The iPhone landscape has changed somewhat over the last few days with the release in Japan of the iPhone 4S. Finally we have a choice other than SoftBank if we want one in Japan. It is not only SoftBank and au any more – make an informed decision before you go ahead and buy the new iPhone 4S in Japan – we go through the things you need to consider as a foreigner in Japan buying an iPhone.

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This is part two of our writeup and perspective on IDNs, especially double byte Japanese domain names. Without going into too much more history or spurting out much more technical jargon, lets explore some day to day aspects of double byte domains, how they are (or rather aren’t) used, and why they just aren’t the glowing future of Japanese internet real estate that initially they may seem to be.

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Internationalized Domain Names, heard of them? Double byte web addresses. You know the ones – the 日本.jps and the 価格.coms – you must have seen them lurking somewhere? Yes, these are called IDNs, or Internationalized Domain Names.

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Matushita Nao (松下奈緒) the girl behind E-Mobile When you go home tonight, you might notice some new ads starring Matushita Nao (松下奈緒) for a cool looking PDA. But contrary to popular belief, this is not Softbank’s X01HT which has been receiving a lot of bandwidth in the comments section of stippy.com. Nor is it part [...]

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After years of refusing to enable Blackberries to work in Japan, DoCoMo finally let the technology loose a couple of months ago. Although there is still only one model available, after reading Wasabi Green’s writeup on stippy.com I couldn’t resist but giving one a test-drive. So what is the verdict? Is it really worth lashing [...]

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Less than one hour ago, Softbank Mobile‘s charistmatic CEO, Masayoshi Son, just completed an unexpected (予想外) press conference at the New Ohtani. Just as stippy.com reported last week, Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is starting this week in Japan and promises to upset the comfortable duopoly of DoCoMo and Au. Stippy.com recevied a lot of email [...]

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Have you noticed that everywhere you go now, you see ads for mobile phones? Over the last month Au, Softbank Mobile and DoCoMo have slowly rolled out aggressive new advertising strategies and more new handset models at once than have ever been seen before. So why the sudden focus on improving their brand image? On [...]

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The Blackberry, the ubiquitous tool that has become a fixture in the hands of the white-collar executive in North America and Europe will finally gain a foothold in the Japanese market. NTT DoCoMo is partnering with Canadian Blackberry-maker RIM (Research in Motion) to offer customers GSM/WCMDA “worldphone” versions of the handhelds. Now as a Canadian [...]

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I‘m not much of an auto guy, but I’m a real sucker for gadgets and the new Lexus has me excited. Toyota released their latest Lexus in Japan at the start of this week and it is amazingly different from any car that has come before. Japanese autos are becoming more and more high-tech and [...]

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Akihabara News is the only (English) website that I know of the continuously covers new developments in the Japanese electronic/gadget market. If you are thinking of visiting Japan, or already live in Tokyo, then check them out. There are some really amazing bargains, and some just plain bizzare stories about “gadgets in Japan”… And who [...]

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