Changes happened among Japanese kids by Nintendo DSi
When I heard about spec of Nintendo DSi and a built-in camera, I thought it’s a crap. Too low resolution to play with in this HD era. But my view was wrong. I almost forgot that the main target users of Nintendo DSi are kids, not gadgets geeks like me. For kids, quality of the built-in camera is good enough or more like it’s not matter. Experience to take photos by their own device is the most important point. And that made a huge change among kids right now in Japan. I saw an impressive scene that kids taking photos by DSi like young people taking photos by their mobile phones. Taking photos by gaming devices like DSi mean they use the photos to play with or share. I was born in NES generation but couldn’t imagine these kind of way to play with...
If they made ticket vending machines at stations like
Ticket vending machines at stations are really important for our life in Japan. A few days ago I found an interesting blog post called “If they made ticket vending machines at stations like…” I’ve translated it below. If they made ticket vending machines like… Nintendo You can buy a ticket if you trace the path from departure to arrival Sony High end machines with their self made CPU (But tickets cost a bit) Microsoft Input a departure station, a destination station, departure time, arrival time, which route you prefer, and choose grade of a train then you can buy it Apple You can only choose your destination station but somehow it will be all right Google Input like “A to B” then you can get a list of tickets with a...
The Computer/IT section of a Japanese book store
If you have wondered what technologies or computer languages are popular in Japan (circa late 2008/early 2009) this video may interest you. I went down to the local bookstore and recorded some footage of (Japanese) IT/Computer books on offer. You’ll find out which language is the most popular, which books are translated from their original English form and there’s even a death-match fight between WordPress and Moveable Type. I even found out there is a VB 2008 out there...
Shy Japanese
Xbox360 is not so popular here in Japan but there are users. Sure as hell Xbox LIVE is the most attractive feature of Xbox360 except Japanese people use it slightly differently. They don’t talk even if they are online and connect a headset. Japanese are so shy, don’t you think? But can you believe it? Japanese players use Skype to talk with Japanese friends while playing online games. What!? And they talk with each other about a current team in the game and feel glad if someone from another countries says “Nice!” to them. Hey! Please don’t think Japanese players are robots or rude! We are shy and just can’t express how we feel in English. We may not be the most talkative players but same as you we feel excited while playing! I...