As we announced last week, today our team at SD Japan transitions to our new home on the web, TheBridge.jp. We still have a few things to take care of [1], but I thought I’d give you a quick update to let you know where things stand. The new website – as you can see – is now live, and we encourage you to look around and give the tires a kick. It was built with a mobile first approach, not because we’re hippies (we’re not, I swear), but because we’ve noticed that about half of you read on mobile devices. So we hope you like it. As for the formalities, the company name will be ‘The Bridge Co., Ltd’, and I’ll continue to lead the English edition as editor. My colleague Takeshi Hirano, the co-founder of the company (pictured above, bottom left), is the editor of the the Japanese edition. We’ll update our social presences shortly, and our weekly newsletter will remain relatively unchanged. As always, we’d love it if you could tell your friends about us. We’d like to say thanks to everyone who has supported our efforts under the flag of SD Japan, and we thank you…
As we announced last week, today our team at SD Japan transitions to our new home on the web, TheBridge.jp. We still have a few things to take care of [1], but I thought I’d give you a quick update to let you know where things stand.
The new website – as you can see – is now live, and we encourage you to look around and give the tires a kick. It was built with a mobile first approach, not because we’re hippies (we’re not, I swear), but because we’ve noticed that about half of you read on mobile devices. So we hope you like it.
As for the formalities, the company name will be ‘The Bridge Co., Ltd’, and I’ll continue to lead the English edition as editor. My colleague Takeshi Hirano, the co-founder of the company (pictured above, bottom left), is the editor of the the Japanese edition.
We’ll update our social presences shortly, and our weekly newsletter will remain relatively unchanged. As always, we’d love it if you could tell your friends about us.
We’d like to say thanks to everyone who has supported our efforts under the flag of SD Japan, and we thank you in advance for your patience as we step into this new brand.
You’ll notice there are still a few pages we need to translate. We’re working on it, so please bear with us! ↩
At this year’s CEATEC Japan event NTT Docomo showed off the news that its NotTV service for smartphones has obtained rights to broadcast House of Cards in Japan. The Emmy award winning show is being brought to Japan with Japanese subtitles. Sounds like good news right? Let’s look at the details. One episode of House of Cards will be broadcast via NotTV at 11 PM every Saturday night, starting tonight, October 5. This means you will need to either stay up until midnight to watch the show here in Japan, or set NotTV on your smartphone to record each Saturday night at 11 PM. What happens if you miss an episode, or you forget to record the show? You might think you can watch old episodes streaming on demand or download, right? Wrong. The episode of the week will be rebroadcast on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at different times, then after that time the episode will no longer be available to watch. If you’re not a NotTV subscriber but want to watch House of Cards in Japan, the other way it will be available in Japan is via satellite broadcast on the Imagica BS channel. Some background about NotTV: NotTV…
House of Cards, advertised on a Tokyo train
At this year’s CEATEC Japan event NTT Docomo showed off the news that its NotTV service for smartphones has obtained rights to broadcastHouse of Cards in Japan. The Emmy award winning show is being brought to Japan with Japanese subtitles. Sounds like good news right? Let’s look at the details.
One episode of House of Cards will be broadcast via NotTV at 11 PM every Saturday night, starting tonight, October 5. This means you will need to either stay up until midnight to watch the show here in Japan, or set NotTV on your smartphone to record each Saturday night at 11 PM.
What happens if you miss an episode, or you forget to record the show? You might think you can watch old episodes streaming on demand or download, right? Wrong. The episode of the week will be rebroadcast on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at different times, then after that time the episode will no longer be available to watch.
NotTV is a proprietary 1Seg-like broadcast service, which certain Docomo Android smartphones can tune into. A 420 yen monthly subscription (about $4) is required to tune in, and when we checked in back in June there service had more than a million paying customers. But because NotTV is a broadcast service it requires towers to be within range to receive the signal, meaning NotTV is not available in all prefectures of Japan.
Contrast this to Hulu.jp’s deal bringing The Walking Dead to Japan. The Walking Dead series is initially broadcast on the International Fox cable channel with Japanese subtitles a couple of weeks after US broadcast, and is made available on Hulu.jp for streaming on the following day. The previously broadcast episodes are available to watch on demand, on a variety of devices.
I guess that Docomo missed House of Cards producer and starring actor Kevin Spacey’s recent speech on giving control to the viewers (see below), where Spacey advises the TV/media industry to make their shows available in any form the viewers want, praising Netflix as an example to follow. I’m glad to see Hulu Japan is picking up the slack in Japan, letting viewers watch the shows they want, when they want, on the screen they want.
Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan office in Tokyo, the eighth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup exhibition event run by Samurai Incubate. Here’s a quick rundown of the entrepreneurs that caught our eye at the event. Quick Money Recorder Quick Money Recorder (or ‘Okanereco’ in Japanese) is a personal finance app (for iOS and Android) that allows you to record your daily expenses on mobile. Our readers may recall similar apps such as Dr. Wallet, Zaim, Money Forward, ReceReco, and Money Tree. But this app recently ranked number one in the Japanese App Store’s finance app category, and is currently ranked second. Smart Idea’s Shohei Ejiri, an ex-Nokia Japan employee and the creator of the app, says the appeal of the app is that it lets you input an expense in as little as two seconds. The app was developed in Vietnam, where system development is very cost effective. Flip Friday When a new fashion season arrives for retailers, there are usually many items left unsold. Retailers look for discounters to buy up leftovers, but it’s difficult since the stock is already out of season or not current. Flip Friday has a…
Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan office in Tokyo, the eighth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup exhibition event run by Samurai Incubate. Here’s a quick rundown of the entrepreneurs that caught our eye at the event.
Quick Money Recorder
Smart Idea’s Shohei Ejiri
Quick Money Recorder (or ‘Okanereco’ in Japanese) is a personal finance app (for iOS and Android) that allows you to record your daily expenses on mobile. Our readers may recall similar apps such as Dr. Wallet, Zaim, Money Forward, ReceReco, and Money Tree. But this app recently ranked number one in the Japanese App Store’s finance app category, and is currently ranked second.
Smart Idea’s Shohei Ejiri, an ex-Nokia Japan employee and the creator of the app, says the appeal of the app is that it lets you input an expense in as little as two seconds. The app was developed in Vietnam, where system development is very cost effective.
When a new fashion season arrives for retailers, there are usually many items left unsold. Retailers look for discounters to buy up leftovers, but it’s difficult since the stock is already out of season or not current.
Flip Friday has a warehouse in Los Angeles, buying branded fashions from local retailers for discount prices. The company will deliver them to Japan, selling them to fashion concious folks for affordable rates using its fashion e-commerce site.
The company was originally launched as an incubated startup at D2C, a joint venture of NTT Docomo and ad agency Dentsu.
When the earthquake hit Japan in 2011, many people not only lost their family members, but also photos and photobooks of family as well. Watching the news about the tragedy, Mr. and Mrs. Ota wanted to invent something to help people get over losing memorable photos.
The startup has developed a photobook app that allows users to keep videos or photos in a well-organized format. If you lose your device, there’s no need to worry about data loss since everything is stored in the cloud. Albums are also provided in e-pub format, so users can browse photos with an e-pub compatible browser even if the startup were to shut down.
The company is backed by Tokyo-based incubator Movida Japan.
Similar to ApexPeak which recently launched in Singapore, Paid provides advanced payments on your billings to your clients. It can also take over your invoicing or billing work, as well as payment collection. In this way, you don’t need to worry about possible delays in collections or demands for payments.
Tokyo-based Raccoon, the company behind the service, has been a middleman service in the fashion industry, giving fashion retailers a chance to deal with well-established suppliers.
Also presenting was Japanese entrepreneur Yorihiko Paul Kato, who is based in Singapore. He has produced a movie filmed in Hong Kong, Seoul, and Osaka, staring up-and-coming actors from those countries. The movie, entitled Fly Me To Minami will be showing from December and early-bird ticket buyers can put their names in the end credits. Minami, literally meaning the south in Japanese, is an alias for the southern district of central Osaka.
Some of our readers may recall when we wrote about Wild Card, a platform that tries to make job hunting a little easier. Another Japanese company looking to tackle the same market, with its recently released Almen. Launched in September, Almen matches job seekers and employers by holding small drinking parties. Anyone over the age of 20 with a Facebook account can use the service. Instead having a formal (and often awkward) job interviews, Almen gives both parties an opportunity to reveal their true colors with a little help from alcohol. A normal job interview process begins by selecting candidates from many resume submissions, but Almen skips this entirely and lets job seekers to apply to employer interviews directly. For employers, Almen restricts party attendance to the president of the company. So targeted employers for this kind of service are small to mid-size businesses. This could be good for their business, since many companies of smaller sizes lack qualified applicants, since candidates often seek stability by applying to larger companies. In addition to the job seekers and employers, restaurants can apply to use Almen too. Restaurants can provide service for 3,500 yen (or about $36) per person, with 500 yen…
Some of our readers may recall when we wrote about Wild Card, a platform that tries to make job hunting a little easier. Another Japanese company looking to tackle the same market, with its recently released Almen. Launched in September, Almen matches job seekers and employers by holding small drinking parties. Anyone over the age of 20 with a Facebook account can use the service.
Instead having a formal (and often awkward) job interviews, Almen gives both parties an opportunity to reveal their true colors with a little help from alcohol. A normal job interview process begins by selecting candidates from many resume submissions, but Almen skips this entirely and lets job seekers to apply to employer interviews directly.
For employers, Almen restricts party attendance to the president of the company. So targeted employers for this kind of service are small to mid-size businesses. This could be good for their business, since many companies of smaller sizes lack qualified applicants, since candidates often seek stability by applying to larger companies.
In addition to the job seekers and employers, restaurants can apply to use Almen too. Restaurants can provide service for 3,500 yen (or about $36) per person, with 500 yen going to Almen as commission.
JIA, the company behind Almen, hopes to acquire 300,000 job-seekers and 1,000 recruiting companies within its first year. Here’s a short introductory video to Almen below.
See this story in Japanese San Francisco-based Square, the mobile payments service established by Jack Dorsey, looks like it will be planting a firm foothold in Japan soon, partnering with Uniqlo on a pop-up store in Ginza on Friday, October 11. Square officially came to Japan back in May of this year, as you may recall. The aforementioned space will be used to spotlight Uniqlo’s Ultra Light Down jackets, but it will also feature Square’s mobile payment technology as Uniqlo staff will be equipped with iPad’s on site to accept credit card payments. So in this way, customers won’t have to bother with queuing at the register, but can swipe their credit card with any store employee. This marks the first time that a big retailer in Japan is using Square in this way, and Uniqlo has plans to to introduce the technology at other stores later on. With a huge brand like Uniqlo now under its belt, Square should make quick progress convincing other retailers, big and small, to get on board as well. In addition to providing Square mobile payments at this pop-up store, Uniqlo will also feature something it’s calling ‘Uniqlo Color Magic’, which is most likely…
San Francisco-based Square, the mobile payments service established by Jack Dorsey, looks like it will be planting a firm foothold in Japan soon, partnering with Uniqlo on a pop-up store in Ginza on Friday, October 11. Square officially came to Japan back in May of this year, as you may recall.
The aforementioned space will be used to spotlight Uniqlo’s Ultra Light Down jackets, but it will also feature Square’s mobile payment technology as Uniqlo staff will be equipped with iPad’s on site to accept credit card payments. So in this way, customers won’t have to bother with queuing at the register, but can swipe their credit card with any store employee.
This marks the first time that a big retailer in Japan is using Square in this way, and Uniqlo has plans to to introduce the technology at other stores later on. With a huge brand like Uniqlo now under its belt, Square should make quick progress convincing other retailers, big and small, to get on board as well.
In addition to providing Square mobile payments at this pop-up store, Uniqlo will also feature something it’s calling ‘Uniqlo Color Magic’, which is most likely their Magic Mirror display (from Sharp) that they introduced at US locations last year. You can see an example of how that works in the video below.
Readers may recall when we previously featured the work of Japanese digital media company Kayac back in March. Their augmented reality Hatsune Miku pizza boxes for Dominos Japan were a great example of digital marketing. Now Kayac has another fun production, this time producing a fun iPhone attachment and app combo in cooperation with Chatperf and their Scentee mobile add-on that plugs into your headphone jack. Their ‘Hana Yakiniku’ (roughly translated as ‘nose barbecue meat’) is a small device/app kit intended to improve your eating experience by emitting the delicious smell of barbecue. 3 flavors: ribs, butter potatoes, and cow tongue For for example, lets say you’re on a diet and can only eat small salads or some white rice or something – in that case, Hana Yakiniku would enhance your bland food with a tastier smell. Currently it comes in three flavors: ribs, butter potatoes, and cow tongue (common at barbecue restaurants in Japan). If you’re eager to try this one out, you’ll have to wait a little while longer. Hana Yakiniki doesn’t go one sale until November 15. But when it does it will be pretty affordable, selling for the price of 3,654 yen (or about $36). Cartridge…
Readers may recall when we previously featured the work of Japanese digital media company Kayac back in March. Their augmented reality Hatsune Miku pizza boxes for Dominos Japan were a great example of digital marketing.
Now Kayac has another fun production, this time producing a fun iPhone attachment and app combo in cooperation with Chatperf and their Scentee mobile add-on that plugs into your headphone jack. Their ‘Hana Yakiniku’ (roughly translated as ‘nose barbecue meat’) is a small device/app kit intended to improve your eating experience by emitting the delicious smell of barbecue.
3 flavors: ribs, butter potatoes, and cow tongue
For for example, lets say you’re on a diet and can only eat small salads or some white rice or something – in that case, Hana Yakiniku would enhance your bland food with a tastier smell. Currently it comes in three flavors: ribs, butter potatoes, and cow tongue (common at barbecue restaurants in Japan).
If you’re eager to try this one out, you’ll have to wait a little while longer. Hana Yakiniki doesn’t go one sale until November 15. But when it does it will be pretty affordable, selling for the price of 3,654 yen (or about $36). Cartridge refills can be purchased for 100 yen for a three-pack. You’ll be able to order yours over on Amazon Japan.
If you’d like an explanation of how Hana Yakiniku works, check out the (rather cringeworthy) demo video below [1].
While this is a pretty fun idea, the voiceover and copywriting in their promo video (much like the Hatsune Mike promo previously) is pretty awful. ↩
Early in September, we wrote about Japanese social giant Mixi and its suddenly aggressive mobile strategy. One app in its growing portfolio is Minimo, an application used to match hairdresses-in-training and models. But recently I stumbled across a similar service called Cuttaloca, produced by Japanese internet service provider Side Tail. Cuttaloca wants to shorten the time novice hairdressers spend to cut 100 models from 3 years just to half a year. Cuttaloca was initially launched in October of last year as a service that provides haircuts for only 500 yen (about $5). Many hairdressers from across 18 Japanese prefectures registered on the site and there were over 2,000 haircut requests within a year. The site was recently overhauled and it now provides features that let users view hairdressers’ work schedule, thus making the request process easier. Cuttaloca can be used without a credit card, as payment processing is possible at local convenience stores. The site uses Facebook authentication to registrated, providing a secure environment for both hair professionals and users looking for a cheap hair cut. Hair professionals used to spend much time looking for haircut models in the streets. Interestingly, this is an important part of becoming a skilled…
Early in September, we wrote about Japanese social giant Mixi and its suddenly aggressive mobile strategy. One app in its growing portfolio is Minimo, an application used to match hairdresses-in-training and models. But recently I stumbled across a similar service called Cuttaloca, produced by Japanese internet service provider Side Tail.
Cuttaloca wants to shorten the time novice hairdressers spend to cut 100 models from 3 years just to half a year.
Cuttaloca was initially launched in October of last year as a service that provides haircuts for only 500 yen (about $5). Many hairdressers from across 18 Japanese prefectures registered on the site and there were over 2,000 haircut requests within a year.
The site was recently overhauled and it now provides features that let users view hairdressers’ work schedule, thus making the request process easier. Cuttaloca can be used without a credit card, as payment processing is possible at local convenience stores. The site uses Facebook authentication to registrated, providing a secure environment for both hair professionals and users looking for a cheap hair cut.
Hair professionals used to spend much time looking for haircut models in the streets. Interestingly, this is an important part of becoming a skilled hairdresser since it requires communication skill and the ability to make judgements about people. Cuttaloca hopes that these professionals can leverage the service on top of their offline activities, so that they can shorten the time spent to cut 100 models from three years just to half a year.
If users wish for additional services like hair coloring or a perm, they can schedule that as well by paying an extra fee at the time of their haircut. Since all haircuts are for training purposes, they will start after 7pm when the store is actually closed.
Cuttaloca is a direct competitor to Mixi’s Minimo, but is presented as a website service in contrast to the Minimo app. It will be exciting to see which community fares better in reaching the masses.
Japanese homescreen decorating application CocoPPa has surpassed 15 million downloads as of September 30th. What’s most remarkable about this is that a whopping 83% of its downloads come from beyond its home market of Japan. CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market. Because of this, United (CocoPPa’s parent company) stands out as a prime example of a company that dares to look abroad. It’s also a great example of how Japan’s cute/kawaii culture can be a very exportable commodity, even on mobile. As you can see in the chart below, CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market, and 17% from its home market. England and Taiwan each represent 4%, while Canada, Brazil, and Germany represent 3% each. United recently launched version 2 of its app (for both iOS and Android), with a number of new features available. There’s now a ‘download all’ function that will let you download entire homescreens (background and buttons). And the ‘Lounge’ area lets you post your own homescreen set for other users to download. CocoPPa recently struck a deal with Chinese search giant Baidu in an effort to help market the app both in mainland…
Japanese homescreen decorating application CocoPPa has surpassed 15 million downloads as of September 30th. What’s most remarkable about this is that a whopping 83% of its downloads come from beyond its home market of Japan.
CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market.
Because of this, United (CocoPPa’s parent company) stands out as a prime example of a company that dares to look abroad. It’s also a great example of how Japan’s cute/kawaii culture can be a very exportable commodity, even on mobile.
As you can see in the chart below, CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market, and 17% from its home market. England and Taiwan each represent 4%, while Canada, Brazil, and Germany represent 3% each.
United recently launched version 2 of its app (for both iOS and Android), with a number of new features available. There’s now a ‘download all’ function that will let you download entire homescreens (background and buttons). And the ‘Lounge’ area lets you post your own homescreen set for other users to download.
CocoPPa recently struck a deal with Chinese search giant Baidu in an effort to help market the app both in mainland China and here in Japan. The startup has also previously partnered with fellow Japanese startup Tokyo Otaku Mode to make available anime-themed homescreen sets on its platform.
See the original story in Japanese. When loved ones pass away, sometimes we might imagine that they became a star shining in the night sky. But one startup is looking to make this idea a reality. San Francisco-based Elysium Space, a company providing space memorial services, announced it has launched its business in the Japanese market on Monday, following its US launch back in August. Elysium delivers the ashes of a deceased family member into the space for as little as $1,990. You can even send the ashes of your pet as well. Coinciding with its launch in Japan, we had a chance to speak with ex-NASA engineer and the startup’s founder and CEO Thomas Civeit. He says they plan to have their own spacecraft but are still exploring better ways to deliver the ashes. At this point, they plan to partner with space transport companies like Space X, asking them to launch a spacecraft for delivery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He explained: There are many options for rocket launch sites but they are typically surrounded by off-limits areas. For our customers who are willing to watch the launch scene, I believe Florida is the best of them….
When loved ones pass away, sometimes we might imagine that they became a star shining in the night sky. But one startup is looking to make this idea a reality.
San Francisco-based Elysium Space, a company providing space memorial services, announced it has launched its business in the Japanese market on Monday, following its US launch back in August. Elysium delivers the ashes of a deceased family member into the space for as little as $1,990. You can even send the ashes of your pet as well.
Coinciding with its launch in Japan, we had a chance to speak with ex-NASA engineer and the startup’s founder and CEO Thomas Civeit. He says they plan to have their own spacecraft but are still exploring better ways to deliver the ashes. At this point, they plan to partner with space transport companies like Space X, asking them to launch a spacecraft for delivery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He explained:
There are many options for rocket launch sites but they are typically surrounded by off-limits areas. For our customers who are willing to watch the launch scene, I believe Florida is the best of them.
Disney World is located nearby, where you can visit with your family members after watching the launch. It may be possible to partner with travel agencies to arrange a tour having those destinations.
The launch scene will be live-streamed as well as recorded so that family can watch without visiting the launch site. He adds:
A funeral service in space is not a new concept at all. What’s innovative here is that we can provide it for as little as US$1,990.
There are space-focused ventures elsewhere but most of them are government funded. In contrast, our company is completely funded from private investors.
We also asked about possible concerns people may have in Japan (should they fall from space), as water burial is illegal here. But it seems their service would not result in any legal trouble since the spacecraft would be launched from the US.
The company has already introduced mobile apps for iOS and Android, where you can preview the kind of experience you will get through the service. In addition to accepting applications via its website, Elysium is in talk with Japanese funeral services for potential partnerships.
From the left: Benjamin Joffe (Director of Communication), Thomas Civeit (CEO), Naruo Kanemoto (Director of Business Development)
Korea’s beSUCCESS reported on Monday that Seoul-based LOC&ALL, the startup behind car navigation app Kimgisa, has raised $3 billion Korean won (approximately $2.7 million) from Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures and two Korean investment firms, Neoplux and Partners Venture Capital. Prior to this funding, the company raised seed funding of 1 billion won ($930,000) from Partners Venture Capital in January. With these new funds, they plan to intensify their engineering and marketing efforts with the initial goal of expanding to Japan, with Mainland China and Indonesia to follow later. Kimgisa is a location-based app for iOS and Android that acts as a sort of touch-screen sat-nav device. Since its launch back in 2010, it has acquired more than 5 million users despite the fact that major Korean mobile carriers have similar apps installed by default on their smartphones. The company projects that its primary revenue source to come from big data, an accumulation of user information including their destinations. They are also planning to sell advertising opportunities to Korean companies like Poing (restaurant booking), GooDoc (hospital finder), Saltlux (big data solution) and Korean web portal Naver. The company was founded back in May of 2010 by three Busan natives: Jonghwan Park, Wontae…
Korea’s beSUCCESS reported on Monday that Seoul-based LOC&ALL, the startup behind car navigation app Kimgisa, has raised $3 billion Korean won (approximately $2.7 million) from Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures and two Korean investment firms, Neoplux and Partners Venture Capital. Prior to this funding, the company raised seed funding of 1 billion won ($930,000) from Partners Venture Capital in January. With these new funds, they plan to intensify their engineering and marketing efforts with the initial goal of expanding to Japan, with Mainland China and Indonesia to follow later.
Kimgisa is a location-based app for iOS and Android that acts as a sort of touch-screen sat-nav device. Since its launch back in 2010, it has acquired more than 5 million users despite the fact that major Korean mobile carriers have similar apps installed by default on their smartphones.
The company projects that its primary revenue source to come from big data, an accumulation of user information including their destinations. They are also planning to sell advertising opportunities to Korean companies like Poing (restaurant booking), GooDoc (hospital finder), Saltlux (big data solution) and Korean web portal Naver.
The company was founded back in May of 2010 by three Busan natives: Jonghwan Park, Wontae Kim, and Myeongjin Sin, and all of whom previously conducted studies on location-based services at KTIT, the R&D body of Korea Telecom. It has hired many engineers from KOSDAQ-listed mobile solution provider Point-i.
Rick Martin
Kevin Korpi
Masaru Ikeda
Yukari Mitsuhashi
