Shinjuku

I have had dirty marks on my camera mirror for a while now and decided to take it to The Nikon service center to get it cleaned. I went to the center in Shinjuku which is near the station and also near Bic Camera.

Can you spot the marks on this photo I took from the 28th floor of the service center just before getting the camera cleaned? If not, can you see the new Sky Tree? The biggest dirty dot is to the right of that and a little higher than the Sky Tree.

I didn’t have to make an appointment in advance and the cleaning only took 90 minutes, which gave me plenty of time to go and look in BIC Camera at the brochures for the new Sony N7, Nikon D4 and a variety of other new cameras coming out.

I also visited the Epson Print Gallery which is close by. It is amazing in Japan how you can visit so many big brand companies in a 10 minute radius.

Related posts:

1. Ear Cleaning Service You can find almost any kind of service in Japan...
2. Camera Lens This is some of the camera lens equipment I use,...
3. Japan Lost Luggage Many of you following me on Twitter saw that I...

Standing in front of the Digital Garage building in Ebisu with ABCLoop members

I had lunch yesterday with the team from ABCLoop.com. They had some exciting news, having just been accepted into the Open Network Lab Seed Accelerator program run by Digital Garage.

Lunch with ABCLoop members and Robin from Social500

Robin, from Social500, a marketing business helping Japanese companies gain fans on Facebook also joined in the lunch. There was some good discussion about how best to use Twitter and Facebook in different ways to help promote a companies brand.

SocialCap.jp has a ranking service for Japanese language Facebook fan pages

The Open Network Lab building is very close to where I am based so it is going to be perfect for meeting up.

ABCLoop.com is a social community where friends can post news, photos and event information in “Loops”, sort of like themed groups, and have others translate their posts into Japanese or English. This is great for communicating with people when you cant speak the language fluently, but it also helps you learn that language by checking the suggested translations.

Some of the popular Loops on ABCLoop

All the translations are done by your friends and other members of ABCLoop which is much better than leaving it up to to a machine. After all, who better knows what you really meant to say than your friends.

The core of this social community is information exchange. It doesn’t matter what language you prefer, sharing with other people across different language borders is now easy and fun.

Here is my post on Rilakkuma. You can see there has already been a translation added. I can now give thanks and check in on the translation as well. Very social, very easy.

Rilakkuma gets a bit of translation

There are lots of great Loops to join and meet new people. Billy and John, the founders of ABCLoop.com told me there is a 60 to 40 percent ratio of females to males, and with the recent integration of Facebook Connect on the ABCLoop site, the number of users are picking up quickly.

Hop over to ABCLoop and try it out. Tell me what your favorite loop is when you get there.

Related posts:

1. ABCLoop Launch Party, Roppongi I just came back from the launch event for ABCLoop.com...
2. Daikanyama Lunch A hot day today in Tokyo. I joined the ABCLoop...
3. Gachapin campaign for TWR The TWR, Tokyo Waterfront Area Rapid Transit Line, is celebrating...

Sunny day out near Tokyo Station

A few people have asked me to talk about some of the code I have been programming on websites including the shibuya246.com site. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I thought whilst looking at a few photos of Tokyo I would explain a few of the programming problems that came up this week and how I solved them.

The photos were taken last week on a very hot sunny day for April, whilst I was out near Tokyo Station, a short walk from the Imperial Palace.

I am working on an Open Source software project with Nick, the founder of JapanSoc.com. The project is called HotaruCMS and is a content management system for people who want to run their own website but don’t have time to program it all themselves.

I was trying to install a copy of the HotaruCMS code from the subversion (svn) code repository. Code is normally kept in a repository so that many people who are working together can all submit their code at the same time and then bring the whole project together as the pages you see on the screen. HotaruCMS is using Assembla.com as its svn. Assembla are actually featuring HotaruCMS on their site at the moment in their introduction page.

To get to the problem, I wanted to directly copy in the code from svn to my linux apache server. I used to program on Microsoft’s .NET platform and worked mainly on Windows Server with IIS. Now I am trying to learn fast how to use my dedicated linux server.

I found out that I could directly copy, or export, the code by using the following from the command line:

svn co http://my-svn.assembla.com/svn/HotaruCMS/trunk/ .

the “co” command instead of the “export” command copies in all of the svn version information so I can easily update the site details later when new code is released.

I am using PuTTy as my software to connect and access the command line of the server. I could write about difficulties in setting this up, but I would probably need a week to explain the troubles. However, when it works, it works, and now it works !

I didn’t realize when typing in the command above because I had logged in as the admin for the whole server, and not just the site I was copying data to, that I had inadvertently set the wrong group permissions for the files, and now could not access the files from the web browser.

Users of linux may be familiar with the 3 digit file permissions commonly seen as 644, 666, 755, 777 etc. These can be changed with most FTP software and also with the “chmod” line command. These were not my problem though so I had to go looking for details on how to change the group owner.

I discovered that the command “chown” could make the changes i needed.

By entering

sudo find . -exec chown hotarupl:hotarupl {} \;

I was able to hunt down and change the files all to ownership of the site itself. The username “hotarupl” appears twice, once for the ownership state on the left of the “:”, and once for the group state on the right.

I thought this was the end of the problem, but discovered I still could not access the files. After much searching it turned out as well as changing the required files, I had also changed the “public_html” folder to be in the group of “hotarupl” when it should be in the group of “nobody”.

After changing back just the “public_html” folder’s group state to “nobody” the directory and files within it were now all accessible.

If you are not a programmer, most of this may seem strange to understand. I don’t expect articles on programming to be a regular feature of the site, but thought it might be interesting to sometimes share some of the problems and solutions that come up during my day when working on the back end of shibuay246.com and other sites.

The next time you see a problem with shibuya246.com, maybe if the site is down altogether, you can think of me madly typing in various commands to try and get things back to normal.

Hope you enjoy the photos from the Palace outer grounds.

Related posts:

1. ABCLoop Launch Party, Roppongi I just came back from the launch event for ABCLoop.com...
2. Conbini Monday Wk3 Following up the Spo-Vege drink from last week, I thought...
3. Shinagawa Birds I spotted these birds moving in a group around the...

Penguin Stadium, The Tokyo Station store is now open

The Suica Penguin character has a new store opened at Tokyo Station, inside the ticket gates at Yaesu Minami exit. It is called Penguin Stadium or Pensta.

Suica has also joined forces with the electronic payment cards popular in Nagoya and Osaka to allow each system to accept payment using the other cards.

Suica toica Icoca, combination of electronic payment cards from Tokyo, Nagoyra and Osaka

Has been a rainy 2 days in Tokyo. Decided it was time to get some snacks, so with my Suica card I bought these.

Rilakkuma surveying the cookies.

Are you using some form of electronic payment charge cards, other than credit cards?

Related posts:

1. Suica Penguin Store The Suica Penguin store at Tokyo Station opened recently. I...
2. JR Suica Ticket Machine JR are changing over some of their ticket machines to...
3. JR Suica Adverts SUICA, Super Urban Intelligent Card, was introduced in 2001 and...

Dual display monitors for your notebook from Kohjinsha

The notebook PC maker, Kohjinsha (工人舎), has brought out a surprising new feature on its latest compact notebook. It has 2 screens. Despite being a small machine, they have managed to squeeze in a dual monitor display to this well priced model.

The notebook, model number DZ6KH16E, has 2 10.1″ screens with resolution of 1024 x 600. Wow, that is 2048 x 600 pixels if you take it all the way across. Recently, screens are getting super wide aren’t they. Does anyone read down the page anymore?

You can turn both screens around and show your customers a presentation. (photo from www.itmedia.co.jp)

This is a particularly useful feature. I Like it.

This model goes on sale on Dec 11, 2009, so expect to see it appearing at your local electronics store soon. Pricing is said to be about YEN 79,800 or approximately US$800.

Have a look at this demo from YouTube.

Other features include a web camera, SD memory card reader, 1GB memory, 160GB hard disk memory, biometric fingerprint security, gigabit Ethernet with built in wireless LAN and a port to use electronic pointing devices. All of this in just a B5 size weighing 1.84 kilograms. The standard OS is Windows 7 Home edition.

Here is a clip from the Kohjinsha website showing the product

The Kohjinsha website showing the dual monitor notebook in action.

If you can’t get to the local electronic store, then maybe pick one up from Amazon Japan. I can’t see this showing on the US site yet.

Source: thanks to the following sources for information on this product.

• itmedia.co.jp
• gigazine.net
• Kohjinsha product page

Would you buy a dual screen notebook? Can you imagine using this in a coffee shop? I bet you get some interesting looks.

Related posts:

1. Rilakkuma PC Netbook Bandai Networks has released a notebook PC for kids based...
2. Ghibli Red Did you know that there Ghibli describes a colour?? Amazing....
3. Kimura Kaela – 5 years Kimura Kaela has a new album out tomorrow and the...

Bijin Tokei spreading across the globe

Earlier this year a Japanese web site came out called Bijin Tokei, Beautiful Girls clock, which introduced a different cute girl for every minute of the day in clock format. It was blogged about by a number of people at the time. This was a great idea for a website which has now gone on to produce a top selling iPhone application as well.

looks like some good advertising links here on this bijin-tokei web version as well.

Recently, the company announced they are producing a Sapporo version of their Bijin Tokei and on taking a fresh look at their site I realized they have actually produced a version for France, Korea, one with Japan guys, and also a version for Shibuya Gals.

Shibuya Gal Tokei

More Shibuya Gal Tokei. Click on it to find out the time now.

and now it is 9:36pm

What type of clock would you like to see made next in this format?

Take Our Poll

Related posts:

1. Ginza Weekend Walk Ginza on a Sunday is one of the few places...
2. Tokyo Snow It was snowing in Tokyo today. I was out this...
3. Shibuya Koen-dori Walk I took a walk up koen-dori today and took these...

Dick Bruna stamps. Popular in Japan

I bought these stamps of Rakuten, Japan’s online auction site. Dick Bruna’s work, particularly with the Miffy character, are still very popular in Japan. Japan Post often puts out commemorative stamps with opular characters on them. Doraemon is a regular.

I bought the stamps because I liked the look of them, but when they arrived it was a reminder to me of the real purpose of stamps, to send letters, and how that system of communication has changed a lot over the last 10 years.

Recently I have been using twitter more than email. I thought back to about 10 years ago when I stopped sending surface (snail) mail and was mainly using email. At some point the balance changes and the new system becomes more widely used than the old one. With Google Wave coming out soon also, what will we call this new form of communication, for tweeting and wave creating, now loosely referred to as “micro-blogging”?

The term blog originally came from “web log”, a log of activities for the web, similar to the Captains Log on a ship. The “micro-blogging” name, therefore, sounds as if we are leaving a log of something for others to read later, but in general, many of the tweets sent out have a short shelf-life beyond which they lack relevance or entertainment value. Are tweets and wave communications more similar to a direct messaging platform than they are to a blog? Does having the ability to search through archives of tweets really help us, or do we really want to see just the most recent time-lines, like trending topics?

I am not sure the “micro-blogging” term is the right one and wonder what new word people might suggest for this type of communication which is growing and developing rapidly. When Google Wave launches we can expect more of this short form communication and with 2 competing platforms it will be interesting to see who can dominate or whether we can find a way to use both services in a cooperative way.

What are your views on Tweeting v. Blogging? Twitter v. Google Wave? Sending mail through the post office v. Email?

If we can send “DM”, direct mail on platforms like Wave and Twitter, and those services are provided to look more like an email platform, do you think people will stop using email?

Related posts:

1. Japanese Government Blog Looks like the new Japanese Government formed under Hatoyama-san have...
2. Google Buzz I was talking with a friend the other day and...
3. Twitter Japanese platform with adverts Update: Just discovered this wasn’t new, but has actually been...

The strap animals look bigger than the phone in some cases

Most users of Japanese cell phones (keitai’s), have a strap on their phone. I think the original idea was so you could hold the strap in case you dropped the phone, or have a longer strap that might go round your neck. Nowadays, it seems like the keitai strap is more of a fashion item than any practical use.

When I first got my iPhone the main thing I missed was the place to put my keitai strap. Now I have bought a soft plastic case which allows me to put a strap on as well. My strap is an “ABC Store” Bear from Hawaii, a good reminder of my favorite place to vacation.

Do you have a strap on your keitai? What’s your favorite? Does it remind you of something or somewhere you went?

Related posts:

1. Docomo Wooden Mobile Docomo has released a wooden case mobile phone made from...
2. Japan Phone Chargers If you want an original phone charger when you come...
3. Eating Healthy? Ask your phone A balanced diet is the base of a good lifestyle....

Mr Natsuno (夏野さん) is well known in Japan as the creator of Docomo’s Imode platform for their cell phones. I had the chance to go to a speech yesterday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ) and hear him talk about his vision for the future of the mobile phone market and telecommunication industry in general.

The speech was in part to discuss the ‘Galapagos Islands’ branding of Japan’s mobile phone market.

Japan is now commonly referred to as the “Galapagos Islands” of the cell phone world – a reference to the Pacific islands where a vast number of species have developed differently from most of the rest of the world.

Natsuno-san covered his career spanning time with Tokyo Gas, studying for his MBA in America, setting up a free ISP company in Japan at the beginning of the internet boom (gaining 300,000 customers with the first year only to find advertisers were not ready to use the internet, and so could not sustain the business model), to then working for DoCoMo on their new idea of connecting people to the internet via mobile phones and charging for data packets.

At the beginning of his time with DoCoMo, Natsuno-san found most people at the company were not interested in the idea of gaining revenue from data and instead everyone was focused on more traditional voice revenue streams. He, therefore, had relatively free control to set up his own system for the data platform of DoCoMo’s mobile phone which would be branded as Imode.

Need for an Open Platform
One of the important decisions made in the early stages of the platform design was to make it an open platform. This meant developers could participate in the creation of content for the phones with delivery coming over the imode internet protocol. The reasons for doing this were twofold.

First, Natsuno-san realized it was impossible for NTT to be the creator of all the content by themselves, and that in any case the best content would most likely come from outside creators. The second reason was that, just as with the initial sales of VHS and DVD players/content, the exotic images and dating sites were seen as a driving force for the usage of this technology, and they were also at the forefront of creating new technology based applications.

Since NTT DoCoMo had no intention of entering the exotic images / dating service market, the only way to have this industry serve as a driving force was to allow it into the club by virtue of an open platform. As Natsuno-san expected, this industry was indeed quick to take up the opportunities offered by this technology and adapted their applications to the platform.

Wikipedia reports the history of i-mode as follows:

i-mode was launched in Japan on 22 February 1999. The content planning and service design team was led by Mari Matsunaga, while Takeshi Natsuno was responsible for the business development. Top executive Keiichi Enoki oversaw the technical and overall development. A few months after DoCoMo launched i-mode in February 1999, DoCoMo’s competitors launched very similar mobile data services: KDDI launched EZweb, and J-Phone launched J-Sky.

Data Revenue now a significant part of NTT’s revenue
Over more than a decade, the market for data applications via mobile phones has increased greatly. The revenue stream from now is measured in billions of dollars and makes up about one third of all revenue. Considering many at NTT were not interested in this market to begin with, it has certainly turned out to be a major sector for them now.

The NTT DoCoMo Tower at Yoyogi. A tower built on the profits of the data revenue model of i-mode

Natsuno-san also talked about how he had become a Director at DoCoMo even though most Directors must be older and be groomed from a young age as “pure blooded NTT men”. Natsuno-san probably didn’t appear to them as the right type of “NTT” branded person, but his success in creating revenue for them could not be denied. Recently he has left DoCoMo and is now on the Board of many other Japanese companies whilst being a Professor at Keio Univeristy.

Future and Opportunities
Looking at the future of the market and what opportunities exist for Japanese manufacturers of handsets, Natsuno-san was critical of the way in which companies viewed overseas markets. Whilst many look to NTT and argue that they should take the imode platform overseas to expand it, NTT does not have any market abroad. They could license the technology and indeed tried that, but they would be unlikely to share in the data revenue stream which is where the real profits are. Without sufficient content users would lose interest and as has been seen recently, newer technologies have been able to leap frog the i-mode brand. In order to expand and utilise i-mode abroad NTT would have to make some acquisitions of foreign telecommunication companies. He does not see this happening as the experience at NTT’s Board level is too inward looking and they do not have a good working knowledge of overseas markets or Standards.

With regard to handset manufacturers, Natusno-san argues that Japan has some great features on its handsets that people in other countries would love to have. The ability to swipe your phone to pay for goods at convenience stores, departments, railway stations, airports has liberated many from reliance on small change, and in the last few years the official report on the circulation of small coins has shown a reduction where normally in a cash economy such as Japan you would expect growth.

Suica on the mobile phone allows you to make payments with out cash and without plastic cards

Other features such as biometric devices, watching television, lock mechanisms to guard your secret data from others are argued to be cutting edge technology that many Japanese now take for granted.

iPhone in Japan
When the iPhone first came out in Japan it was criticized for not having most of these features and many questioned whether it would be a sustainable product because of this. Recently, the iPhone’s popularity has increased greatly and it has become the number 1 handset sold, on a monthly basis. It is common though to find more than a few Japanese who use an iPhone to also have a normal Japanese mobile as well for those other functions.

As Natsuno-san himself said, paraphrasing, “the iPhone is not a good phone. It’s terrible, but it’s a great internet computer”. I agree with this. I dislike the iPhone as a phone, but its ability to connect to the internet quickly and access thousands of applications in a small but highly visible neat touch screen, is outstanding. Many of the things I can do on the iPhone I can still not find out how to do on the computer. I can list on one screen 10 email accounts at the same time and quickly see which ones have messages waiting (can’t find out how to do that on the PC in a web browser), I can easily switch from email to twitter to flickr to my blog with simple clicks not requiring typing in domain addresses (yes, i can set up shortcuts on the PC, but the iPhone does it with such ease it makes the PC look hard).

Japan handsets abroad?
Getting back to the opportunities for Japanese handset manufacturers overseas, Natusno-san discussed the current window of opportunity where Apple, Google, Blackberry and other non-telco companies have come into the market as a perfect time for Japanese companies to hit the market. With these non-telco companies in the market there is little adherence to the cumbersome standards that normally exists. This is perfect for the Japanese handset manufacturers to compete in, as they often have difficulty understanding the complex standards that exist outside of Japan. We are probably seeing a major shift at the moment away from the types of standards that telecommunication companies have established and seeing more electronic products style research at faster rates of design and development.

It is probably unlikely that Japanese companies will take advantage of this window of opportunity and it is more certain that NTT are unlikely to buy up foreign telecommunication companies. What is likely is that although Japan has some of the best hardware technology built into its handsets, the ability of iPhone and the soon to be released Google phone (not just the android platform phones, but an actual branded Google phone) to penetrate the market, will probably lead to less future development of handsets, technology getting old, and then a gradual domination of the Japan market by iPhone, Google or the next hit product from a web based company (Don’t expect that to be Microsoft).

Could Facebook, Ebay or even Twitter release a phone? Could Facebook acquire the Blackberry unit for example? Why does it seem odd to think of Raukten, the major Japan auction site, or Mixi , the social networking site, launching their own phone in Japan? Maybe a few years ago we could have imagined a LiveDoor phone?

The new Google Phone may be Data only, from TechCrunch (click for more)

More information about the rumored new Google Phone, from TechCrunch (click for more)

Data Revenue sources strong
The future for mobile operators certainly seems centered around data, but you have to keep your eye on the shifting revenue models as well. Whereas telecommunication companies were previously focused solely on voice revenue streams they have now shifted to valuing data revenue streams as well. Just as they get comfortable with that proposition the market will move again and they must now start exploring other ways to make money. One such way is through being a service provider for financial transactions. Building a credit facility directly into the phone is a way to make life more convenient and also ensure that part of the transaction fees goes to the telecommunications company, opening up a new source of revenue for them.

WiFi Expansion
One of the future problems for mobile operators is expansion and bandwidth. WiFi is becoming more popular but seems more suitable to populated areas. WiMAX has started to appear at various places including at Tokyo Station. The ability of phones to move from place to place and handover smoothly from one tower to the next is a harder proposition with WiFi, and handing back and forth between WiFi and mobile networks is even more difficult. These are challenges that will no doubt be solved, but for the moment we are seeing many 3G networks that operate around the 2GHz bandwidth also starting to rely on the older 800Mhz range as well with a multi-band approach.

WiMAX and Yahoo BB advertise their services at Tokyo Station

By using both networks the companies can increase their coverage in areas where the 3G network may not yet be as well developed, plus the money they spent on establishing the 800Mhz network is not wasted. In this arena, Softbank, who are the distributors of iPhone in Japan only have a 2GHz band network and so may have to find a different way forward.

The seminar was extremely interesting and provided some great insight into Japanese companies, in particularly the telecommunications industry.

My Thoughts

TV v. Computer battle
A number of years ago there was a debate over whether the PC screen would be the new place to watch TV, rendering the TV set obsolete, or whether the PC would embed itself in the TV, making the desktop PC unnecessary. With YouTube, Ustream, NicoNicoDoga and many other services (not to mention 1-seg cards for PC’s), we now have TV on the computer 24 hours a day. In my home my TV is now connected to the internet and I can get movies online from Tsutaya and watch drama programs through Hikari TV. I even have completed the full cirlce and got YouTube on my TV. YouTube being TV for the PC but now being pumped back on to the TV. Great!

It looks like the TV and the PC can coexist.

PC v. Phone
The battle between the PC and the phone was perhaps not as obvious. Today, an iphone can perform much of the functionality required for the internet using PC owner. You might not be able to easily type a 2,000 word essay or perform complex calculations on Excel, but that may be more to do with screen size than computing power. With applications on cloud computing and storage almost limitless, if we can transfer enough data to our hand held device then the complex calculations can be done back at the server. Can the phone of the future kill the PC for home at least?

Other variations of the PC
With more and more companies developing tablet based computers we should expect to see this market take off also. With iPhone hugely successful, Apple must be ready to up-size the machine and declare it an iOffice or something.

Small digital picture frames that cost about $200-$400 could also be ideal for a jump into the tablet market. If they include wi-fi, wireless lan, 1-seg, microphone, speakers, you could have a picture frame that acts as a phone, tv, internet radio, picture frame and more all connected up to both your home PC and the internet. Your home PC could act as the base for changing the settings and storing files if you prefer that over cloud storage, but the picture frame would then deliver the content to the viewer.

Digital picture frames with many features connected to Internet are already available

Whatever we see in the future, it is bound to be interesting and eye-opening. One thought crossed my mind which I cannot answer. If the iPhone had been called the iData, iComputer, iTelevision or iWallet would we have been so quick to embrace the technology? The iPhone really doesn’t perform well as a phone, yet its internet based computing features shine. The Google phone is proposed to be a data only phone. Does that mean by definition it is not a phone?

Is the consumer perception of buying a phone different to buying a PC?
It seems as if consumers are happy to buy a device called a phone, but more reluctant to be seen spending money on a PC. A phone gives the image of “keeping in touch”, whereas a PC sounds like more like work, and we all want to keep in touch, right?. Maybe it is because everyone believes they need a phone, but a computer is more of a luxury item. Therefore, to buy and spend money on a phone is essential, but a PC might seem unnecessary. 10 years ago if we bought a PC and were told we had to pay $100 a month just for data usage we probably would not have bought one.

I hope to meet up with Natsuno-san some time in the future and discuss these issues further. For a good article about an interview with Natsuno-san in 2008 you can read this column at Tech-on.

Related posts:

1. Google Android in Japan The ads are starting to come out at the train...
2. Mobile Phone Straps Most users of Japanese cell phones (keitai’s), have a strap...
3. Docomo Wooden Mobile Docomo has released a wooden case mobile phone made from...

Are you on the Shibuya Twitter map today?

I am just checking out the Shibuya area twitter map which shows those people who are tweeting locally with a GPS enabled device. As more people use applications requiring GPS, this map will start to fill up with thousands of tweets.

It is another interesting example of how search on the internet has changed from corporate encyclopedia type entries, to news items, personal opinion blog posts, to twitter-like snap shot comments, and then to take that information of the page and reorganize it not just into subject matter but also source of origin.

Do you have a twitter map website you can share with us? Are you on the map somewhere?

Related posts:

1. Family Mart on Twitter Family Mart announced last night that they are starting a...
2. Twitter Japanese platform with adverts Update: Just discovered this wasn’t new, but has actually been...
3. Twitter, SNS, Blogs This months issue of 日経ＴＲＥＮＤＹ magazine, June, 2009 (yes, the...

New wooden mobiles from Docomo

Docomo has released a wooden case mobile phone made from trees that are part of the more trees project that musician Sakamoto Ruyichi helped to form.

The two mobile phone brands shown here are Olympus and Sharp.

It sounds a bit like a retro product, but I don’t ever remember us having wooden mobiles before. I bet the ring town has a good echo on it.

You can see samples of these phones at the CEATEC JAPAN 2009 exhibition at Makuhari Messe (6th -10th October).

Would you be interested in owning a wooden mobile?

Related posts:

1. Omron Fitness for Mobiles Omron have brought out a set of digital scales that...
2. Japan Phone Chargers If you want an original phone charger when you come...
3. Mobile Phone Straps Most users of Japanese cell phones (keitai’s), have a strap...

Odaiba Wedding

Had some major site traffic over the last 2 days thanks to everyone for checking out the Gundam Wedding Photos. Much appreciate all of you who have re-tweeted, emailed to friends, stumbled the photos and various other social networking things.

I have moved from a shared hosting service with bluehost to a dedicated one now with peer1. I think you will notice the improvement in site speed. Given that only about 1 in 10 requests were returning pages before, this should be a big improvement.

Sorry to all those who tried and couldn’t access the pages. Now is your chance to go wild and check things out.

Having a slight issue with a few minor things on new site. Will have everything ironed out over weekend. At the moment, thumbnails are not showing for photos, but the main photos themselves should all be showing.

Thanks again. It has been a crazy 2 days but now we should be set for the next 2 years worth of growth on shibuya246.

I will be doing a review of the site again at the end of this month and talk about plans for the future. Thanks again to all who showed support over the last few days and of course those who visit everyday. It is always great to share life in Japan and talk with you all.

_ shibuya246 _

Related posts:

1. Site Review, Jun 2009 I am a little bit behind in providing the site...
2. Site Review, Jul 2009 We have seen some more increases in traffic this month...
3. Site Review, May 2009 To help make the site better for all visitors, I...