, it makes quite sense that what maker announced what new product gets attention from numerous people.

But today's my post is far different from those new gadget things.

Again, it's a creature related story, which is about Euglena, microorganism that are found in fresh water near you, such as ponds, or stream etc. It makes the coloer of water looks green when the number of Euglena increases.

Then, The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and NEC announced that they could successfully created plastic made of Euglena, with adding extractive from cashew nut.

The plastic made of Euglena has a good thermal plasticity and heat resistance.

Plastic is generally made of petroleum oil, so it is limited resource.

When this new technology becomes available for commercial use, because Euglena is so easy to increase, plastic can be more easy and cheap to be created, and most importantly, it is going to be eco-friendly.

No Eat for 4 years, but Still Alive. Record is still counting

Of course, it's not a story for human being, but the one for the creature that usually inhabit deep ocean water, about 200 - 1,000 meter from the surface.

Toba Aquarium keeps two Bathynomus giganteus, the largest wood louse, that become 20cm to 40cm big in the deep water. One of these Bathynomus giganteus somehow keep rejecting to eat anything, while another Bathynomus enjoys its meal every three to four month.

The last time, that Bathynomus had a dinner was Jan 2, 2009. At that time, it ate 50g of Squid. Ever since, that was the last meal. Since then, completely for 4 years, that Bathynomus had eaten nothing at all.

On Jan 4th 2013, the breeing staff of the aquarium served a meal, but it did not eat at all neither.

When it was brought in to the aquarium in 2007, its weight was of the Bathynomus was 1,040g. Now its weight is only 12g less than before. 5 years diet, and only lost 12g is quite ineffective diet. Too bad for her.

Though it has not eaten anything for 4 years, the Bathyomus seems quite healthy. It usually stay calm in the water, but sometimes it moves vigorously with moving its feet cheefully.

The staff of the acquarium is wondering if it is not a Bathynomus but a creature from the outer space. :)

K-POPS coverd by Japanese musicians

Every Dec 31st is the day NHK broadcast big live music shows from 7:30pm to 11:30pm, which is the last music TV show programme of the year.

This year, the programme got 49.1% of view ratio, which is extremely high compared with previous years.

This year, none of K-POP musicians or groups had not been nominated on the show.

So, here is some music clips of K-POPS that are covered by Japaneses musicians.

(Gee original by Girl's Genration)




(Go Go summaer by Kara)