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Like ‘I Can Has Cheezburger’, Japan’s Bokete is lots of laughs

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Photo apps are extremely popular in Japan. And there are many photo-related services that provide unique experiences. One such service, Bokete, was launched as a website back in 2008, a place where users can make humorous captions about different photos. There have been over eight million ‘boke’ (‘boke’ roughly means ‘jokes’ in Japanese) uploaded up until now 1. Bokete has also released smartphone apps for both Android and iOS, and the total number of downloads so far is a solid 1.8 million. On Bokete, users can view images and their corresponding jokes by criteria like popularity, most recent, and ‘hand-picked’. There are many images of animals/pets, celebrities, movies, and even quotes. On the app, users can also post their own funny captions from the series of photos and images available. These photos are user-generated as well. The company behind Bokete is Omoroki in Shizuoka prefecture. They recently announced a content partnership with Yahoo called Bokete Select. Bokete Select will feature photos and jokes, but it’s limited to images with a Creative Commons attribution licence from Flickr. The ‘boke’ content will be featured on Yahoo Japan’s mobile apps for (iOS and Android). Bokete have been used in interesting brand promotions, such…

Bokete

Photo apps are extremely popular in Japan. And there are many photo-related services that provide unique experiences. One such service, Bokete, was launched as a website back in 2008, a place where users can make humorous captions about different photos.

There have been over eight million ‘boke’ (‘boke’ roughly means ‘jokes’ in Japanese) uploaded up until now 1. Bokete has also released smartphone apps for both Android and iOS, and the total number of downloads so far is a solid 1.8 million.

On Bokete, users can view images and their corresponding jokes by criteria like popularity, most recent, and ‘hand-picked’. There are many images of animals/pets, celebrities, movies, and even quotes. On the app, users can also post their own funny captions from the series of photos and images available. These photos are user-generated as well.

The company behind Bokete is Omoroki in Shizuoka prefecture. They recently announced a content partnership with Yahoo called Bokete Select. Bokete Select will feature photos and jokes, but it’s limited to images with a Creative Commons attribution licence from Flickr. The ‘boke’ content will be featured on Yahoo Japan’s mobile apps for (iOS and Android).

Bokete have been used in interesting brand promotions, such as for the G.I. Joe movie which recently hit theatres in Japan. The movie stills were provided by the film, and users then unleashed their snarky comments. The award-winning jokes can be seen over on the Bokete blog.

If you encounter a fun boke, it can be shared with friends on Twitter, Facebook, and Line. The images and jokes shared on the site are generally a sort of Japanese black humor, so many of them could be difficult for non-Japanese readers to understand. But give it a try!

Here are a few examples of boke below.

This mushroom says, “I’m a bit cold.”

Santa says, “God damn it, why didn’t you deactivate the security!”

“It was this big! The tuna fish I had in my dream was this big!”


  1. Not to be confused with bokeh.

Widgely: Community Factory and Yahoo Japan team up on multi-purpose girlie app

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Community Factory, the company behind the popular purikura app Decopic, and its parent company Yahoo [1] have released their first joint widget app on the Android platform. It’s called Widgely. The theme of the app is is “Kawaii, Easy, Useful,” and as you may have guessed by now, it’s targeting young women. The app includes what are (supposedly) all the features necessary for a girl’s daily life including a clock, weather, horoscope, a camera, and a mirror (i.e. an inward-facing camera). The visual theme of the widget app can be switched between four types, allowing users to dress up their smartphone according to their mood. Users are able to start searching right from the homescreen, and they can check a variety of articles from Yahoo News within the app, integrating well with one of Yahoo Japan’s prime services. From Widgely, users can also access Decopic directly and easily. The Decopic app has over 12 million downloads and is available for both iOS and Android. This project is likely only the beginning of more collaborative efforts between Yahoo and Community Factory, and we can certainly hope to see more Kawaii apps from the team in the future. Community Factory was acquired by…

Widgely-app

Community Factory, the company behind the popular purikura app Decopic, and its parent company Yahoo [1] have released their first joint widget app on the Android platform. It’s called Widgely.

The theme of the app is is “Kawaii, Easy, Useful,” and as you may have guessed by now, it’s targeting young women. The app includes what are (supposedly) all the features necessary for a girl’s daily life including a clock, weather, horoscope, a camera, and a mirror (i.e. an inward-facing camera). The visual theme of the widget app can be switched between four types, allowing users to dress up their smartphone according to their mood.

Users are able to start searching right from the homescreen, and they can check a variety of articles from Yahoo News within the app, integrating well with one of Yahoo Japan’s prime services. From Widgely, users can also access Decopic directly and easily. The Decopic app has over 12 million downloads and is available for both iOS and Android.

This project is likely only the beginning of more collaborative efforts between Yahoo and Community Factory, and we can certainly hope to see more Kawaii apps from the team in the future.


  1. Community Factory was acquired by Yahoo! in September of last year  ↩