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Apple’s new iPhone 5C and 5s start hot in Japan [Photos]

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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It’s opening weekend for Apple’s new iPhone 5C and 5S here in Japan. And I was curious to see that even on a very hot Sunday morning there were perhaps a hundred people lined up at the Apple Store in Shibuya, even though it’s the third day that they’ve been on sale. You can check out more pictures below. Now that the iPhone is on NTT Docomo , Apple’s presence in Japan has significant room to grow. The carrier has 55 million mobile subscribers, and has finally given up on their aspirations to crapwarify the popular handset with their vision of a ‘lifestyle system’. But clearly customers want something different, as Docomo’s flagship Galaxy S4 has disappointed. With a population that is both very health- and fashion- conscious, expect the new iPhone 5S to do especially well in Japan, with the fashionable gold model and the new M7 motion coprocessor bringing new kinds of fitness apps to the platform.

apple-store-japan-iphone-5s-5c-launch16

It’s opening weekend for Apple’s new iPhone 5C and 5S here in Japan. And I was curious to see that even on a very hot Sunday morning there were perhaps a hundred people lined up at the Apple Store in Shibuya, even though it’s the third day that they’ve been on sale. You can check out more pictures below.

Now that the iPhone is on NTT Docomo , Apple’s presence in Japan has significant room to grow. The carrier has 55 million mobile subscribers, and has finally given up on their aspirations to crapwarify the popular handset with their vision of a ‘lifestyle system’.

But clearly customers want something different, as Docomo’s flagship Galaxy S4 has disappointed.

With a population that is both very health- and fashion- conscious, expect the new iPhone 5S to do especially well in Japan, with the fashionable gold model and the new M7 motion coprocessor bringing new kinds of fitness apps to the platform.

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Translation startup Gengo relocates its home base, has some changes in store

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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Tokyo-based translation startup Gengo has recently relocated its head office to Shibuya, a district where many Japanese startups are based. The company held a press conference today to unveil how they expect to evolve the platform one step further. CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine, and VP of product management Hiroto Tokusei were all present at the conference, where they proudly introduced their new office where 26 people from 12 countries are working to give their users a better experience. In the presentation, the startup revealed that they are currently working on launching a new interface, which will probably go live next month. For crowdsourced workers who typically translate large volume of texts, the startup will provide an interface that helps you use the same terminology in an entire document and check for spelling or grammatical errors. For clients who order translation requests, the platform will be able to accept business document file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc., as well as plain text formats. The startup’s competitor Conyac also recently rolled out this feature on its platform back in February. To date, the service has been used to hire more than 8,000 crowdsourced workers, serving translation needs in…

gengo-office1

Tokyo-based translation startup Gengo has recently relocated its head office to Shibuya, a district where many Japanese startups are based. The company held a press conference today to unveil how they expect to evolve the platform one step further.

CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine, and VP of product management Hiroto Tokusei were all present at the conference, where they proudly introduced their new office where 26 people from 12 countries are working to give their users a better experience.

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From the left: VP Hiroto Tokusei, CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine

In the presentation, the startup revealed that they are currently working on launching a new interface, which will probably go live next month. For crowdsourced workers who typically translate large volume of texts, the startup will provide an interface that helps you use the same terminology in an entire document and check for spelling or grammatical errors. For clients who order translation requests, the platform will be able to accept business document file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc., as well as plain text formats. The startup’s competitor Conyac also recently rolled out this feature on its platform back in February.

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The Gengo team at its new office in Shibuya

To date, the service has been used to hire more than 8,000 crowdsourced workers, serving translation needs in 38 languages. In the last three months, they’ve transacted more than 22 million translation requests from clients in Japan and around the rest of the world. By refining the service’s interface, they hope to transact more translation orders and enhance their revenue stream.

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Annual growth of translation orders using Gengo

Gengo originally launched back in late 2008, at that time under the name MyGengo. In 2010, the startup secured seed funding of $750,000 from 500 Startups, Last.fm co-founder Felix Miller, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, and ex-Value Commerce CEO Brian Nelson. Subsequently, it received $5.25 million in a series A investment round from Atomico and 500 Startups. And then this year, it also received series B funding worth $12 million from Intel Capital (US), Atomico (UK), Iris Capital (France), Infocomm Investments (Singapore), STC Ventures (Saudi Arabia), and NTT Docomo Ventures (Japan).

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Uniqlo drops a unique pop-up shop at Tokyo’s Shibuya station

Yukari Mitsuhashi Yukari Mitsuhashi
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A rather historical event took place at one of the biggest train stations in Japan Shibuya just a few weeks ago. The old Toyoko train line, which has a history of 78 years, closed down as part of a large scale urban renewal project. The train service was re-routed to the 5th floor underground lane. The switch-over construction at the station was done overnight in just four hours, leaving a large empty space right in middle of Tokyo. Uniqlo found the vacant 660-square-meter space convenient for a pop-up shop called UT Pop-up Tokyo. The Toyoko-line Shibuya terminal is now filled with more than 1,000 kinds of items and over 12,000 t-shirts. The shop opened on March 28th as a part of the Uniqlo pop-up shop World tour, led by well-known Japanese creative director Kashiwa Sato. The project is planned to launch in different cities around the world including (but not limited to) London, Paris, New York, and Singapore. Visitors can even shoot videos of themselves at the site using a new mobile app called UT Camera, which converts their original movie into a unique animation. The resulting content is displayed on a big screen at the pop-up store as well…

uniqlo-popup-tshirts

A rather historical event took place at one of the biggest train stations in Japan Shibuya just a few weeks ago. The old Toyoko train line, which has a history of 78 years, closed down as part of a large scale urban renewal project. The train service was re-routed to the 5th floor underground lane. The switch-over construction at the station was done overnight in just four hours, leaving a large empty space right in middle of Tokyo.

Uniqlo found the vacant 660-square-meter space convenient for a pop-up shop called UT Pop-up Tokyo. The Toyoko-line Shibuya terminal is now filled with more than 1,000 kinds of items and over 12,000 t-shirts. The shop opened on March 28th as a part of the Uniqlo pop-up shop World tour, led by well-known Japanese creative director Kashiwa Sato. The project is planned to launch in different cities around the world including (but not limited to) London, Paris, New York, and Singapore.

Visitors can even shoot videos of themselves at the site using a new mobile app called UT Camera, which converts their original movie into a unique animation. The resulting content is displayed on a big screen at the pop-up store as well as on a dedicated website.

The pop-up shop works for shoppers looking for fun t-shirts, but it also functions as a form of interactive entertainment. It will be open until April 7th, selling unique t-shirts in collaboration with Star Wars and other artists. This UT line of t-shirts has sold over 160 million worldwide.

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Tokyo’s iPad-powered bars remember your favorite drinks

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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A new bar just opened yesterday in Tokyo’s busy Shibuya district, bringing with it a new digital solution that could disrupt the bar industry. It’s called LogBar, and was founded by entrepreneurial programmers Takuro Yoshida and Takayuki Yamazaki. When you step inside the bar, you receive an iPad upon which you should sign in with a username and password. Every order of beverages, alcohol, and appetizers is to be made on the iPad. You can also interact with bartenders and other customers on the app, which have been specifically designed for the bar. The app allows you to check what the other customers have ordered and to throw them a ‘like’ as well. The two founders are not satisfied with developing digital-centric solutions, but wanted to explore digital solution opportunities by connecting online to offline. By accumulating your orders on the app, your drink preference will be stored on the system, so you might see a suggested drink that suits your tastes at a participating bar in the network, even if it’s your first time there. Their bars are located at two locations in Shibuya, but are open only on Monday evenings. Traditionally, the best bars are the ones where…

logbar_entranceA new bar just opened yesterday in Tokyo’s busy Shibuya district, bringing with it a new digital solution that could disrupt the bar industry. It’s called LogBar, and was founded by entrepreneurial programmers Takuro Yoshida and Takayuki Yamazaki.

When you step inside the bar, you receive an iPad upon which you should sign in with a username and password. Every order of beverages, alcohol, and appetizers is to be made on the iPad. You can also interact with bartenders and other customers on the app, which have been specifically designed for the bar. The app allows you to check what the other customers have ordered and to throw them a ‘like’ as well.

logbarapp_screenshotThe two founders are not satisfied with developing digital-centric solutions, but wanted to explore digital solution opportunities by connecting online to offline. By accumulating your orders on the app, your drink preference will be stored on the system, so you might see a suggested drink that suits your tastes at a participating bar in the network, even if it’s your first time there. Their bars are located at two locations in Shibuya, but are open only on Monday evenings.

Traditionally, the best bars are the ones where bartenders remember customers’ preferences, and customers might often frequent establishments where they enjoy chatting with the bar staff. This is why many consider the bar industry to be one of the most difficult sectors in which to develop a franchise business. But with this new technology, you might find that a bar you’ve never been inside before could know your name and favorite drink in advance!

logbar_ipad_and_cocktail

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