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Bandai is the third biggest toy company in Japan, following Nintendo and Sega. While the other two are successful globally, Bandai’s success has so far remained local: Perhaps the only exception was Tamagotchi, an egg-shaped keychain with a small creature moving around in the display, successful in early 90s.

Bandai’s competence is definitely not in hi-tech, but they are great at identifying small joys in our everyday lives and enhancing them.

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Workshops typically require tools to share your thoughts with a large number of people. PC screens are often not enough, and we end up using a massive amount of papers and pens, and a large space on a wall. In fact, I do this to sort findings from user studies just for myself. We all know this is not very eco-friendly, but it’s so hard to beat this simple setup.

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After charging my transportation cards for number of times, I became quite envious of people owning cards with auto-charging features. Basically, those cards are credit cards, which monitors how much money is still left in your card and automatically tops up once it reaches to the certain amount. So despite of the fact I detest owning another credit card, I decided to acquire one.

I received the credit card with excitement, but something really disturbed me. The card, was FLAT. There was no emboss on credit card numbers, and instead, they simply printed the numbers on a card.

It is hard to understand why the design. Some say, credit cards without emboss are a lot safer for overseas traveling. It may as well be a technical issue, perhaps card slots for ticket machines are not designed for an additional millimeter. After all it’s a credit card with Suica features, meaning these cards should go into those machines if you like to use them for, say reserving seats for express trains.

But the fact that they made the card flat, seems like they haven’t really considered the suspicions we could get abroad. I can easily think of several countries where cashiers could simply look at the card (and me) and decline it without even trying it. I recall in China when I tried to use a foreign credit card which did not have PIN codes, the cashier lady resisted to swipe my card. She said, “It’s not safe.”

There was a sufficient number of reasons for her to speculate my credit card. First of all, Chinese credit cards, they come with a 4-digit PIN code. Second, a typical credit card payment there require both the PIN and the signature. While many other countries use the PIN code to reduce the hassle of signing, in China they use this to double the customer’s hassle for the sake of safe transactions. Together with all the papers that I have to deal with between the shopkeeper and the cashier and the queue, it sometimes drove me crazy and took all the shopping fun away.

What happened with the cashier lady and me in the end? She took the card reluctantly after checking my passport, making a call to her manager and me resisting to use anything else. She told me, “Next time set the PIN code because it’s not safe for you!” From the way she looked, she really meant it, she was concerned of me losing money. I keep on thinking, what would she say, if I come to her again and show the new, flat, Suica-integrated credit card? “You! Again!”, perhaps?

Here is another data. Sales of digital music in Japan for year 2007 is 75,487 million yen (632 million Euros). It increased by 40% in comparison to the previous year. And of course, most of its sales (90%) come from mobile phone services.

Figures are impressive, but frankly, it seems like neighboring South Korea has progressed much more, and I haven’t paid much attention so far. What’s more, I have never thought about what effect that could have to the music itself.

According to a 30-minute-TV program called Closeup Gendai (meaning “Closeup Now” in Japanese), this very trend of downloading music on mobile phones is the reason why music has now a very short life expectancy. They compared how it was 20 years ago, when hit songs can stay in the chart for months; in contrast, in 2007 there were only two songs which remained in the top position for two consecutive months. So it’s becoming more and more difficult to have a great song that would be listened for a long period of time than before.

The program then described of how people, in particular, teenagers select music to download. Girls on TV demonstrated by browsing tracks from their mobile phones and listened to 30-seconds free downloads prior to the final purchase. This 30 seconds, according to the program, is the cause of short-living music; most hit makers are aware of the free downloads and creates melody lines memorable and catchy within this time slot. By the time people purchase the full track, they have already consumed the best bit.

The TV program then changed the topic and discussed how Enka, Japanese folk songs, are regaining sales and appealing older generation. They say the artists are singing clearly with good lyrics that appeal to a wider audience. And as a proof, while Enka only had 4% of the entire sales eight years ago, now it occupies 10%.

Although that is an interesting trend, I believe typical Enka lyrics which talk about “broken marriage”, “forbidden love”, “alcohol, men, women, one night stand”,”women waiting for the fishermen to be back to the harbor” may sound too old for the younger generation. How to create a great hit that lasts and appealing for the keitai generation is yet to be found.

Closeup Gendai, in Japanese: http://www.nhk.or.jp/gendai/

When I came back after living in Finland and China for 9 years altogether, I found crowded public space – which is pretty much everywhere in central Tokyo – quite painful. There was no way I can filter the conversation any more, and regardless of the topic, I was forced to listen. But eventually, I realized that was not the only thing I need filtering. In crowded morning trains, I was also looking at other people’s privacy over their shoulders, unless I make an effort by closing my eyes or looking elsewhere, I often come across with other people’s text messages and browsed websites.

Ten years ago, when there were still people without mobile phones, we still saw quite many people reading newspapers on trains and metros. Typically they were men reading supootsu-shinbun (sport newspapers) which are basically tabloids. Although the cover page was about sports, a significant proportion of the paper was more like playboy magazine, full of naked women. And how do I know that while I have never bought those papers? That is because I could see them as I shared the same cargo with their readers.

Now the media might have changed and although the device maybe small, it seems like I can even see better than papers, with the display so brightly lit.

In order to protect the privacy when you are so close with strangers, here in Japan, you can you can now buy ‘privacy filter’, which comes in so many different shapes and sizes. The filter serves as a protective filter, too, but the primary functionality is to shut the view when seen from a certain angle. And now, many mobiles come with this feature automatically. From View Blind by Panasonic, Privacy Angle by NEC, to Veil View by Sharp, displays become foggy with a long press of a button. Once the filter goes active, it will look like as if you went into a steam bath without taking your glasses off.

Pity, all the Japanese phones nowadays come with displays that are 3 inches or bigger. It is so clear and pixels are so dense, that you can even read A4 PDF files quite well. But obviously, here people to demand the display to be not TOO clear.

Furikome Sagi is a term used to describe a fraud using phone calls. Swindlers, they call victims to “trick them into believing invented stories and paying money into a certain bank account” (translation based on daily yomiuri).

Swindlers, they target people over 60s; they call you up in early day time so that banks are open and you are less likely to reach your family members at work. They typically call that it is police who’s calling, and will tell you your son or daughter is in trouble. Whether it is a car accident or a sexual harassment on train, they convince that money can settle the matter between the other end who is ‘seriously hurt’.

It’s funny to think that people can be easily tricked with these stories, but people do have panic attacks when it comes to emergencies involving your family. Older generation might not have skills to operate ATMs to transfer money, so these swindlers, they KINDLY give instructions over the mobile phone how you could do it realtime. In a way, I am impressed of their skills to make people use a device for the first time!

If you are interested in how severe the incidents are, you should simply see the amount that has been reported to be transferred. In 2007 these swindlers earned 25,142,421,788 JPY – that’s about 200 million Euros.

Because of the sheer scale of these crimes, banks started to act. Chiba Bank has now decided to stall a mobile jamming device in their banks. Together with a company who has developed the device for hospitals and concert halls, the bank has developed an equipment which the interfering signal can be adjusted to work within a very small (1 to 2 meters) range that could only affect the ATM area.

Although the idea of stalling a phone jamming equipments has been considered and reported for months now, it will only be in November that ATM will be in action. The biggest reason was because of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which controls the Radio Law in Japan, has expressed reluctance to the idea. The ministry says that the license can only be issued to institutions where, one, there is a substantial space so it will not jam the mobile phones used nearby, and two, there is a clear evidence that incoming notifications of mobile phones can be hinder its business. It is mandatory to fulfill these two conditions, and the ministry has given permissions only to concert halls; other public venues, like museums and libraries, though their nature is public, were considered not to qualify for the second condition, and have not been permitted.

It is funny that these solutions are often led by industry, not by government. We shall see if other brave banks are to follow the brave Chiba Bank.

And speaking of the radio law, the approach seems to differ a lot by country; For instance, France has had a law to allow phone jamming in public venues since 2002, but US and Canada seems to be reluctant of the idea.

In English:
Chiba Bank – http://ir.chibabank.co.jp/english/
Japanese Radio law – http://www.soumu.go.jp/joho_tsusin/eng/Resources/laws/2003RL.pdf
French Cinemas act to jam mobiles: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3735936.stm

In Japanese:
Chiba nippo news: http://www.chibanippo.co.jp/news/chiba/society_kiji.php?i=nesp1223950299