Casualties and unfound victims of the town counts 1,373 people, and it is said that 80% of the local business were affected by the disaster.
11 months have passed since 311, and you may be wondering how bad it still is- or how well the town has recovered.
On 2/15, I visited Kesennuma, and here are some photos from that trip.
Some areas of the town are burnt and still empty.
Broken bus...
Broken houses
Broken businesses
There still are loads to clean up
Boats in the middle of the town.
The businesses trying to rebuild.
The black things getting dried are shark fins.
"We will not say we can't do that. Kesennuma City"
One year has passed, but there are still lots to do to get back to pre-311 situation. We are trying to seek what we can do to help the area and recover the businesses there. According to the volunteer center, more than 50,000 people came to help the city as volunteers.
Here are some videos I shot in Kesennuma. I'm sorry the quality of the video is low (primarily due to the fact that I was shooting still photos in my right hand and videos in my left hand)
2012/2/15: Near Bentencho in Kesennuma
2012/2/15: Near Uohamacho in Kesennuma
2012/2/15: Near Asahicho in Kesennuma
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer.
I had multiple non-Japanese people asking me about social games in Japan, so I'd like to summarize some of the stuff I saw recently.
2011 was the year of social games in the Japanese game industry. According to this article on Diamond "Why Nintendo will not do social games(JP)", many game companies such as Square Enix, Bandai Namco and Konami were "rescued" by the rise of social games that were operated by mobile social network/game platform companies like DeNA(JP) and GREE(JP). On the other hand, there are companies like Nintendo that is not entering the social game business. Nintendo's CEO Mr. Iwata says "charging users by changing some number parameters and making them open some key or making something advantageous is not charging for creative efforts" and that "you might get short term revenue but cannot build long term relationships with customers" and that "Nintendo should not do such thing". On the other hand, it is true that companies like DeNA and GREE are making a successful business- if you compare Zynga and GREE, active user (used the service at least once a month) of Zynga is 227 million whereas GREE's registered user is only has 10% of that- 27 million users (update: GREE does not publicize number of active users but apparently less than 27 million- thank you for the info, @serkantoto!), but the net operating profit of Zynga 2011 was 630 million USD whereas GREE's prediction for 2011 June-2012 June is 900 million USD according to Sankei Biz. Also, their business success is not only for themselves but for various companies and industries surrounding them, and many people advises Nintendo to enter social game business as well.
For example, GREE sees its operating profits rise 300% to hit a record $910 million profits, and their sales for the final quarter of 2011 alone may be $520 million. GREE invested in a startup that creates social games called "Gumi" and has 20% stake of the company. Gumi Raised $26 million, and sold more than $50 million worth of virtual in-game coins last year. Those revenue are split with partners including carriers and platform providers like GREE- so that's how the business ecosystem works.
This is a diagram explained in Diamond's article above- left is social game business model which circulates revenue to mobile carriers and content providers (blue arrows) whereas package game business model does not have.
It is also true that we are starting to see troubles in online games and Consumer Affairs Agency is investigating the expensive bills(JP). Consumer Affairs Agency's press release on this issue can be found here(JP). Criticisms toward Online game companies is that they attracts users saying their games are "free", and charges later on the items. Children gets heated up by those services, some reports in the article above includes "My son who is elementary school student bought 300yen (4USD) lottery 100 times" and "My child is 5 years old, and bought an item for 100,000yen (1,300USD)", asking the platform providers to pay back the bills.
According to another article, one of the game manufacturers says 80% of the users play social games for free, and less than 20% pays. Within those who pay, some pay more than 2million yen (26k USD). Of course that doesn't happen in a day. They start by paying 50 yen, 100 yen, 500... and whey you pay 1,000yen you have no trouble paying 2,000. You might want to ask "what are they paying for?". According to Prof. Miho Nojima, "They are paying for their existence in the in-game community, to keep their friends there." The article introduces a jobless man living on social welfare, but is paying around 20,000 yen per month (2.6kUSD) to stay in this in-game community. "Not everyone can be successful or admired in the real world. Human beings wants to be admired, and are willing to pay to be admired. In the 1980's during the bubble economy, people paid for expensive brand bags to satisfy their pride. Now, that is happening inside social games." When you don't receive the word "Thank you" from anyone in the real world, they go out and "help" someone by a "click", and you get admiration, gratitude and are able to satisfy their pride, even if it means paying some money. You don't get that in package games, this only happens in social games.
This video created by Google Japan to promote Chrome is an excellent representation of the value of Hatsune Miku- I love their phrase "Everyone, Creator". (Disclaimer: I work for Google)
I have been posting and speaking a lot about Hatsune Miku in various places including this blog(2008), this blog (2010) and did Ignite at LeWeb'10.
Hatsune Miku is a Desk Top Music software and a character- it started with the "voice" and "picture" created by a company called Crypton Future Media, which generated a huge movement of DIY music, video and art phenomenon. It is one of the series of softwares called "Vocaloid".
I think the highlight of Hatsune Miku for 2011 was that it has gone international :)
Recently Hatsune Miku had been attracting attention from various countries.
Following is a recap of my Ignite speech which was one year ago (didn't have time to post this for a year...)
I started my speech by introducing Miku's concert that happened in Japan. At that time, people around the world were interested that Japanese people actually gathers to watch a virtual character to sing- this year, we have seen this happen in Los Angeles and I heard that as many as 5,000 people came to the event ;)
Video of the concert
Press articles of media around the world surprised about a concert of a virtual idol.
The most interesting thing about Hatsune Miku is how it spurred enormous amount of creativity by the users- music, pictures, animations, software, etc.
Users can upload music to various sites such as Piapro:
And some of those user generated songs won #1 of the Japanese weekly CD Sales ranking, and Vocaloid series won #2,4,6,7, 8, 10,11, 15,18 of Karaoke ranking last year.
I was looking at the data this year, and for example the Oricon Blu-ray ranking as of 2011/11/28 (data from 2011/11/14-2011/11/20) #5 was Hatsune Miku. (#1,2,4 are all Harry Potter, #3 is Pirates of the Caribbean)
Much less in Karaoke ranking compared to last year, but still #3, #19 and #21 were Hatsune Miku songs.
I played one of the most popular songs at LeWeb last year- "Miku Miku Ni Shite Ageru"
This song was remixed by many people, and the dots on this chart shows all the remixes- it actually looks like universe!
Many people started drawing illustrations -many of which you can see on Piapro
And of course various 2D animations and 3D animations.
People started creating software too- MikuMikuDance is the most popular one- user generated 3D animation creation software.
Originally it only had one character (Miku) but the different versions allowed users to add different characters, objects and backgrounds, and different models as you can see in the following videos:
MMD started to carry physical engine, and the users can control objects’ weight, friction, spinning speed, speed decay, repulsion, etc. MMD development by the original creator- Yu Higuchi has ended as of October 2011, and MMD's further development is now in the hands of the MMD community.
Then there's the 3D animation and hardware hacking part. This video of "Innocence" started the movement.
You can see this imaginary musical instrument- which stimulated the geeks around Japan to actually create it.
As you can imagine, there are Android app version such as this one and this one :)
At Digital Contents Expo, a bunch of creators gathered to show off their instruments and did a mini live.
I believe the key to the success of Hatsune Miku was its openness- Crypton Future Media could've claimed their rights and prohibited the use of the characters- as many of the contents industry companies does- instead they decided to open up the use of the character Miku, and invited various creators to share, reuse and remix their creativity- which led to a viral effect not just by consumers, but creators, and also made consumers to become creators.
What I really like about the Hatsune Miku community is that they have love and respect with each other, they like other people's work, praise, and build on top of them for the next great thing - and the following was my final slide ;)
Photo CC by Shanissinha_
For those of you who wants to see newer vid, looks like this one is in the ranking now :)
Disclaimer- This blog is a personal blog of Fumi Yamazaki. What I write here reflects my personal opinion, and has nothing to do with my employer.
Half a year has passed since the 311 incident. There was a Magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which led to tsunami, fire, landslide, and nuclear power plant accident.
311 was a chance for the media to change their attitudes- for example, NHK (National TV station of Japan) allowed a junior highschool student to livestream their news contents on Ustream, and they ended up livestreaming themselves, too. They also officially uploaded some of the video clips on YouTube which you can see here:
Many citizens shot videos of the tsunami as well- to keep these lessons in mind for the future, I will post some of those clips here:
Tsunami in Oirase
Kesennuma
Otsuchi
Minami Sanriku
Kamaishi
Sendai Airport
A ship of Maritime Safety Agency crossing the tsunami
Fukushima Power Plant explosion
Fukushima nuclear power plant after explosion
There still are people working IN that power plant to cool down and terminate the reactor... video message from them.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer.
It was an event called "IT Fuji". The event started around 10 years ago with a bunch of researchers with geeky gears climbing Mt.Fuji with lots of sensors and GPS, etc trying to learn how they can utilize IT in the mountains. They played on the mountain with those gadgets so much that recently they've become pretty normal mountain climbers- at least that's what I heard ;) Here are some tips from our trip:
How to get to Mt.Fuji:
Take the "Fujikyu Bus" from Shinjuku station - it takes you directly to Mt.Fuji's 3rd station (3goume) and 5th station (5 goume). Reserve your seat well in advance for early morning buses.
Climbing schedule:
Typically you leave Tokyo in the morning and arrive at 5th station, have lunch and climb up to 8th station where there are lots of lodges and huts. You can eat dinner, take a nap and leave 8th station around 23-1AM to head to the top of the mountain and watch the sunrise. Sunrise from Mt. Fuji is considered very precious and is called Goraikou(御来光) meaning honorable delivery of light. After you reach the top and watch the sunrise, you can either wander at the top - this walk is called Ohachimeguri (お鉢巡り), or you can head back down. Visiting the hot spring -Onsen (温泉) after the climb is highly recommended :D
What to bring:
-backpack, make sure you have waterproof cover (to avoid rain and dust)
-trekking shoes
-warm clothes for the top (it's freezing cold up there even during hot summer)
-light clothes for the bottom (it's hot during summer)
-heat tech T-shirts (clothes that will dry quick is desirable)
-gloves
-climbing stick
-raincoat (umbrellas won't work)
-headlamp (flashlights won't work)
-money (to buy drinks/snacks and pay for the toilets, coins are better)
-mobile phone (to communicate with your team mates. It fairly works!)
-snacks and drinks (don't bring too much since they will be heavy)
-hat/cap (to avoid sunburn)
-sunscreen (to avoid sunburn)
-medical mask (to avoid the dust)
might be good to have
-Oxygen (I didn't use it at all so I don't know if it's effective but saw lots of people using it)
It was foggy/rainy when we started climbing, but didn't rain that hard.
It was actually raining really hard when we were taking a nap at 8th station, but the sky cleared up when we started climbing at 1AM... we were lucky!
This is a typical lodge. They have sleeping bags that you can take a short nap before heading to the top.
Just before the sunrise, it became so cloudy that we almost thought we'll miss the Goraikou (sunrise)...
Then the sky started to clear up
Sunrise! 御来光！
I think it was rather good that we had some clouds since the reflections were so beautiful :D
You can see the clouds down below. The red object is Torii (鳥居) .
Appendix: One of my colleagues asked me to bring Android figure with me to Mt.Fuji and here is the evidence!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer.
There's a lot of visualization and applications recently using brain waves.
One of the most popular ones was this one by Ariel Garten, CEO of Interaxon presented at LeWeb2010. You can watch her speech "Thought Controlled Computing" here:
Yes, we were sitting there in the audience watching her brain wave while she talks ;)
What about the Japanese usage of brain waves? There's a bunch of interesting installations, but I'll introduce a cute one here - "Necomimi" by Neurowear project. You wear cat's ear shaped device which would lay down if you are relaxed, stick up if you are concentrated.
Looks like I was concentrated when I tried it this time ;)
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer.
For the Japanese folks, this info is a bit old. But I realized talking with non-Japanese folks that many of them didn't know this so I thought I'd write this post.
** The Problem **
Global roaming fee had been a headache for most travelers... the options were, we either:
1) give up and try to hop through wifi spots or go to internet cafes ... this was what I usually did when I was a traveler. Before that, I thought if I lose internet I might not be able to survive. Internet connection was like oxygen to me. I was totally Internet addicted, Twitter addicted. Actually I learned how to survive- I had no internet connection at all for 4 whole days trekking in Machu Picchu :)
2) get a local SIM ... I sometimes do this in U.S. when my stay is long. But it is annoying to do this in each country you go, you don't know the language and you don't know the pricing models in that country, you don't know which career is good etc... it is painful.
3) use the SIM from the country of origin and "behave" not to use too much packets ... this is what people usually does.
4) use the SIM from the country of origin and use it as you want to. ... this is called "パケ死 (packet death)"
** The Solution **
In order to solve this problem, Japanese mobile carriers - Softbank and NTT docomo started to provide flat rate international roaming packet services several months ago.
Masayoshi Son, CEO of mobile carrier Softbank received a mention to his Twitter account (@masason) in April to request flat rate international roaming packet service. Maybe he already had some kind of plan already before replying, but his reply was " Let's consider that". A month later, he comes back with the tweet that Softbank will actually start that service from July. Some of the tweets from the conversation:
Son-san: We're ready. Starting flat rate international roaming packet service from 7/21. Countries fixed. You will be released from several 10,000 yen packet costs. http://bit.ly/bHrive
Softbank needs to pay other carriers - is it really possible to do flat rate?
User: Uh, are you going to be OK? lol
Son-san: If you use too much, we will be in the red. Please don't be too hard on us.
皆さんが、ガンガン使うと当方かなり赤字。お手柔らかに。RT @terrysaito だ、 大丈夫なのか？ w RT 出来ました。7/21から海外パケ定開始。対象国も確定。 数万円のパケット代から解放。http://bit.ly/bHrive
Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed herein are my own and do not represent my employer’s views in any way. Nothing posted here should be considered official or sanctioned by my employer or any other organization I’m affiliated with.
