jig.jp blog

New Office!

2009-02-16T01:14:00.000-08:00

We've just moved to a new office!

The location is just a block away from the former one between Shinjuku 3 cho-me and Shinjuku Gyoenmae.

Happy with lots of flowers!!

GSMA-The Mobile World Congress

2009-02-16T00:06:00.000-08:00

Hey! Here is the news!

Our CEO, president, Taisuke Fukuno has just created convenient tool called "GSMA 2009 search"

It's easy to search the exhibiting company information.
Please try it!

GSMA 2009 search
http://fukuno.jig.jp/gsmasrch/

GSMA -the Mobile World Congress @ Barcelona
http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/index.shtml

How to eat the Seiko Crab

2009-01-25T17:29:00.000-08:00

Japanese food is known as healthy food.

I would say...Japanese food is healthy and tasty.
One of my favorite food is "Kani Miso of Seiko Crab" which is orange and dark green color part inside the shell.

Here is the instruction how to eat the Seiko Crab directed and acted by our CEO, Taisuke Fukuno.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fixCld8VXMw&eurl=http://jig.so-netsns.jp/?m=pc&a=page_fh_diary&target_c_diary_id=126&comment_count=1&feature=player_embedded

Macau- a mixture of Chinese and Portuguese cultures

2009-01-12T19:37:00.000-08:00

A Happy New Year!

How have you been started this year?
Did you wish or think about your new year's resolution?

I went to Macau this weekend.
Macau was a colony of Portugal and it is "the Macau Special Administrative Region" after 1999 handover to China.
It still has Portuguese taste among Chinese cultures.

It is somehow different from original "Portugal" and "China."
But somehow nicely mixed...I guess it's because there are people who live in the midst of mixed culture.

Macau is now growing as a exciting sightseeing spot like Las Vegas.
There are casinos and bungee jump, sky walk, and other attractions at Macau Tower.
There are gigantic hotels to have enough space to have conventions.

It seems like a party space, just to get together in a scheduled time.
Yet, there are a culture for the people who live in Macau.

Back to the top of this blog...
As a new year's resolution, I think we as a company want to be in a spot something like Macau.

Year End Cleaning

2008-12-26T01:16:00.000-08:00

We have "O-souji", a tradition to clean house at the end of the year.
Our office will be closed from Dec.30 to Jan. 4.
Before people leaving, we cleaned office.

There are lots of things which are not necessarily to have, but good to keep.
I decided to throw those ones and tried not to put things on the desk.

It feels good to work in a clean office.
I think I am ready to welcome the coming new year!

Night in Tokyo

2008-12-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

Winter has come to Tokyo on November...since the light-up decoration starts in Tokyo in that season.
It gets colder and air gets clearer.

So you can enjoy Christmas light-up even before Thanksgiving in Tokyo.

Enjoy your night in Tokyo!

Mobile Phone Accessaries

2008-12-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

Here are my mobile phone strap accessories!

1) Sushi strap (orange bubble with black tie one on the top)
It is called "Ikura" sushi. Ikura is a salmon roe.

2) MicroSD card strap ( light blue one in the middle, and the first picture with PC)
My mobile phone has a microSD data card and it has much better quality than my camera.
I take a picture and save it into PC via microSD with USB plug.
The microSD costs only 980 yen (about US$1,000).

3) Japanese kimono texture balls strap ( colorful balls with red strap at the bottom)
Those balls wrapped with cloth which has Japanese kimono like texture and colors.
I feel like I am educated as a quiet but sophisticated traditional Japanese lady by having it!

Color of fall

2008-12-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

Japan has a clear cut seasons, spring, summer, fall and winter.

The differences are beautiful.

Here is one of the colors of fall.

New Hot Spat in Tokyo -H&M-

2008-11-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

The Swedish fashion brand giant, H& M (Hennes & Mauritz AB) has come to Tokyo this year.
On Nov.8, the second shop in Tokyo has opened in Harajuku.

The first one in Tokyo is located in Ginza which is popular for higher socio-economic area like 5th street in New York city. The clothes are more business like compare to Harajuku one.
The acculturation of the town worked very well so far and pricing is not as high as other foreign brand shops in Tokyo.

In Tokyo, we have their competitors, such as GAP, UNIQLO and ZARA (and more).

Here is my perception.
H&M appeals wide range of generation like GAP.
H&M is inexpensive like UNIQLO.
H&M is fashionable like ZARA.

I like them a lot, but I personally want to recommend you UNIQLO.
Do you know why?
It's because good quality, inexpensive and Japanese brand!

If you come to our office in Shinjuku, you can try those shops in just 10 minutes walk distances!

"Torino-ichi" - one of the traditional Japanese festivals

2008-11-05T17:16:00.000-08:00

10 minutes walk from our office, there is a shrine called "Hanazono jinja."

On the "Rooster Day" of Chinese zodiac in November, people make a wish for better business, health, and family safety or for getting rid of evil spirit at "Torino-ichi" by buying ornaments decorated with gods, cats, and rice in this harvest season.

At the "matsuri" festival, people eat "yakisoba" cooked noodle with special source, "yakitori" grilled chicken, and "sake."

In Japan, we have "yaoyorozu-no kami" millions of god. We thank many gods in each occasion such as land of god, water of god, and any. We appreciate what we have given by having "matsuri" festival, so we have hundreds of "matsuri" in a year.

If you find "matsuri" sometime, somewhere in Japan, please enjoy it!

Presidential Election - observing from Tokyo-

2008-11-04T23:13:00.000-08:00

The time has come around noon in Tokyo.

I was checking CNN website and looking at the number to get to 270.
The time to change America has come by voting for Barack Obama.

I remember that in 1997, former president Clinton gave a speech as a second inaugural address.
Within the speech, he used a key word which describes the needed word for America, "Change."
As people are aware, Mr.Clinton likes John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
He wanted to be the one to change the world.

The person who was elected by promising people to change is next president of United States of America, Barack Obama.

By observing from the other side of the Pacific, I am wondering what was the key point to persuade people to choose him.

Are these factors to choose?
young
Economy issue
African American
good looking
good at speech
vice president
non-female
sympathy for his grad-ma
money by using IT
no more war
not emotional in public

I hope this change will lead the better future for anybody in the world.

Origin of Halloween

2008-10-31T02:11:00.000-07:00

Do you know why people wear costume on Halloween?
What is halloween for?

When I checked wikipedia, I found it interesting!
It was a big suprise for me to know that jack-o' lantern was originally curved rutabage in Europe, not pumpkin!

Why gaust?
The Irish immigrant to U.S. celebrated harvest by slauting livestocks.
Masks or costumes immitate those livestocks' spirits.

I am wondering if there is any relationship between Salem and Halloween?
Salem is known for Witch Trials.
On Halloween week, people wearing costumes show up in Salem.
Is it because of the relationship with gaust???

Why Boston?
The biggest pumpkin carving event is taken place in Boston common in Halloween week.
The park is fulled with 30,000 Jack-O-Lanterns! (2006 records)
Was it because of Irish community?
It's fun to carve pumpkin and eat pie.
But I definitely recommend to go to the park at night.
It is amazing to see candles inside those lanterns!

If you know some trivia, please add me a comment!

Otogen Live!

2008-10-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

Hi, guys!

I did a gig in Fujisawa city last night. That was wonderful night. See my blog :

http://otogen.blog59.fc2.com

Fujisawa is located west from Tokyo, seaside, many surfer live. We can get comfortable ocean wind and great scenery of Enoshima-island & Mt.Fuji.

Best,

jig musician Otogen

Pretty Flower

2008-10-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hi, good news!

My cozy garden got pretty yellow flower. Do you know the flower name?
This is very pretty = "kawaii" in Japanese.
Enjoy this photo!

http://otogen.blog59.fc2.com

Best,

from Otogen

Hi from Otogen

2008-10-24T02:40:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone!

My name is Otogen, a member of jig.jp and also am acoustic guitarist. So, I am jig.jp musician!
My homepage is http://otogen.blog59.fc2.com (Japanese lang), I am happy if you visit my homepage.
My play style is finger picking. The melody is romantic.

Otogen

Vernacular Video

2008-10-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

Video was used to be a more personal tool to shoot, watch and keep by yourself.
Nowadays, video became a more communication tool to share with people in a casual way.

Vernacular Video In Culture and Education
This video tells us how this casual style video, called "Vernacular Video" can work and contribute to the society.

By using vernacular video, we can shoot video in a casual way, not using any "big" camera, formal language, or good quality of image.
We can easily share those videos by uploading to one of those vernacular video share portals.

This casual communication tool can be useful to connect people in a far distance.
Teacher to educate children doesn't have to be physically there.
Doctor to see a patient doesn't have to be there. (depending on its legal condition)
Those tech might help people who are not accessible to education or medical check.

I hope life will be better by using this technology!

These are the video share services.
YouTube

seesmic

justine.tv

Revision3

Super Deluxe

If you know more, please let me know by adding comment!

iKnow-sustainable Japanese language learning service

2008-10-16T23:15:00.000-07:00

How many languages do you speak?

1.5 ?
Why haven't you succeeded to acquire second language at that level?

iKnow is the service which provides personal learning data to visualize how much the user have made progress.
You can share the data to your friends within iKnow community.
So, you can compete your score or achievement with your friend and you can also be motivated by seeing how much your friend has done.

iKnow is originally the service for Japanese learning English.
Japanese language learning course in English is available.

Don't miss it!

Tasty and Healthy

2008-10-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

As you may know, food in Japan is tasty and healthy!

Teste:
According to Michelin Guide, Tokyo got 191 stars, Paris got 97 and New York got 54 as a total.
People acknoledge that food in Tokyo is amazing.

Yet, Tokyo is one of the biggest cities in Japan which collect local foods.
So the local foods are more fresh and tasty.

Rice, seafood, and vegitable are local productions in Fukui.

Photo 1) Sashimi: fresh fish/ shrimp, sea bream, tuna, and squid
Photo 2) Bon branded sake
Sake, one of the popular alcohol in Japan is made from rice.

Health:
Japan is famous for the longest life expectancy.
Fukui is the second longest place within Japan, following to Nagano.
It is 78.55 years.

If you want to feel "test of happiness", Fukui might be an option for you!

Sabae Office

2008-10-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

jig.jp has two offices in Japan. Head quater is in Tokyo. Another office is in Sabae city in Fukui prefecture.

It takes three hours from Tokyo by Shinkansen and local train.
Our presidne, CEO, and founder of jig.jp, Taisuke Fukuno lives in Sabae and commutes to Tokyo this 200 mile two days a week.

Sabae office is located in Sabae city which is famours for optical glasses.
90 % of the optical glasses made in Japan is made in Sabae. And the share holds 20% of the world production amount.
I heard the news that Sarah Palin uses Sabae glasses.

Our Sabae office is located in Japan Optical Center.
It is a symbol tower in Sabae.
Fukuno-san (that' s how I call him) describes the building as "Sabae hills" and Sabae city as "small Kyoto".

If you have a chance to visit Japan, Sabae can be one of the options to experience traditional, beautiful, and tasty Japan!

Search by Image, GazoPa

2008-10-07T19:16:00.000-07:00

:photo @TechCrunch50

People get used to search by keyword.
what if people do not know the name of the thing to search?
Here is the answer....we can search by image (by GazoPa).

We can draw an image and search it.

Have fun!

Japanese Handsets - the inside!

2008-09-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

I already wrote about how Japanese handsets look like, now let me share the inside.

Most handsets in Japan are not recognized by the manufacturer but by the operator, this happens because most operators "build" their own handsets, they take the design from the handset manufacturers but all the features and keys are customized for the operator. This is particularly true with NTT Docomo and KDDI, Softbank (previous Vodafone Japan) is not so involved in this process (maybe that is one of the reasons for them to be the 3rd player in the market). So, when a Japanese is going to buy a phone, instead of saying I want the Nokia XX, they say, I want the NTT XX... it might seem a small difference, but it shows the power of the operators in the Japanese market.

So how does the phone looks inside? One thing is that Japanese people like list menus and they like to see everything at once, so most phones have a list menu and most of the features are available at the first glance. Of course, because there are a lot features, they have second and third level menus, but the most common features are available right there on the first level menu.

For a foreigner like me, the big difference is that the most common features for a Japanese are different then my own. For example I use SMS, Japanese use e-mail, so e-mail is right there... SMS is hidden somewhere always hard to find!

Besides the menu itself, the general usage of the mobile phone is very different, for example, whenever I use a NTT phone, if I call someone and want to redial that number, just pressing the green key doesn't work... for some reason that I still don't understand, the call log is always hard to find, so I tend to give up and just write the number again or go to the contacts address book!

This probably explains why most western handset manufacturers have a small market share in Japan.

What I found it's interesting at TC50

2008-09-26T01:15:00.000-07:00

There were new interesting services started at TC50.
Some of them have started a bit ahead of TC50. Some have just started at TC50.

I will introduce some of those which I found it's interesting.

Today, I will introduce...

animoto.com

It is an easy video editing service.
All I have to do is upload photos and choose music.
Simple and easy.
Yet, its quality is amazing!
You know what is surprising ....which is for free for 30 seconds usage!
Wow! You should try it and share your friends now.

TechCrunch50 overall report

2008-09-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

Hi, I am Naoko.
Here is my overall description about TechCrunch50.

I flew into San Francisco from Tokyo on Sep.8.
This was the first time for me to visit TechCrunch.
Awaking all the day straight on the airplane, but still I have one more
day to be awake.
The Design Center is not very far, but a bit need to take taxi to get
there from our hotel.

The place is wide open space.
The registration was smooth enough to get in.
At that point, demo pit was crowded.
There were several types of convenient solutions, such as personalized
history record, matching users needs solutions, and image search.
As a user, I really like to use some of those service.
Yet, it was not clear enough what is their business model to me.

The session hall was a lot bigger than my expectation.
The capacity might be more than thousand people to be seated.
Each presentation was quite well prepared by using video and speeches.
I cannot imagine how much they made an effort for it.
At the same time, it was great opportunity to hear such big names of
expert commented on their services.
I personally liked Yossi Vardi's straight forward but with humor sort of
comments.

In the evening, it was freezing cold which I have not expected in San
Francisco. People says it is always windy and cold like this.
I needed winder jacket at night.
It was always quite hard to pick up taxi at the Design Center.

Suprising or not, it didn't end the day.
There were parties to wake us up unitl mid night even the event started
at 7:30 am.

Tired... because of jet lag, lack of sleep, and busy with business!

zoo...zoo..zoo

TechCrunch50 photo report

2008-09-16T00:33:00.000-07:00

The Place, outside the Design Center

The Place, inside the Design Center

Main Stage

Presentation

Panel

Chat Event

First japanese company presentation: Open Trace

Demo pit tour:

TechCrunch50

2008-09-12T00:13:00.000-07:00

My coleagues are on the way back to Tokyo from TC50 and I can't wait to get all the news on what happened. Of course I read about it on the Internet, on Techcrunch blog, but its not the same thing as being there, watching the presentations and checking out the live demos of the new products. They will be back today, so next Tuesday (Monday is a national holiday!) I'm sure we will be uploading some photos of the event!

Leaving from Japan to U.S. TechCrunch50

2008-09-09T00:21:00.000-07:00

Now I'm in Narita airport.
I'll be San Francisco to see TechCrunch50.
Here is a list TC50 atendees, good for mobiles.

I took a lunch ANA udon. BLUE is an accent!?

I'll ride this plane.

An another plane arriving.

Japanese handsets - how they look like...

2008-09-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

I am a foreigner living in Japan, and I've been working for jig.jp for almost 1 year now. When I arrived here in Japan about 2 years ago, I didn't really know what I was going to find around Japanese mobile phones, I read the industry was more developed, that applications such as e-mail on the mobile phone were commonly used by everyone, but I had no specific ideas around the handsets itself and how they looked like.... well, I found out that the market is truly unique.

By looking around me I saw that the phone models that I used to see in Europe were not available here. The only Nokias I found were used by foreign people! Also the color of the phones is quite different... in Europe and the US, most phones are black, dark grey, silver, blue... color models are not so popular, but here in Japan most women, but also men, have white, pink, orange, green flashing phones! Also, I would say 85% of the phones are clamshell phones, 14% are slide phones and only 1% are bar phones... (attention this data is based on my eyes and common sense only)!

I managed to buy a clamshell navy blue Samsung phone, and I was happy about it!

Japanese mobile industry has been evolved like the Galapagos Islands, what is needed is diversity

2008-09-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

I while ago, I wrote this post on my own japanese blog...

People say Japanese mobile industry has been developed like the Galapagos Islands. I agree.

From the historical perspective, Japan has developed its culture in an original way by disconnection with other countries. Japan is dislocated because of geographic conditions. In addition, Tokugawa government had its policy called, “Sakoku” which is exclusion of foreigners, isolationism, policy of noninvolvement in the affairs of other countries at Edo era. Without having relationships with other part of the world, Japan had developed our originality. In order to create something, it needs time not to be interrupted from external world. Japanese animation culture has been developed in a unique way under this circumstance.

Retrieved from Wikipedia on Aug.27, 2008: Sakoku (Japanese: 鎖国, literally "country in chains" or "lock up of country") was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter or Japanese could leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633-1639 and remained in effect until 1853 with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and the opening of Japan. It was still illegal to leave Japan until the Meiji Restoration (1868).

Japanese mobile industry is also one of the other examples of Japanese originally developed culture. By competing with many handset manufactures, Japanese mobile industry has been developed and made a huge success in an original way. In another example, i-mode which is the first mobile Internet portal developed by NTT docomo contributed to enlarge mobile contents market in Japan.

If we take a look at the world mobile industry, and the handset manufactures in particular, we have four giants Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson are holding 78% share of its market.

What is important is people in Japan? There are users who care about features on mobile phones. There are also users who do not care about features as long as they can use email. It is no meaning to have features which users do not use, even if these features have been developed with huge effort.

What is needed for diversifying modern society is to be the world which creates “the Galapagos Islands” for anybody."

2008-07-08 10:09

Welcome!

2008-09-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

We are very pleased to welcome everyone to jig.jp english blog!

jig.jp has been around since 2003. We started our business in Japan, developing software applications for mobile phones.

Since last year, October 2007, we decided to expand our business to overseas and start developing applications for users all over the world. We started by hiring people, understanding the differences between Japan culture and other countries and we are now developing the products to match this differences.

This blog will be about the mobile industry and Japanese culture.

We at jig.jp hope you all like it!