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TechMom from Silicon Valley
I just came back from "Cellular 25" party in Chicago. The event marks the start of Wireless History Foundation, on the day that the first mobile phone service started in Chicago 25 years ago Oct. 13.
It was a fun night, with lots of industry insider attending (500 people). It was also encouraging for me that the foundation was headed by Arlene Harris, well-known female entrepreneur in wireless, and is backed by lots of women in the industry. They gave me lots of inspiration.
Michi
Hello everyone. I am another blogger joining this Japan Tech blog. My name is Yoko "Not Ono" S - I don't remember how many Americans have asked me about her well known better half John Lennon. :p
I've been a hardcore reader of Michi's blog and a friend of Yuki, who's been contributing to this blog for a while. Thanks Yuki for offering me this great opportunity!
Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in Fukuoka, grew up in Tokyo and moved to San Francisco 4 years ago. I've been working for an accounting firm and a full time CPA ever since I graduated from the college. Yes, I am not a "Tech Person" in my career, but I am a person who is having a lot of fun with technologies. In fact, I didn't get to know Yuki and Michi if blog technology doesn't exist in my life. So, I guess I have some good reason to join Japan Tech Blog!
Besides working as an audit manager with the firm, I've been writing monthly articles for online edition of Nikkei Business, which is considered as Japanese version of Business Week. (Nikkei has an alliance with BW at least). On Nikkei Business, I am delivering articles about US finance/accounting issues to Japanese readers. On this blog, I will bring some taste of finance/management matters relating to Japan. And maybe other fun stuff. We'll see.
On the personal side, I've been having fun in belly dancing, traveling, playing the violin, and dining out at good restaurants in the bay area (and yelping about them, of course) etc. Living in San Francisco has been a lot of fun for me. I still remember when I arrived in San Francisco on a cold rainy day by myself...it was the beginning of my real life after living in Japan as a girl who never lived out of the tiny island. In San Francisco, I learned how to cook, how to drive a car, how to negotiate my rent, how to deal with many diverse people in the team, and all other important things in the life. It's been full of eye opening experience.
Okay let's move on to the next topic. I am looking forward to posting some entries and introducing more about my home country to the world.
Yoko
In the U.S., all eyes are on the Presidential Election and the financial crisis, while Japan is in a bit of political turmoil in this messy world as well.
I was comparing various new search engines and Internet databases yesterday, and found out that lots of search result do not show that Taro Aso is the current Prime Minister of Japan. Yes, Wikipedia is updated, but some minor ones don't reflect the "recent" changes yet. He became the PM on Sep. 24, about 2 weeks ago.
Who cares about "PM of the day" in Japan? Really, the two previous PMs have resigned in less than 1 year. No time to memorize the names.
And many in Japanese major media predict that he will be the third "PM of the day" in a row, given the current stalemate in opposition-controlled upper house, and that the general election of the lower house will be called soon, with the ruling LDP likely to lose.
But I was surprised at the overwhelmingly POSITIVE reaction of the Internet people towards his inaugural speech in the lower house, as well as his speech in the United Nations just before that (both can be seen on YouTube and NicoNico Douga).
Unlike what is said about him in the New York Times editorial on the day of his UN speech, back home, he is much better known for his favor of Manga (Japanese comic books) and Internet, while his colleagues in the same age group often despise both. So many Akihabara-goers have enthusiastically supported him for some time, nicknaming him "Rosen Aso" (taking from a character's name in his favorite manga).
I thought it was about rather small number of people, but the amount and kinds of positive reaction from the broader Internet community, including NicoNico comments and Hatena bookmarks (Japanese version of Digg), really struck me.
I remember seeing this type of political tempreture on the net before the election in 2005, where then-PM Junichiro Koizumi achieved a landslide victory, despite of the negative prediction of major media.
There, I was impressed about the huge gap between the traditional media and Internet in Japan, and am wondering if this time around, the same thing may or may not happen.
Some say such enthusiasm towards Aso will die down soon, faced by the severe reality of late.
I don't make any bets, but am curiously watching how the Net tempreture changes over the next couple of months or so.
Michi
Nothing to do with technology, but I got to write about what I encountered today.
I was walking down to my favorite sandwich shop for lunch and saw this guy crossing the street wearing a black T-shirt that says “I am looking for a Japanese girlfriend” in Japanese and in huge font.
Bold, to say the least. I was stunned.
Sometime you see T-shirts with funny but a bit off or wrong foreign words which I am sure the people who wear them have no idea what they actually mean. But this one, it is right-on and obviously intentional.
First I though it was a custom-made for the purpose, but decided to google it just to make sure. Boy, I was wrong. Apparently, that’s a rather popular product.
There is no way Japanese girls would line up before you wearing this shirt. However, it is a very clever way to screen Japanese out in this Asian heavy city of San Francisco. They will certainly look at you, good or bad. Then you have a choice either to strike up a conversation or to walk away if the girl isn’t your type. Nothing to lose, I guess. Oh, except that you might look too light.
Nonetheless, this is one of the most targeted, direct and perhaps effective ads I’ve ever seen.
Anime, manga, wii, Toyota … a number of Japanese things exist that are quite popular globally, but Japanese girls could still be the most popular thing of all made in Japan.
Me, apparently, wasn’t up to the standard. He just walked by.
Yuki
I just learned that tonight's vice presidential debate will be broadcasted on Current.tv, partnering with Twitter.
While you watch the debate on Current.tv either on cable TV or on the Web, you can send you comment through Twitter and a part of the comments will be displayed on the screen in near-real time. (They say they cannot show all the comments, though.) To participate, you have to have an account with Twitter, and are supposed to add a tag "#current" on your comment to be included.
This "user comments on the screen" style is already common in Japan, with the popular web service called "Nico Nico Douga". The service allow users to comment on the YouTube-like video uploaded by a user. The strength of it is that even though different users are watching the video at different times, you can see the comments synchronized with the video, making you see the comment at exactly where another person make a comment, so it feels like you are watching the video with many other people at the same time.
This time, the debate is the real rea-time, but the concept probably is easy to understand for Japanese net participants. But as always, US does it in bigger scale in major event. Interesting.
Michi
Hello world. I am a friend of Michi's, or more precisely her fan, and I’ll be contributing to this blog from time to time.
Although I've been running my own tech/startup blog in Japanese, I hadn't been able to get round to making English version. I was hoping that translation technology would advance eventually, but it looks to be years away before reaching a practical level. So, when Michi offered this wonderful opportunity to join forces, I said, "why not".
Let me start with a brief introduction of myself.
I moved from Tokyo to San Francisco about 4 years ago. As a day job, I am an M&A advisor for tech startups. That means, I help early stage tech startups to get to the next level by finding acquirers or strategic partners for them. Before that, I was a management consultant working closely with internet and enterprise software solutions.
Traveling has been my longtime passion. I have visited over 40 countries so far and hope to keep backpacking around. It is fascinating to observe the lifestyles of people in different places and learn different perspectives.
My favorite things about Japan are the food, computerized bathtubs, and considerate people. It is a great country after all.
Well, I guess that's enough about me. I am looking forward to putting our Japan-related stories and thoughts through Japanese eyes out to the world...before everybody forgets about the tiny islands in Asia.
Yuki
Wall Street Journal's Yukari Iwatani wrote an interesting article yesterday, regarding the slow sales pace of iPhone by Softbank Mobile in Japan.
WSJ article on iPhone 9/15/2008
The article was translated into Japanese and is getting lots of social bookmark and comments back in Japan.
I think what is to blame here is the outrageous media hype. Everything that is mentioned here is no secret to Japanese users and industry people. Before the release, media hyped that Apple is SO special that it WILL be a huge hit, even though you cannot use emoticons or one-seg (satellite TV) or mobile wallet or anything. It was just not the case. That is all.
iPhone is and will remain as a niche product, even though a sizable niche, in the U.S., Europe or in Japan.
U.S. soil was cultivated enough before iPhone release with smartphone market development after 2004. Japan did not have that background. People there are also used to using number keys for typing in text. They are already so fast in doing so, just as a fierce samurai with his quick sword skill, so they would rather not give up this habit and skill to flat, touch screen interface.
It will just take more time for learning curve in Japan. It is still too early to judge.
Michi
The demise of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch reminded me of my home country Japan 10 years ago. Amid the post-real-estate-bubble mess, In 1997, Yamaichi Secirities, then one of the "Big Four" brokers in Japan, closed its doors. Long Term Credit Bank and Nippon Credit Bank wend under as well.
Today's Wall Street Journal article "The Japan Lesson: U.S. Must Own Up To Its Bank Crisis" talks about how Japan was slow in taking drastic measures, and that one of the reasons was the fear of causing social instability with massive and sudden unemployment. So-called life time employment system still is not quite gone away in Japan today, and was still very intact 10 years ago, so the career flexibility was not woven into its social system yet.
In the end, many employees from those failed brokers and banks found jobs in other financial institutions. Some still had to go out and seek the opportunity in the new world. It is not an official story, but I have my own theory that this "spill over" employment issue caused a chain reaction in the form of "mobile phone boom" and pushed Japan up to one of the most sophisticated mobile countries in the world.
I don't know who brokered it, but I started seeing many "ex-Yamaichi" or "ex-LTCB" executives in NTT DoCoMo, the largest mobile phone carrier in Japan. I don't know how many of them actually ended up in DoCoMo either, but I can tell it was not a single digit. DoCoMo had to give them something to do, but they didn't know anything about base stations or mobile billing systems, so many of them went to business development. And it was 1999, when DoCoMo launched its flagship mobile internet service called "i-Mode".
It is cumbersome (=high cost) to work with many small content providers (CPs), so US carriers limit the number of official CPs, but because DoCoMo had so many people that needed work, they could afford to have wide range of CPs. They basically threw people at it (instead of money). I should also mention that it was not only the failed financial institutions who provided extra work force to DoCoMo around that time; they accommodated thousands of people from NTT's landline phone units around the same time.
After the success of i-Mode, its pioneer Mr. Natsuno tried another push to transform DoCoMo into a financial institution, with its mobile wallet service "Osaifu Keitai", although he had to leave the company before it sees the project completion. I suspect maybe his idea was hatched by his ex-financial staff - or at least this is something they are familiar with and they probably had little resistance.
It was a new thing for a Japanese company to accommodate such a big chunk of white collar work force from totally other industry, and it is quite interesting that DoCoMo had such a drastic transformation around that time. The situation in the US is different, and there is no lesson to learn from them on this side, but I just thought it may be an interesting observation for the mobile industry insiders.
Michi
I wrote several entries in my Japanese blog and Newsvine (English) about Mainichi newspaper problem, and those were taken up by Global Voice Online. This works as a good summary of what I wrote. Please read if you are curious.
Michi
I was at MobileBeat conference last week. There, the buzz around iPhone apps very much reminded me of the time of "iMode boom" in Japan, circa 1997-98. iMode is the mobile contents service by NTT DoCoMo (Japan's largest mobile carrier), that pioneered mobile entertainment service such as ringtones and mobile games.
iPhone/iPod and iMode sometimes confuse me, not just by their lower case "i" on the top. Of course, they are different, but in American life style, I feel that iPod in the US has taken over iMode's position in Japan; a very personal entertainment device, coupled with micro-payment platform that is wide open to various long-tail contents. Over there, interactivity of mobile phone fitted well in train-riding lifestyle, whereas in the US, niche time to use such device is the time while you are driving, when you really cannot handle the device, so connecting iPod to the car audio and keeping it playing make more sense.
Now with iPhone, wide variety of interactive apps and softwares, ranging from Light Saber toy to deeply integrated Google apps, are available at iTunes Store. As in the case of iMode, iPhone application providers don't have to worry about distribution and collection, the two biggest demons for start-ups, so it is a bonanza for venture companies. No wonder, at MobileBeat conference, everybody is not just talking about it, but is working on iPhone apps.
Venture capital community is excited too. Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers has iFund, dedicated to iPhone apps, and other VC's are naturally interested in this iPhone bonanza. People and money are rallying around iPhone.
And this enthusiasm is exactly the same as the one during iMode boom in Japan 10 years ago. Back then, everybody wanted to become an iMode star, hundreds of startups sprung up, money flooded in to this community. Eventually, the rule of survival of the fittest kicked in and only a handful remained to this day, but some, like Index and Dwango, still are operating as major players, though they have their problems here and there. And this enthusiasm built the foundation for one of the world's most sophisticated mobile cultures at the other end of the Pacific.
Today, 10 years later, some criticize that the most featured iPhone apps are from the established players such as Facebook, Google and Pandora, but you can still feel this iPhone enthusiasm in the venture community. I can easily see that some of the iPhone players today will survive to become majors later on, and some new culture or mini-industry will emerge.
So again, I am getting more confused between iPhone and iMode. Sigh.
