THE BRIDGE

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Searching for a cafe with power outlet? Japan has an app for that

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Here’s a fun app for any freelancers or homeworkers based in Japan. Dengen Cafe, released this past December, gives you a mapped view of cafes in your area that have a power outlet, so if you’re running low on juice, you can stop and plug in. It’s in Japanese (and is focused on Japan) but is pretty easy to navigate. Check out Dengen Cafe on the App Store.

Here’s a fun app for any freelancers or homeworkers based in Japan. Dengen Cafe, released this past December, gives you a mapped view of cafes in your area that have a power outlet, so if you’re running low on juice, you can stop and plug in. It’s in Japanese (and is focused on Japan) but is pretty easy to navigate.

Check out Dengen Cafe on the App Store.

dengen

Grand Prix Story: Retro 8-bit racing goodness on mobile

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There were lots of fun mobile games at the recent Tokyo Game Show. But here’s a game that I stumbled upon today, which has actually been around for some time, but is still worth sharing here. Kairosoft’s Grand Prix Story is a delicious little 8-bit race simulation game that puts you in the role of a racing team manager. And for a racing game that actually require you to drive, it’s surprisingly fun. Your job is to manage the teams funds, improve your car, hire drivers and mechanics, and even acquire sponsorships. You can spend money to have your team conduct research on developing better car parts, and then out them to the test in a simulated race. As the team manager, you can also put your driver through training, but you need to make sure he’s well rested enough to go full throttle on race day. If he can pull off a podium finish, that will bring prize money you can further invest, and it also turns the heads of sponsors to get behind your team. Grand Prix Story comes in two versions: a paid app which is $3.99, and a free/lite version that limits your playing time. For…

There were lots of fun mobile games at the recent Tokyo Game Show. But here’s a game that I stumbled upon today, which has actually been around for some time, but is still worth sharing here. Kairosoft’s Grand Prix Story is a delicious little 8-bit race simulation game that puts you in the role of a racing team manager. And for a racing game that actually require you to drive, it’s surprisingly fun.

Your job is to manage the teams funds, improve your car, hire drivers and mechanics, and even acquire sponsorships. You can spend money to have your team conduct research on developing better car parts, and then out them to the test in a simulated race.

As the team manager, you can also put your driver through training, but you need to make sure he’s well rested enough to go full throttle on race day. If he can pull off a podium finish, that will bring prize money you can further invest, and it also turns the heads of sponsors to get behind your team.

Grand Prix Story comes in two versions: a paid app which is $3.99, and a free/lite version that limits your playing time. For a better idea of how the game is played, check out our video demo above.

If you’d like to try another fun 8-bit mobile game from Japan, you might also check out Ninja Striker, a really fun retro platformer that we looked at last month.

grand-prix-story-2 grand-prix-story

Japanese e-commerce platform provider Base introduces new iPhone app

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See the original story in Japanese. Base is an e-commerce platform provider startup from Tokyo. It was born out of Project Liverty, a tech savvy team led by serial entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri. In contrast with their competitor Stores.jp, the Base team has been pretty quiet recently. But they have released a new iOS app today, which allows merchants to build and manage their online shops entirely on mobile. In addition, the company has added a new feature called ‘Base Curation,’ which has an interface resembling an online shopping mall, curating featured shops. It displays users’ shops which have been selected by the company’s management, and if you would to like them to feature your shop in the menu, you can make a request via the dashboard. I asked the startup’s CEO Yuta Tsuruoka if the curation menu is a special business strategy for Base — but he said that this wasn’t quite the intention, explaining: Unlike other mall platforms (which have many tenant merchants), our service does not provide a way to find a specific shop on the platform. We want to see how we can encourage merchants to set up their online shop on our platform. When you launch…

base_iphoneapp01 base_iphoneapp02

See the original story in Japanese.

Base is an e-commerce platform provider startup from Tokyo. It was born out of Project Liverty, a tech savvy team led by serial entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri. In contrast with their competitor Stores.jp, the Base team has been pretty quiet recently. But they have released a new iOS app today, which allows merchants to build and manage their online shops entirely on mobile.

In addition, the company has added a new feature called ‘Base Curation,’ which has an interface resembling an online shopping mall, curating featured shops. It displays users’ shops which have been selected by the company’s management, and if you would to like them to feature your shop in the menu, you can make a request via the dashboard.

base_iphoneapp04 base_iphoneapp05

I asked the startup’s CEO Yuta Tsuruoka if the curation menu is a special business strategy for Base — but he said that this wasn’t quite the intention, explaining:

Unlike other mall platforms (which have many tenant merchants), our service does not provide a way to find a specific shop on the platform. We want to see how we can encourage merchants to set up their online shop on our platform. When you launch an app, it shows you a number of online shops where you can quickly jump in to purchase something you want, but you can also [just as] easily establish your own shop from the menu.

Placing pictures of products, changing design, inventory management, etc. – all these tasks can be completed with the smartphone app because we really want to give more people opportunities to build up their own “economic block”.

Base is not trying to be a big e-commerce portal, but a rather platform where people can easily repeat transactions, buying and selling items by leveraging their social connections, and accelerating long-tail businesses.

According to Mr. Tsuruoka, almost 60% of their purchasing traffic comes from mobile devices.

IMG_4395
Co-founder Kazuma Ieiri using the app

Of course, all these updates are very likely a direct result of Ieiri’s own philosophies. I asked him how they plan to compete against various competitors, including major e-commerce platforms, shopping cart ASPs, and other similar services. He answered me directly, not hiding his intentions of taking the fight to his competitors:

They are elephants or capybaras [1], but we are mere ants, in contrast. For ants, even if you join forces with capybaras, there’s no way you can defeat elephants. Therefore, you must dig up the ground so that you might trip up the elephants. Understand?

The Base team is expecting to see 500,000 downloads of their iOS app by the end of this month. Let’s stay tuned to see how they do!


  1. The capybara is the largest rodent in the world according to Wikipedia. Editor’s note: Ieiri’s metaphor is a little strange, but it seems capybaras might be a less obscure animal among Japanese people because it is cute, and has been featured in some TV commercials.

PressSync Pro: A handy way to connect to WordPress on the go

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Recently I wrote a little about my favorite mobile writing apps, one of which was Poster, a beautifully designed iOS app that interfaces quite nicely with WordPress blogs. But there’s a similar app made here in Japan that almost made my list. PressSync Pro, while not as pretty as Poster is every bit as powerful, maybe more so. PressSync lets you do practically everything you can normally do with WordPress, with menu items to browse published articles, drafts, local articles, and media/images [1]. You can even edit things like the URL slug, the post’s featured image, and custom fields. PressSync does not access your entire archive of articles, but just the most recent ones. But you can adjust the setting to increase or decrease how many posts deep you’d like to dig into your archive if you wish. By default the font size in the PressSync editor is a little small, so you might want to bump it up a notch – and you can do so in the settings. There is snippet support for common HTML tags, and even Markdown. While this is handy, to me it requires a few to many button presses, and I will likely continue…

press-sync-pro

Recently I wrote a little about my favorite mobile writing apps, one of which was Poster, a beautifully designed iOS app that interfaces quite nicely with WordPress blogs. But there’s a similar app made here in Japan that almost made my list. PressSync Pro, while not as pretty as Poster is every bit as powerful, maybe more so.

PressSync lets you do practically everything you can normally do with WordPress, with menu items to browse published articles, drafts, local articles, and media/images [1]. You can even edit things like the URL slug, the post’s featured image, and custom fields. PressSync does not access your entire archive of articles, but just the most recent ones. But you can adjust the setting to increase or decrease how many posts deep you’d like to dig into your archive if you wish.

By default the font size in the PressSync editor is a little small, so you might want to bump it up a notch – and you can do so in the settings.

There is snippet support for common HTML tags, and even Markdown. While this is handy, to me it requires a few to many button presses, and I will likely continue to compose in another app, and maybe use an app like this one to publish. PressSync also has an AppLink maker function for bloggers who need to create affiliate links.

Overall I think it’s a pretty great app, and for anyone who needs to interface with WordPress on a mobile, its certainly worth the 450 yen ($4.99) price tag. You can get it over on the App Store.

presssync-2 presssync-1


  1. I do have one complaint about tag input, which presents tag selection by listing all your tags (which can tag a while if you have many) with on/off sliders. Tags would be better input by simple writing them out separated by commas , I think.  ↩

5 great mobile writing apps for iOS, and how to use them [Video]

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This is part of our series of articles (RSS) where we share some of our favorite technology tools. Like you, we’re pretty enthusiastic about new ways to geek out, and we hope to share some of that here. Let us know what you think. If you live here in Japan, you probably know what it’s like to be standing on a crowded train. Most of us spend that time with some mobile games, or messaging with friends. But you can get a lot of work done too if you try, and I’m finding lately that there are more apps available than ever before that can enable you to write on a mobile with ease. Since my work is primarily writing and editing, this is a wonderful thing! Many of these apps use a text format called Markdown. If you’re not familiar with it, don’t worry. It is just a plain text markup language that is easily converted to HTML. But trust me when I say that if you write for the web (i.e. if your final output is HTML), you should be writing in Markdown. It’s far more readable, and from an editor’s point of view that’s invaluable. It’s also…

This is part of our series of articles (RSS) where we share some of our favorite technology tools. Like you, we’re pretty enthusiastic about new ways to geek out, and we hope to share some of that here. Let us know what you think.


If you live here in Japan, you probably know what it’s like to be standing on a crowded train. Most of us spend that time with some mobile games, or messaging with friends. But you can get a lot of work done too if you try, and I’m finding lately that there are more apps available than ever before that can enable you to write on a mobile with ease. Since my work is primarily writing and editing, this is a wonderful thing!

Many of these apps use a text format called Markdown. If you’re not familiar with it, don’t worry. It is just a plain text markup language that is easily converted to HTML. But trust me when I say that if you write for the web (i.e. if your final output is HTML), you should be writing in Markdown. It’s far more readable, and from an editor’s point of view that’s invaluable. It’s also really great if you happen to be writing on a mobile device. Have a look at the two documents below. HTML is on the right and the Markdown equivalent is on the left. Which is easier to read/write/edit? Which would be easier to read/write/edit on a mobile device?

markdown-vs-html
Markdown vs HTML

I’m going to give an overview of some of my favorite mobile writing tools here. They all cost a couple of dollars each, but when I consider the benefits they have for work, they’re well worth it. Plus, it’s always fun to learn new tools!

1. TextExpander Touch 2.0

textexpander-touch

As you can see in the picture above, even though Markdown is far simpler to type than HTML, it could still be made a little easier. In iOS for example, getting at the “[“ and ”]” keys can be awkward. TextExpander Touch (as well as TextExpander for Mac allows you to get around this in many ways. The app can be used for any kind of text expansion, but here are just a few of the ways in which I use it [1]:

  • Create tag links for common keyword on our blog
  • Create a regular Markdown links from a URL on the clipboard
  • Make a blockquote with an ID and permalink
  • Add an abbreviation tag with help/hover text for things like Japanese words

Check my video demo below to see how these work. If you want the snippet bundle used here, you can download it and mod it for your own purposes. But there are lots freely available out on the interwebs, and you can always whip up your own too!

2. Drafts

drafts-app

I actually used Drafts to write this post, so naturally it is going to make my list (and it’s also the editor you see in the demo video above). Drafts is a useful text editor when you need to write something quick. Just open it up and there’s a blank page just waiting for input.

Once you’re finished writing, you can send your note to just about any destination you wish: Facebook, Twitter, Email, Evernote, Dropbox, or a different text editor. I often use this last option, but there is a wide range of Draft Actions that you can perform on your text. You can even write your own, as I did for my recent ‘data diet’ hack. This app might be my favorite on this entire list because it is so versatile.

3. Nebulous Notes

nebulous-notes

Another powerful text editing tool is Nebulous Notes. I first discovered the power of what Nebulous could do be watching what Federico Viticci has done with it. Among my favorite features is the app’s ability to create a custom macros, which can be added as new keys on your software keyboard. Want a single button that will type you name? Can do. But there are functions far better than that of course, such as undo and redo, find text, and select text assist functions. Naturally, I use the macros functions to assist with Markdown input, but really you can use it however you wish.

Check out my video demo below for a quick and dirty overview.

4. Byword

byword-iphone

While Text Expander, Drafts, and Nebulous are your workhorse text editors, sometimes you just want to feel pretty. Byword is for just those times. This app is available for both iOS and Mac, and syncs them both up using iCloud or Dropbox – so if you are the type who spends time on both desktop and mobile, Byword is a great way to make sure you have the same work everywhere.

The beauty if Byword for Mac lies in its Markdown syntax highlighting, which darkens elements like your headings or bold text, and lightens/hides things like URLs in Markdown links (see below). And while that syntax highlighting doesn’t display on an iPhone or iPod Touch, Byword is still an essential mobile tool for me, since I use the Mac version so frequently. If you haven’t written on Byword in full screen yet, you simply haven’t lived. Ok perhaps I’m exaggerating a little, but it’s pretty damn nice.

byword-fullscreen-mode
Fullscreen writing bliss on Byword for Mac

5. Poster

poster-iphone

For anyone who publishes with WordPress, as we do here on SD, you’re probably aware that it’s not the friendliest system to work with on a mobile device. But invariably I’ll need to access our site from mobile, sometimes to edit a post when I’m on the train or maybe just to make a late night edit when my MacBook isn’t nearby.

Poster is a great interface to WordPress, and it accepts Markdown input too which is pretty great. But I really just like it mostly because of its clean layout and design. Of course having access to custom fields is a big help too, as is the ability to add tags, categories, edit the permalink, and save as draft rather than publish live.

I think this is a must if you use WordPress, but there’s a made-in-Japan alternative called PressSync Pro that does much the same thing. It’s also a quality app, in my view.

Update: Poster has been acquired by Automatic, and is no longer available in the App Store.

poster poster-2


  1. You can also use it for things as simple as canned email templates, which is especially helpful on mobile. I even use it for live blogging events to automatically insert linked time stamps. Note that Text Expander Touch 2.0’s fill in feature is not yet supported by all text editors. But Drafts supports it, which is a good reason to get it.  ↩

Classic game from Sega gets a refresh for iPhone

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Video game giant Sega had a hit game called Puyo Puyo way back in 1991 (it was called Puyo Pop in countries outside of Japan). So I think many people were pleased to see that the company released a new Puyo Puyo game on iOS on April 24th. It’s called Puyo Puyo Quest. The game has a strong fan base across a variety of age segments, and it quickly nabbed million downloads just ten days after its release. One of the biggest gaming portals, 4gamer.net has even called the puzzle game a national obsession. The game was the top free app in Japan for a brief period, and it retained a position in the top five until May 8. It has dropped off a little since, but still ranks fourth overall in the puzzle category currently. The game works sort of like Tetris, but it has now been optimized for smartphone. You basically erase one puyo (the slimy looking creatures) to bundle up four of the same color. By eliminating more and more puyo, you can build up power to damage your opponent. This bundle reaction is called Rensa in Japanese, which can roughly be translated as ‘chain reaction’. The…

Video game giant Sega had a hit game called Puyo Puyo way back in 1991 (it was called Puyo Pop in countries outside of Japan). So I think many people were pleased to see that the company released a new Puyo Puyo game on iOS on April 24th. It’s called Puyo Puyo Quest.

The game has a strong fan base across a variety of age segments, and it quickly nabbed million downloads just ten days after its release. One of the biggest gaming portals, 4gamer.net has even called the puzzle game a national obsession. The game was the top free app in Japan for a brief period, and it retained a position in the top five until May 8. It has dropped off a little since, but still ranks fourth overall in the puzzle category currently.

The game works sort of like Tetris, but it has now been optimized for smartphone. You basically erase one puyo (the slimy looking creatures) to bundle up four of the same color. By eliminating more and more puyo, you can build up power to damage your opponent. This bundle reaction is called Rensa in Japanese, which can roughly be translated as ‘chain reaction’. The initial navigation takes a while to get past, but once you get started, it’s a fun game to play.

For those people who are not familiar with the original Puyo Puyo game, the iOS version might remind you a little of that other puzzle RPG, Gung Ho’s hit title Puzzle & Dragons.

This is not the first time that Sega brought Puyopuyo to iOS, as Puyopuyo Fever Touch was released in Japan back in 2009.

PuyoPuyoQuest

Shadow Love: The Japanese iPhone game made entirely with shadow puppets [Video]

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Here’s a really fun iPhone game from Japan that is created entirely with shadow puppet characters. It’s called Shadow Love, and it’s a side-scrolling platformer where you take on the role of a cute shadow bunny rabbit, just like the type you probably tried to make when you were a kid. Your task is to navigate to the end of each round, evading other shadow puppet enemies like snails, crabs, porcupines, and even alligators. Even the backgrounds, buttons, and inter-titles are made in this shadow art style, and it gives the game a really nice look, especially with the colored backgrounds. Shadow Love, which was developed by Japanese game publisher Strawberry Gohan, has been around for almost a year now. But for some reason it hasn’t really gotten much attention, even in its home market of Japan. That’s a shame too, because the gameplay is really smooth, with very easy-to-handle controls. There are two versions of Shadow Love available: one for $0.99 (for iPhone or iPad, with retina support), which has 30 stages to play through; and there’s also a free version called Shadow Love Free Plus, with five levels to play. If you’d like like to learn more, check…

Here’s a really fun iPhone game from Japan that is created entirely with shadow puppet characters. It’s called Shadow Love, and it’s a side-scrolling platformer where you take on the role of a cute shadow bunny rabbit, just like the type you probably tried to make when you were a kid.

Your task is to navigate to the end of each round, evading other shadow puppet enemies like snails, crabs, porcupines, and even alligators. Even the backgrounds, buttons, and inter-titles are made in this shadow art style, and it gives the game a really nice look, especially with the colored backgrounds.

Shadow Love, which was developed by Japanese game publisher Strawberry Gohan, has been around for almost a year now. But for some reason it hasn’t really gotten much attention, even in its home market of Japan. That’s a shame too, because the gameplay is really smooth, with very easy-to-handle controls.

There are two versions of Shadow Love available: one for $0.99 (for iPhone or iPad, with retina support), which has 30 stages to play through; and there’s also a free version called Shadow Love Free Plus, with five levels to play.

If you’d like like to learn more, check out our demo in the video above.

shadow-love-2

shadow-love

Why I can’t stop playing Puzzle & Dragons

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I started playing Puzzle & Dragons a few months back. Or at least, that was my first serious look at it [1]. Prior to that, I had picked it up for a few plays only to put it down just as fast. It’s a game that takes a little bit of time to get into, and in the English version the help menu isn’t really an adequate primer for what the game has in store. And while I’ve come to really love the game, I think it can be tricky for newcomers. What follows is a short explanation of what I’ve learned about the game so far, as well as what I wish I knew when I first picked it up. The mechanics of the puzzle is not immediately apparent to start. If you haven’t tried the game yet, I’ve included a short video explainer above to help you get the gist of how to recognize basic orb patterns that can quickly be solved, and once you master those, you can move on to more advanced techniques [2]. Looking ahead to possible combinations makes the game feel somewhat chess-like sometimes, in that you need to plan ahead to execute your…

I started playing Puzzle & Dragons a few months back. Or at least, that was my first serious look at it [1]. Prior to that, I had picked it up for a few plays only to put it down just as fast. It’s a game that takes a little bit of time to get into, and in the English version the help menu isn’t really an adequate primer for what the game has in store. And while I’ve come to really love the game, I think it can be tricky for newcomers. What follows is a short explanation of what I’ve learned about the game so far, as well as what I wish I knew when I first picked it up.

puzzleanddragonsforum.com
via puzzleanddragonsforum.com

The mechanics of the puzzle is not immediately apparent to start. If you haven’t tried the game yet, I’ve included a short video explainer above to help you get the gist of how to recognize basic orb patterns that can quickly be solved, and once you master those, you can move on to more advanced techniques [2]. Looking ahead to possible combinations makes the game feel somewhat chess-like sometimes, in that you need to plan ahead to execute your moves within the limited time you have. I used to be a chess fanatic, and perhaps that’s why this game appeals to me so much.

It’s also not at all obvious for a beginner how to best power up and evolve your monsters. While it’s important to save magic stones to try to get rare eggs from the machine, you’ll find in later levels that in order to acquire evolution material for specific cards, you need to find out in which dungeons you can acquire it. You could keep playing until you stumble across it, or you could check one of online databases for the game that are out there.

I still don’t fully understand evolving monsters and building teams, and there are lots of other resources out there that you might want to check out to learn more about that. But I do like that the depth of the game and the fact that I’ve been casually playing for months and there’s still so much more to learn.

Everybody must get stones

game-over
Spend a magic stone to continue?

Why Puzzle & Dragons has been such a money-maker for GungHo Entertainment? It’s all about the magic stones, the games currency. You’re occasionally awarded a stone, or simply given one as a gift upon login – but no matter how you get them, you probably ought to save them to either expand your monster box (in early stages especially) or to take a shot at the rare egg machine.

But the game draws on the same money-making principle of video game arcades back in the 70s and 80s: insert coin to continue. And sometimes after you’ve played a long round only to lose to a tough boss, you’ll be tempted to spend a magic stone to continue. Or, if you have no magic stones, you’ll be very tempted to buy one.

As a personal rule, I try not to spend any money on any virtual goods in games [3], and I’m really glad that the game isn’t crippled as a result. Game play isn’t really hampered at all, in fact. I don’t think I’m a hardcore fan of the game, but I do pick up the game daily, which is more frequent than any other mobile game.

What day is it, anyway?

puzzle-dragons-spring

Puzzle & Dragons has special dungeons available on certain days of the week. On the weekend for example, you earn more coins than usual, which can then be used to pay for power ups later on. Thursday is a fun day for me as it awards wood monsters, and I’m working on building a wood team. But this pattern of recurring in-game events is a pretty brilliant strategy from GungHo. Gamers look forward to the weekend when they can rack up lots of coins, or to special events during the week when there might be an increased chance of finding a rare monster. There are events on special occasions too, like a recent easter event, or the current spring event which just started.

No doubt gamers who take Puzzles & Dragons more seriously may find the information above somewhat trivial or obvious. But I think since the English version of the game still hasn’t come close to being popular on the US app charts, I thought I’d pass on a little information about why I like it so much. Besides the fun of the puzzles alone, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had in collecting rare monsters and building a team. I enjoy the card battle genre, and P&D has all the right elements of that, I think.

Anyway, if you’d like to learn more about the game, I’ve included some more resources below. Some of them are deeper than you’ll need starting out, but keep them on hand for when you start to get hooked. If you have any advice to give I’d be delighted to hear it, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.


  1. Note that I’m referring to the US/English version of Puzzle & Dragons, as opposed to the Japanese version.  ↩

  2. Some of the tutorials that exist on the net seem to indicate tactics that are far more complex than my simple video demo. I look forward to diving deeper and learning more.  ↩

  3. The money I spend in the Apple Store is usually on text editors or, more recently, on the very expensive Dragon Dictate, which I used to write this post.  ↩

Watch out WeChat! Japan’s Line becomes the top social app in China

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Japanese chat application Line pulled off a pretty impressive feat this week, achieving the top spot in Apple’s Chinese App Store in the social networking category on April 8. This is especially interesting because so far in Asia, each of the big chat app players Line (Japan), Kakaotalk (Korea), and Weixin/WeChat (China) have each dominated on their home turf. For Line to become the top social networking app in China, having only launched back on December 12, is a significant achievement. According to a China Daily report, it was helped along initially by being introduced via Qihoo 360’s Mobile Assistant. After becoming the top social app on Monday, it has since dropped to number two. But the app is still rising in the overall ‘free app’ rankings (currently ranked 7th), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it reaches number one overall in the next few days. Line is branded as ‘Lian wo ’ or ‘Link Me’ in China, with apps available on iOS, Android, and PC. Given the fact that some individuals in China can be hostile towards Japanese brands, it’s encouraging to see a made-in-Japan service getting some love in the country. Weixin is, of course, still China’s dominant…

line-china-2

Japanese chat application Line pulled off a pretty impressive feat this week, achieving the top spot in Apple’s Chinese App Store in the social networking category on April 8.

This is especially interesting because so far in Asia, each of the big chat app players Line (Japan), Kakaotalk (Korea), and Weixin/WeChat (China) have each dominated on their home turf. For Line to become the top social networking app in China, having only launched back on December 12, is a significant achievement.

According to a China Daily report, it was helped along initially by being introduced via Qihoo 360’s Mobile Assistant. After becoming the top social app on Monday, it has since dropped to number two. But the app is still rising in the overall ‘free app’ rankings (currently ranked 7th), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it reaches number one overall in the next few days.

china-daily-line-social-networking
Photo: China Daily

Line is branded as ‘Lian wo ’ or ‘Link Me’ in China, with apps available on iOS, Android, and PC. Given the fact that some individuals in China can be hostile towards Japanese brands, it’s encouraging to see a made-in-Japan service getting some love in the country. Weixin is, of course, still China’s dominant chat app in terms of overall downloads.

On a related note, Korea’s Kakaotalk has recently made a little progress in Japan, announcing last week that it has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone, although it’s still a distant second to Line’s 45 million.

Weixin, while dominant in China, has a tougher challenge on its hands in achieving success among non-Chinese users.

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

Japanese tower defense hit ‘Battle Cats’ marches on, now with 4 million downloads

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The Japanese tower defense game Battle Cats from Kyoto-based developer Ponos has just surpassed 4 million downloads, this according to Gamebiz.jp. This comes shortly after the title passed the 2 million downloads milestone just last month. The game was initially released for iOS back in November, with the Android version following at the end of December. The title has been a top 50 iOS app in Japan for the majority of 2013, and a top 5 stallworth in the strategy category. The Android version has done even better, starting out a little slow, but staying in the top 25 of all Android apps for Japan since early January, with the exception of a few days. Personally I’m a huge fan of this game, and I’m really glad to see it doing well. I confess, that Puzzle & Dragon’s has displaced Battle Cats somewhat in my gaming time, but if I can ever get past chapter 3, round 48, then I expect my addiction will re-kindle pretty quickly. While I haven’t yet cracked the problem of beating chapter 3, some readers have inquired about beating chapter 2. So here’s a short video (above) which gives an overview of that round. I…

The Japanese tower defense game Battle Cats from Kyoto-based developer Ponos has just surpassed 4 million downloads, this according to Gamebiz.jp. This comes shortly after the title passed the 2 million downloads milestone just last month. The game was initially released for iOS back in November, with the Android version following at the end of December.

The title has been a top 50 iOS app in Japan for the majority of 2013, and a top 5 stallworth in the strategy category. The Android version has done even better, starting out a little slow, but staying in the top 25 of all Android apps for Japan since early January, with the exception of a few days.

battlecats

Personally I’m a huge fan of this game, and I’m really glad to see it doing well. I confess, that Puzzle & Dragon’s has displaced Battle Cats somewhat in my gaming time, but if I can ever get past chapter 3, round 48, then I expect my addiction will re-kindle pretty quickly.

While I haven’t yet cracked the problem of beating chapter 3, some readers have inquired about beating chapter 2. So here’s a short video (above) which gives an overview of that round. I hope it helps!

If you’re a fan of Battle Cats, feel free to share your tips or invite codes in the comment section below.