It appears Disney's mobile efforts in Japan are going pretty well, and with the help of carrier NTT DoCoMo they're expanding under the joint "Disney Mobile on DoCoMo" brand name. The partnership is kicking off with two new Android-powered handsets launching over the next couple of months that pack in access to exclusive content from Disney like full-length animations, games, wallpapers and more. First up is the F-08D (left), a "luxury smartphone" that features silhouettes of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, a 4.3-inch HD (720x1280) LCD display, dual cameras and 1.2Ghz dual-core OMAP4430 CPU available in pink or white next month with preorders opening up February 17th. (engadget.com)
Disney Mobile on DoCoMo brand launches with two new Android phones in Japan
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Sony's Hirai to replace Stringer as CEO
Sony Corp. announced Wednesday that Kazuo Hirai, who leads the company's core consumer products business, will replace Howard Stringer as CEO and president as the electronics and entertainment company tries to turn around its fortunes.
The 51-year-old Hirai, currently executive deputy president, was widely expected to succeed Stringer, who will become chairman of the board of directors in June, Sony said in a statement. Hirai had also led the company's gaming business in the past.
In 2009, Hirai was named as part of a new management team to lead Sony, and Stringer had told the board he recommended Hirai replace him.
Battered by the strong yen and poor sales in its flat panel TV business, Sony has forecast its fourth year of net loss for the fiscal year through March. It will announce fiscal third quarter earnings on Thursday. (AP)
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South Korea, Japan want U.S. to detail Iran sanctions
South Korea and Japan will soon meet U.S. officials in Washington to ask how much oil they can import from Iran under new sanctions that leave the Asian nations with few alternative sources for energy, government officials said Wednesday.
Japan is the world's third biggest oil consumer, and South Korea is the fifth largest.
Both nations import significant amounts of crude from Iran, which they are under pressure to cut back to secure a waiver from a U.S. law imposing sanctions on financial institutions that trade with Iran's central bank.
Japan's foreign ministry said a delegation was due to hold talks in Washington Thursday as part of ongoing consultations and would seek clarity on the law, which is part of a raft of sanctions aimed at reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions. (Reuters)
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Sharp forecasts $3.8 billion loss
Japanese electronics maker Sharp said Wednesday it expected a full-year net loss of $3.8 billion, blaming falling prices, a high yen and the global economic slowdown.
The firm expects to lose 290 billion yen for the year to March, reversing an earlier projection of a six billion yen net profit.
For the nine months to December it made a net loss of 213.5 billion yen, compared with a 21.83 billion yen profit in the corresponding period in the previous year, it said.
During the same period, operating losses came to 9.1 billion yen, reversing operating profit of 66.5 billion yen in the previous year, while sales fell 18.3 percent to 1.9 trillion yen, Sharp said. (AFP)
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Japan's biggest bank reports surge in net income
Japan's major banks reported a mixed bag of earnings results for the April-December period, as valuation losses from equity holdings and an incoming corporate tax shake-up prompted a number of firms to book charges.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. was the only one of Japan's megabanks to report net profit gain in the period from the year before. Japan's biggest bank by assets logged a 48% surge in net income largely due to a one-time gain from conversion of its holdings of preferred shares in Morgan Stanley into common shares at the end of June.
[MUFG]
MUFG said its net profit came to ¥815.80 billion in the nine-month period, compared with a ¥551.83 billion profit in the same period a year earlier. (Wall Street Journal)
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Japanese Stocks Advance After ANA Raises Forecast, Shipping Lines Surge
Japanese shares advanced, with the Topix (TPX) Index snapping a four-day loss, after All Nippon Airways (9202) Co. raised its operating profit forecast and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. led shipping companies higher.
All Nippon Airways, Asia's largest listed carrier by sales, jumped 6.8 percent. Mitsui O.S.K. led a rebound among cargo lines after Jefferies Group Inc. boosted its target price. Unicharm Corp. (8113) rose 2.1 percent after a report the diaper maker will double its production capacity in India.
"Earnings aren't looking that bad," said Hisakazu Amano, who helps oversee the equivalent of $29 billion at T&D Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. "Investors aren't buying across the board, but they're picking companies that have specific strengths and that's buoying the market." (Bloomberg)
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Writer talks of 'underground reality' of Japan's foreigners in new book
The myth that Japan is a homogenous society lost its veracity long ago. With the growth of globalization, the sight of foreigners living and working in Japan is certainly no longer a rare occurrence.
However, how much do we know about the real lives of Japan's foreigners? This is the question that Kota Ishii, a spirited non-fiction writer, raises in his new book, "Nippon ikoku kiko -- zainichi gaikokujin no kane, seiai, shi" (Journey through foreign Japan: The money, love, sex and death of foreigners in Japan). The book introduces a South Korean who has conquered the Japanese sex industry by undercutting prices; an Israeli man with an expired visa who pays a Japanese woman to marry him to obtain Japanese nationality; Chinese who flee from the country after obtaining citizenship, and many other examples that portray the reality of "underground" foreign communities in Japan. (Mainichi)
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Japanese emperor to undergo heart test
Japan's ageing Emperor Akihito is to undergo another heart exam next week, a palace official said Wednesday, amid increasing worries about the monarch's health.
The angiogram of his coronary arteries, scheduled for February 11, comes after Akihito's electrocardiogram showed a restricted blood flow to his heart.
The 78-year-old emperor went through the same test a year ago at the University of Tokyo hospital, which found his arteries were narrowing, leading to his being placed on medication, according to the palace official.
In November, Akihito was hospitalised for 19 days for mild pneumonia. (mysinchew.com)
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Darvish's brother guilty of assault
The Osaka District Court on Wednesday sentenced the younger brother of new Texas Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish to a suspended one-year prison term for assaulting a female friend.
Sho Darvish, 22, repeatedly slapped the woman in the face and tried to choke her Jan. 25 last year in Kawachinagano, Osaka Prefecture, the court said.
Presiding Judge Hidetake Koga said the defendant assaulted the woman after becoming angry over her association with some of her friends. "The attack was persistent and malicious," he said. (Japan Times)
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Gundam park to open in Odaiba
A theme park featuring popular "anime" series "Mobile Suit Gundam" will open on April 19 in Tokyo's Odaiba district.
According to Bandai Co., the new theme park, named Gundam Front Tokyo, will have a huge dome-shaped screen showing images of Gundam, the venerated fighting robot in the popular series, and rare documents related to the series' production will be on display.
The theme park will be on the seventh floor of a new shopping complex, DiverCity Tokyo Plaza, opening on April 19.
An 18-meter statue of Gundam will stand outside the complex. A second outlet of the popular Gundam Cafe, located in Akihabara, Tokyo, will also open on the second floor of the complex. (Japan Times)
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Pipe leaks water from reactor 4 fuel pool
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has found radioactive coolant water leaking from a broken pipe in reactor 4 of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, but it hasn't flowed outside the building.
The reactor's fuel rods are in the spent-fuel pool, as the reactor was offline for maintenance when the March 11 disaster struck. The leaked coolant water contains radioactive materials from the fuel pool.
According to Tepco, about 8.5 tons of water leaked onto the floor of the reactor 4 building at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. The leak was stopped 13 minutes later by closing a valve, officials said. (Japan Times)
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Hamamatsu new 'gyoza' capital
Boasting dozens of restaurants and shops and the highest household consumption rate of "gyoza," Utsunomiya, the capital of Tochigi Prefecture, has long been regarded as the capital of the Chinese dumpling as well.
News photo
Pot stickers: "Gyoza" dumplings are arranged for a photo Wednesday at a restaurant in Minato Ward, Tokyo. YOSHIAKI MIURA
But no longer.
For the first time in 16 years, the city lost its No. 1 ranking in gyoza consumption, beaten out by Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, according to a recent survey of household spending released Tuesday by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Last year, Utsunomiya households spent on average just ¥3,737 on the dumplings, down 40 percent from a record high ¥6,133 in 2010. Meanwhile, households in Hamamatsu spent ¥4,313, down 10 percent from ¥4,754 in 2010.
(Japan Times)
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Privacy and Net cafes - a tale of two cities
Kazushi Takahashi, a 22-year-old student in Tokyo, likes the privacy provided by closed individual rooms in Internet cafes, where he can surf the Web, play online games and read manga.
"I wouldn't be able to relax if people peek in a room I am in," he said.
What Takahashi doesn't know is that since last April people like him in Osaka and a few other prefectures don't have the privacy he enjoys in Tokyo's Internet cafes.
Privacy is out of reach for Osaka Internet cafe fans because operators had to make the rooms viewable from the outside, for example by changing door materials from wood to transparent acrylic or altering the doors so they can't be closed. (Japan Times)
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Japan plans to merge major science bodies
In its battle against a sluggish economy, Japan's government is gearing up to make cost savings through a root-and-branch reform of the country's science system, merging some of its most prominent research organizations.
Plans approved by the government's cabinet on 20 January would consolidate the RIKEN network of basic-research laboratories with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) - the national funding body.
The policy would probably create an overarching body to supervise all five institutions, which would share more of their research and administrative resources, and lose some of their executive directors.
But with few details about the timing, potential cost savings or full implications of the change, many researchers are concerned that it could be a recipe for harsh funding cuts and even greater bureaucracy. (nature.com)
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The games that changed Japan
The first arcades in Japan weren't video arcades, and they weren't even in game centres. In the decades following the second world war, gamers played electro-magnetic games in bowling alleys and on department store rooftops. Families would take shopping breaks, playing carnival-style shooting games or riding rinky-dink kiddy trains. Gradually, early analogue arcade games began popping up - driving games in which the road was on a rotating belt, and players had to steer a small car through obstacles. Companies like Namco and Sega started joining in, releasing magnet-powered cabinets that were the forerunners of the modern arcade game.
In 1978, everything changed as Space Invaders enthralled the country - and the rest of the western world - spawning a slew of arcades and players dedicated solely to the new game. The game's release came just as Star Wars was hitting Japanese cinemas - and the timing could not have been better. (guardian.co.uk)
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Govt to create new child care program in '15
The government has agreed on a final draft plan for a new preschool child care program designed to combine kindergartens with day care centers.
The scheme is designed to reduce the number of children on day care center waiting lists, and the target year for its introduction is fiscal 2015.
The government will cover the projected cost of the new program by allocating more than 1 trillion yen in the fiscal 2015 budget to its implementation. It intends to cover about 700 billion yen with revenue expected to be earned through an increase of the consumption tax rate. The hike is part of a government plan to reform the social security and tax systems. (Yomiuri)
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Brazil passes Japan as number two country on Twitter
Brazil has leapfrogged Japan to become the second most-represented country on Twitter, according to a study from social media research company Semiocast.
The U.S. is still the top country on Twitter in terms of number of users with 107.7 million accounts. But Brazil now comes in at number two with 33.3 million, followed by Japan with 29.9 million.
To determine its results Semiocast analyzed 383 million Twitter accounts created prior to 2012, looking at criteria like the location listed on the profile, time zone, language used to tweet, and GPS location when available.
Although Brazil has more Twitter users, Japan's Twitterati is still more active, Semiocast said. Nearly a third (30 percent) of Japanese accounts tweeted between September and November of last year, while a quarter of Brazilians posted a 140-charater message during the the same period. Additionally, Japanese is the second most-used language on the platform behind English. In fact, Japanese was the first non-English tongue added to Twitter in April 2008. (pcmag.com)
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Japan's dilemma over Iran sanctions
Cutting off Iranian oil imports has put Tokyo in a difficult position. The United States and its European allies have already agreed to up the ante on sanctions against Iran, but the domestic costs that Japan has to bear in order to cooperate are higher.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's government has indicated its desire to cooperate, and last December the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced new restrictions on the operations of 106 entities as well as one individual with potential links to proliferation-sensitive activities in Iran. But the real effort now is to reduce Japan's oil imports from Tehran, and to negotiate an exemption from more stringent restrictions on Japanese banks included in the new U.S. sanctions law.
Rebalancing Japan's energy supply is even more delicate at the moment, as most of the nations' nuclear power plants remain offline. (theatlantic.com)
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Trading suspended in 241 issues in Tokyo on glitch
The Tokyo Stock Exchange says it has suspended trading in 241 securities, including Sony Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., due to a glitch in its electronic trading system.
The problem was not affecting other issues on the exchange, which handles nearly 2,500 stocks and other financial instruments, exchange officials said.
The Nikkei 225 index was up 68.73 points, or 0.8 percent, at 8,878.47 in midmorning trading.
Stock exchange officials said they discovered the problem before trading opened at 9 a.m. and technical staff are working to correct it. (AP)
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Japan protests to China over undersea gas drilling
Japan has accused China of unilaterally exploring gas deposits in the East China Sea, in violation of an agreement to jointly develop disputed areas.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told reporters Wednesday that Japan protested to China after a flare was seen Tuesday at a Chinese structure at an undersea gas deposit. Japan has made similar complaints several times in the past.
"We have detected a flare, a sign that it is highly likely that there is a gas development going on," Fujimura said. "Any unilateral exploration is unacceptable."
The deposit, known as Kashi in Japan and Tianwaitian in China, sits near a median line of the two countries' overlapping exclusive economic zones. (AP)
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