Hasta La Gadget!

Is the party finally over for Second Life in Japan?

J-Cast is reporting that on March 31 magSL, a company that offers rental services on Second Life (SL), announced it would be heavily reducing its services for businesses in Japan.

Through magSL you could rent space in the virtual world and promote your business, as well as buy the currency used in SL. Since April 1, however, magSL has no longer been offering realtime support for some of its services, nor in-game staff avatars. Come April 30 it will also be closing five of its “Tokyo” sectors in SL, concentrating on individual users and its remaining three districts.

SL first arrived in Japan in 2007 and is said currently to have between twenty and thirty thousand users. A swathe of big retailers and businesses opened up virtual outlets, including cecile and HIS. However, the lack of 3D support on home computers led to apathy and bewilderment, and corporations who initially were keen to exploit the service for PR started to withdraw even in 2008.

Linden Lab, the US firm behind SL, is actually making profits, though, and individual users are said to be increasing across the world.

We at CScout Japan are currently looking to recruit some new copywriters for one of our clients, an online retailer based in Japan. This is a great opportunity to hone your copywriting skills editing content in several areas.

Job 1
Japan Trend Shop sells select Japanese gadgets, cool designer accessories, wacky toys and more to customers all around the world. Your job would be to write copy that accurately describes products in an exciting way. Sometimes these products might be hard to understand for non-Japanese audiences, so part of your job would be using words to traverse those cultural gaps. You would also be preparing images and video links to accompany the text.

Job 2
As above you would be writing copy for products, but this time for Kanojo Toys, a specialist adult online store. We are also looking for people who can write for the shop’s blog, in which you will report on the seedy Tokyo underworld, covering unique stories, idol news, and JAV gossip.

Who
We want you if you are based in Japan (preferably Tokyo) and are enthusiastic about Japanese products. You may be a geek, a design fan or just adore hi-tech gadgets. Whatever you are into, you will love writing about it. You are a web-savvy person who likes blogging and image editing. As you will be researching in Japanese, your language skills should also be good.

Requirements
You need to have a valid working visa and be based in Tokyo (or least Japan). Equally important, though, is having a good ear (and eye) for how to sell cool Japanese stuff to an overseas market.

Payment
You’re not going to get rich, but payment will be per piece. Strong experience and skills will be rewarded with higher reimbursement. Further, there may be opportunities to expand into working with us in other projects from research to marketing.

Apply
Please email your information to contact (at) cscoutjapan.com, with “Copywriter application” in the subject line. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Kobe Shimbun recently reported on a “boom” happening among drinkers in their twenties and thirties: online nomikai.

As we know, Japanese nomikai often have a lot of ritual and social tension, especially when it’s with colleagues: where you sit is important to your rank in the office, and of course you have to be nice to your boss, pour his drink, and generally show lots of 遠慮 (enryo or “consideration”).

One way to get around this but still enjoy drinking in groups is to go online. Apparently net nomikai are gaining in popularity, according to reports by J-Cast and others. All you need is a web cam, Skype and a pair of headphones and mic. There is no boss, no seating arrangements — and even no geographical limitations! Obviously it’s a lot cheaper than boozing in an izakaya too, which might appeal to the recession-minded younger drinkers who can’t rely on company expenses.

Some might argue that drinking in front of a camera, even though at home, is not private enough. The same Kobe newspaper reported that single customers going to sing and drink in private karaoke booths (ヒトカラ or “solo karaoke”) are increasing.

Drinking alone sounds a bit, well, lonely, right? Not necessarily. It can become a whole product concept. Suntory in fact last year ran a campaign promoting its 3% low alcohol Chu-Hi Horoyoi (”tipsy”) as a drink for the young consumers to enjoy just by him or herself. It also started a community site to encourage people to go online and interact with each other. Horoyoi.com, did not, though, use a web cam, but instead provided you with a drinking avatar and customizable profile: importantly, drinking through a web campaign like this became a way simultaneously both to express and re-make yourself.

Scheduled to end on March 15, the site has only been a moderate success (70,000 registered users, 60% of whom are in their twenties). Suntory is hoping to keep building up word-of-mouth marketing through collecting tweets on a new Horoyoi site, Horotter.com. Though it doesn’t start till March 9, you can already see similarities. Again you get a cheerful avatar, through whom you post your tweets about Horoyoi drinking.

Actually nomikai-related tweeting has already been taking off too, it seems. Check out the tag #twinomi for what’s happening now.

While we can’t find any numbers to support this “boom”, it is interesting to see how drink companies are working with online and viral resources to try to generate young consumer- and recession-friendly trends.

It seems that Set Japan, who wowed us with their Louis Vuitton / Murakami and Marc Jacobs promotions last year, have now been working on “built” QR codes for clients like Frisk mints, utilizing actual physical object (like the product in this case) to create the scan-able barcodes.

We are pleased to announce the release of our in-depth report on Japanese ECO trends, a seriously under-reported area with real future implications for global business.

We’ve spent several months researching all about the emerging technology that will change our modes of transport, as well as the consumer trends, community shifts, and lifestyle changes. Along the way we’ve encountered power-generating floors, Shibuya fashion gurus taking to the farms, and surprisingly green vending machines. While often unique to Japan, these new movements provide limitless possibilities for inspiring innovation around the world.

The new Japanese government has promised a bold twenty-five percent reduction in emissions by 2020, and will no doubt introduce regulations and legislation designed to achieve this target. However, our research has told us that the real success happens through consumer and industry interaction, that the biggest innovation is in harnessing the power of the consumer for creating real change.

There’s arguably no better country than Japan for brand-to-consumer interactions.

Our 75+ slide report is packed full of original images and on-site local examples with analysis and numbers. Even if you’re not a researcher or marketer, there’s a lot to be learned from the pioneering developments happening in Japan that will likely have implications for your own business.

You can read more about the report on our special Eco Report page, where it is available worldwide in digital form.