Dave Jenkins

I am not sure if it is a show of weakness, or just another table-upsetting play by our old friend Son Masayoshi, but Softbank is now offering a Free 8GB iPhone as long as you sign up for the two-year data plan.  We’ve seen this model before: Japan pioneered the ‘free crack pipe’ model almost 10 years ago with game consoles and cell phones.  But as functionality, swiveling screens, and other doohickeys made their way into the small devices, prices started to creep up.  Hardware prices took a real hike as the portable chips made jail breaking the phones an assumption, and as all signal carriers standardized.  (In fact, most electronics stores will transfer your chip into your new phone right there when you buy it.)

But Softbank has two things going for it: 1. jailbreaking the iPhone is possible but not easy, 2. the 3G network is still somewhat proprietary.  With these, Softbank can go back to the market-share giveaways that made them famous.  Earlier, I didn’t see the iPhone taking off so strongly inside the Empire.  Now– maybe we’ve got a real race.  In response, competitors could go either way:

a) Use Android to lower the cost of the hardware (also offer for free), and then use VoIP wherever possible to lower radio costs.  However, this doesn’t work because– believe it or not– open wifi networks are not that common in Tokyo

b) Use Android or another OS platform to out-app the iphone (weak strategy)

If the iPhone can get sufficient marketshare, it will be fascinating to see what unexpected apps the Japanese developer community comes up with.

My wife tried to register me on mixi.jp, which is the Japanese equivalent of everyone’s secret vice and favorite soap opera, facebook.   Mixi has been an invitation-only affair until recently, but will soon open up to anyone (just as facebook did a couple years back).  I tried to register, but couldn’t get past the first page.  Why?  No cell phone in Japan. The mixi registration page asks for (demands, actually) a cell-phone mail address (i.e. 0123456789@docomo.co.jp).  No keitai, no go.  Frustrating for us no longer in the Empire.

It soon dawned on me, however, that this may be a very convenient way to handle security against spammers, robots, duplicates, and oher malcontents: all keitai mail addresses are unique.  To get another address would require one to get another cell phone– not a cheap proposition.  As such, every person can really only register on Mixi once (twice if they have two cell phones, like many Japanese business people do these days).  Moreover, Mixi now has a new channel to keep everyone together and in touch with their Harajuku comrades before they all meet-up down on Cat Street for sushi and costumed be-bop dancing.

Genius.  Frustrating, but genius.

Can I borrow anyone’s cell-phone number for registration?

I am working on a project, and could use your help: how do you rate a sushi bar?  The simple “4 stars!” doesn’t really work, because I firmly believe that one cannot reduce a good sushi experience to a single dimension: the food, the preparer, the server, the atmosphere, the drinks– so many elements go into a dining experience, and even more so for something as ethereal as sushi nite. And, to be blunt, I am not sure most of the unwashed masses out there can judge good sushi from great sushi (not on the fish, at least).  Simply rating by 1-5 ’stars’ or whatever doesn’t work.
What goes into the decision on where to eat?  If you could rate a sushi bar on maybe 3-4 dimensions, what would they be?
So, here are my initial thoughts:

1. Atmopshere:

Traditional < ---------------> Modern

2. Menu:

Fresh Fish< ---------------->Nice Sauces

3. Service/chef:

Middle-aged Japanese Men< ------------------> Good Looking Young Hipsters

What else do you consider when choosing a sushi bar?  What would the different points of the dimension be?

Well, I told ya so.  The iPhone isn’t doing so well in Japan, and has an uphill climb ahead of it.  As reported in a poll conducted by the Nikkei Business, 59% of respondents had “no intention to buy”, and another 26% had “no interest.”  That left 2.5% who intend to buy, and another 13% who may think about it.

Apple just doesn’t have the juice in Tokyo– almost everything there is either clearly wabi-sabi and traditional, or slick-plastic-wonderland-emotive.  This goes for cars, buildings, magazines, shows, and even the girls in Harajuku.  The iPhone’s sex appeal that is so compelling to clunky plaid-shirted Americans is just another plastometallic toy to the Japanese.  Even at that, the iPhone comes up short in functionality– no terrestrial TV, poor kanji anticipation, and an underdeveloped app market.  Japan, like Europe, has fierce competition amongst calling plans and contracts; they don’t have the Faustian vendor plans like in the United States, so iPhone’s lock in with Softbank is a big turn off.

I don’t have an iPhone.  I think I want one, but at the same time, I find myself using a cellphone less and less.

Meh.

(thanks to Gen Kanai and Joi Ito for the photo)

Well, I’ve been here in Tokyo a week, and have yet to go sing karaoke. As it is, I’ve been back and forth between Japan, Korea, and China for 20 years now, and I’ve only been to karaoke 3 times. Here’s how it usually goes down: someone in the office [misguidedly] decides that Karaoke is a good idea, and books a room (a.k.a. “karaoke box”, and no that’s not a euphemism– get your mind out of the gutter). We all go, start drinking, and start singing. In general, it’s an okay time, if only because the office is buying all the whiskey sours you can drink and savoury snacks you can munch. Unfortunately, not all of us humans can sing, and even less of us can perform. But the kicker is: are you sure you want to perform in front of people you want to take you seriously in a meeting the next morning?

Karaoke Do’s:

1. Drink. Drink a lot. Don’t drink so much that you pass out, because your co-workers will draw things on your forehead.
2. Sing Japanese enka ballads. To be honest, they are the only songs that sound half-decent in karaoke.
3. That’s about it.

Karaoke Don’ts:

1. Don’t sing heavy metal rock songs. You’re not David Lee Roth, nor are you Steven Tyler. Even if Diamond Dave were to show up in your karaoke box (again, no euphemism), are you sure you’d want to hear him singing ‘Jump’ to a pre-recorded half-assed track 4 feet in front of you ?
2. If you’re a gaijin, and don’t understand Japanese/Korean, you’ll likely find your friends shoving the Elvis Presley or Beatles or Animals onto your lap. Resist this urge, unless you want to make everyone depressed. House of the Rising Sun is a kick-ass song, but only because that singer takes it that seriously and pulls if off, and that organ solo is the greatest organ solo of all time.
3. Don’t just sit there and thumb through the catalog looking for the next track. This is the most common death of karaoke night: 6 people with their noses buried in the song catalog, fearing what to sing when their turn comes around, and simultaneously embarrassed to make eye contact with the schnook up in front of the room belting out an off-pitch Madonna track.
4. Don’t stay for more than 90 minutes. You should be good and loaded by then, to the point where you’re willing to sing on the train with no backing music required. Why pay the room fee at that point?
5. Beware of the whiskey goggles. These are people you work with, and it doesn’t matter how much she seems to look like Gwen Stefani up there with the Mic– you’ll regret it later. Remember there are not enough people here to hide your flirting, like you did at that one Christmas Party.
6. When someone invariably passes out, don’t try to help. You’re blotto yourself, and you’ll just cause more trouble.  Just amuse yourself quietly by drawing on their foreheads and wait for the paramedics.

So, there ya go.

As goes Tokyo, so the rest of the world will follow. This is hard to swallow for women’s fashion, but it certainly holds true for cell phones, personal electronics, and violence comics. I’m in Tokyo, and here’s my prediction: the laptop’s days are numbered.

People want portable computing, no doubt. However, the market is quickly being divided into two camps: larger laptops for 20-something hipsters in studio apartments where the laptop really doesn’t go anywhere but cannot take up the entire desk, and small palm-tops that carry all the power of a “laptop” but actually fit in your pocket, aka, the palm-top.

My wife wanted a smaller (10 inch screen) laptop, but we are hard-pressed to find one at Yodobashi or Yamada Denki. My theory was confirmed by 3 different salesmen: either go bigger for the unportable all-in-one (with georgeous 19″ screens), or go down to the palm-top tablets.  It is worth mentioning that, here in Japan, this laptop comes with a TV tuner, and serves as the entire media center: DVD player, TV, mp3 player, and AV anime download-o-rama.  For what it’s worth, the Playstation3 also does all of these (including a browser) along with some kick-ass games, and just needs a nice LCD screen.
The only thing that may prevent the death of the laptop in the US is the college system that allows laptops (Japan does not)– students need something that fits on a desk, gets hauled from class to class, and has a big enough screen to watch ’scrubs’ or ‘chuck’ or whatever the kids are into lately.

Linkedin.com was down for a ‘major upgrade’ a few days ago. When I saw that, I guessed (correctly it seems) that they would be moving more toward a personal network with more facebook-like elements: groups, what are you doing now, what are you reading, etc.

I for one welcome our new serious older brother equivalent to facebook. Lest we forget, Linkedin came first, but it was stodgy, the interface confusing, and prone to sychophants from the telecom industry. Facebook is moving more into Stage 5 (the overcrowded party where you cannot hear anyone and the cops are on the way), and the sheer number of chainmail apps and stupid-ass games all over the place are making facebook distasteful for anyone who was expecting a ‘real’ networking tool.

Welcome back, linkedin. For what it’s worth, browsing through people’s profiles on linkedin is a great way to learn what to write and what not to write on your résumé– It’s easy to spot the liars, the blowhards, and the self-important.

Facebook is great to mess around at the coffee shop for an hour, or to waste time on Sunday morning, but Linkedin has a potential to keep real associations together, and to help you find that next job. When I worked as a recruiter in Tokyo, every agent in town relied on Linkedin to see who knew whom, and to do a quick check on backgrounds.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the iPhone, and how I was not so impressed by all the functionality there, because I have seen what the keitai (mobile phones) in Japan can do. Well, I missed a big fat chunk of it– the keitai are capable of a lot more than what I had considered at the time, and things are about to get very interesting over in Tokyo.

Son Masayoshi, the maverick entreprenuer behind Yahoo BB (Japan Yahoo as an ASDL provider) and some other wacky schemes, recently flooded the market with cheap cell phones with a prepaid-package of minutes every month. When I say cheap– I mean $10/month– that’s it (the phone is free). My 68-year-old father-in-law recently got one, as did his wife (these two have resisted cell phones for 15 years, if that gives you any idea of their technological inklings). The deal from Son Masayoshi was finally too good to resist, and they’ve joined the masses.

So what? Well, The Economist just came out with a rather good piece about the death of cash society, and how everyone is going to be moving toward Near Field Communication (NFD). Japan has been pioneering this with the Suica cards in the trains, and then the shops around the train station– wave your metal card (or now your keitai) near the register and tada! everything is paid for. Here’s the trick: people will have their salaries deposited to their bank accounts as normal, but now they wil lgo one step further and transfer all their “walking around money” from the bank account to their keitai, maybe 20% of their salary. Son must have understood that by putting phones in everyone’s hands, he doesn’t need to make a damn dime on the airtime, he has a chance to capture 20% of the cash holdings of the entire country.

Not bad– he hands out cell phones and creates maybe the 5th or 6th largest “bank” in Japan. But it gets even better: cash is untraceable (that’s why they call it “cash”); but all these keitai transactions are traceable at the atomic level. The data around buying trends alone is worth millions (for both internal investment data as well as for sale back to merchants).

Let’s see if Son Masayoshi can pull off what may be the biggest game changer since Visa created the debit card.  I would welcome any comments from those who have used smart cards– are they easier than cash?  Do you worry about the (lack of) privacy)?

Well, I don’t have one here in my hands, so this is mostly conjecture, but I really am not all that impressed by what I’m reading about theiPhone from Apple. Why not? Because I had a better phone TWO YEARS AGO when I was here in Japan, not to mention the mind-bending stunts the cell phones are doing now here in Tokyo.

Phones are the primary bit if digital candy that everyone has. I know they are the primary bit because the cell phones take up the entire ground floor of the big electronics retailers (BicCamera, Yodobashi, Yamada Denki, etc.). Those retailers would not waste the most valuable real estate if cell phones were not the most profitable, highest volume, highest turnover (most Tokyoites keep cell phones about one year) items. With volume and turnover like this, the only place to compete is on functionality. Japanese mow send mail by _default_ on their cellphones, not their work computers. Young people, especially girls, access mail. photos, the internet, reservations, train schedules, and tunes all via their phones– rarely a desktop or laptop computer.

Wanna do business in Japan? One word for you:

keitai.

Cat street will be home to a new Burton store in Tokyo. I love that neighborhood