By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
300 people attended what is sure to be one of the biggest get-togethers of bloggers in Akihabara, Tokyo’s (no: the world’s) geek paradise, yesterday. I took part as the only gaijin in the room ;). The 3-hour conference which is named “スタート×キッカケ×ブログ” (“start x chance x...
Last Wednesday, I attended an event at the Tokyo 21 c Business Club in Marunouchi focusing on the relatively fresh Japanese web service iknow! (link leads to an English page). iknow! is marketed as a social learning web service for Japanese users interested in studying English. On the site...
I was invited to take part in the so-called “Venture Beat Monthly Networking” party in Harajuku/Tokyo on this past Wednesday. The event is organized by a couple of influential IT organizations such as CNET Japan or IBM Japan. Hisashi “Sam” Katsuya from the latter company...
I personally believe the basic concept behind the idea of Second Life (the existence of “virtual worlds” in 3D populated by avatars) will be here to stay in the web world forever. In Japan, people took a liking to Second Life particularly after Linden Lab decided to translate the site...
Japan’s biggest social network and blogging platform Mixi (boasting a user network of over 13 million people, my review) caused a huge stir some days ago when it announced a shocking move. The company of the same name plans to take away all content to be found on its website from its users...
Typing in Japanese can be a real pain. Whereas using the Roman alphabet to type on a keyboard is a relatively direct and easy issue, typing in Japanese usually involves a lot of converting (i.e. from the Japanese alphabet Hiragana to the Chinese characters called Kanji). Also, there sometimes are...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry