Motoko’s weblog

SES Paris was a success with increase in attendance and well received sessions. I spoke about the search market in Japan at “Search Around The World” session on the first day. It’s the only session at SES Paris that was in English. (Phew! I took French as the third language at college for a year, but unfortunately, nothing I learned stuck with me.) There were 5 speakers at this session. Each of us was given 5 min to present. The intent was to provide a quick overview of the market from each Continue Reading »

DeNA owns Japan’s most popular mobile portal site, “Mobaga Town”, and their stock is falling rapidly for the past several weeks.

Late last year, Japanese government put out a statement requesting all the mobile service providers to use a filtering system to stop children under 18 to access certain sites*. And, in early December, Japanese Telecommunications Carriers Association and Continue Reading »

Happy New Year! As we welcomed 2008 on a crispy cold day in Connecticut, I’m missing a Japanese New Year celebration. New Year is the biggest holiday in Japan, and it’s the beginning of new year, new life, and new everything.

Yahoo Japan entered the new year with their new home page, which has a stronger feel of the portal site than a search site. In fact, they got rid of the category list Continue Reading »