11.28.2015

Halal Japanese food recipe site for Muslims

Japanese startup Tsutau opened recipe site HALAL RECIPES JAPAN of the haral Japanese food which Muslims can eat.


All the Japanese food recipes introduced in HALAL RECIPES JAPAN are arranged for Muslims, and of course pork and alcohol ingredients are deleted. Brief snacks, home-cooked meals, meat dishes, vegetable dishes, fish dishes, noodles, rice dishes, soup, dessert, etc... recipes of the most dishes which are generally eaten in Japan are placed. Furthermore, it has soup stock, miso, the sleeve notes of basic seasonings such as the soy sauce. Users having allergies can search recipes without the wheat flour, milk, and egg. It is a site written in Japanese, but you can change it to Arabic, Indonesian, Thai, Tamil, French, Bengali, Malay, English, Chinese by an automatic translation function of Google translation.


Unfortunately there are few Muslims in Japan, and halal foods are not common. Tsutau aims at spreading understanding to halal foods in Japan by opening HALAL RECIPES JAPAN.

11.27.2015

SEGA Games cooperated with Sanrio also


Last week, I wrote that SEGA Games cooperated with LINE.

See Also:
LINE and SEGA Games become a marketing partner in game business

The next is Sanrio. They start project "WITH Sanrio" which their mobile game and characters of Sanrio perform collaboration in January, 2016. They carry these out in this project.

1. Development of the new mobile games that popular characters of Sanrio appear
2. Continuation enforcement of the events that characters of Sanrio appear in mobile games of Sega
3. Sale of the fancy goods in conjunction with this project including new mobile games

Furthermore, they carry out the mutual promotion that let Sanrio shop cooperate with marketing support tool Noah Pass of Sega.

The mobile game of Moomin developed in Japan goes abroad

Character Moomin(Mumin, Muumi) born in Finland is very popular in Japan. Mobile game "Welcome to Moominvalley" which Poppin Games Japan developed passed 1 million downloading in Japan. They started English support and the global advance of this at last.


Welcome to Moominvalley is a very cute simulation game. The graphic is totally like the picture book. You can do field works, catch fishes, cook and make various things with Moomin, his family and friends in Moominvalley. 20 kinds of characters and more than 100 kinds of items appear in this game. You can design own Moominvalley by putting them together. The downloading is free (iOS/Android).





Production I.G. showed teaser video of the VR apps of "Ghost in the Shell"


This is unmissable if you check VR contents. Japanese animation studio Production I.G. showed teaser video of the VR application of cyberpunk anime movie "Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie" in Youtube. At first, they showed this in Tokyo Game Show 2015(TGS2015) and it became the big topic. In TGS2015, VR contents attracted attention than games, and this was one of the contents that pulled this movement.




Of course you can enjoy Youtube videos shown this time as VR contents with simple VR goggles such as Google Cardboard.

HD ver.

360 degrees VR ver.

11.21.2015

DeNA purchases the Yokohama stadium

This is not known very well abroad, but Japanese main mobile game company DeNA has a professional baseball team called "Yokohama DeNA Bay-Stars". They are pro-baseball teams based in Yokohama which is capital city of Kanagawa Pref. located next to Tokyo. DeNA established a subsidiary in December, 2011 to run them and entered the pro-baseball league in earnest from 2012. Thereafter, they carry out tie-ups using  social games/mobile games, and make efforts in the acquisition of fans. hey succeed, they called out 1,810,000 fans in the games of this season.


And they purchase the Yokohama stadium which is home ground of Yokohama DeNA Bay-Stars by take-over bid. It is that the purpose of their purchase unifies a team and the management of the stadium and performs capital spending and business administration quickly. The purchase total sum is 9,840 million yen.

11.19.2015

LINE and SEGA Games become a marketing partner in game business

LINE and SEGA Games announced that they did collaborative efforts as a marketing partner in game business. They utilize each other's business results and contribute mobile games in LINE'S game platform LINE GAME from now on. In the beginning, they started the pre-registration acceptance of the first co-operation game "Fortisia SEGA×LINE".







Fortisia SEGA×LINE is the fantasy action RPG that four players form a party, cooperate and play. It's a high-end game to have real-time chat function, avatar function, and full 3D graphic. They release this in the end of this year.

11.18.2015

Monster Strike's anime passed 10M view in about 1 month


I wrote it about Anime of the popular mobile game Monster Strike two weeks ago. It is peak form now.

See Also:
Anime of the popular mobile game Monster Strike passed 5M view in 15days

mixi announced that the world total view number of the anime series of Monster Strike passed 10 million on November 14. They accomplished this in about one month from the launch of the anime. This is exceptional in Japanese Web animes. Of course the factor of the success is a multi-language support. They support 11 languages(Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese) in this, and opened official Youtube channels every each languages. In addition, they localize every each country in the game. This is interesting as cross-media approach example of the mobile games.

11.17.2015

Mobile game developer gumi also join in VR business

Now, Japanese VR market may be "bubble" boom. Mobile game companies enter VR in sequence.

See Also:
GREE entered the VR business and established GREE VR Studio
Mobile game company Colopl established the subsidiary which produce VR panorama video

Next is gumi. They establish subsidiary "Tokyo VR Startups" in December to support VR startups. Tokyo VR Startups does not develop VR contents, but contributes funds and working space to the VR startups. In other words, they are incubator. The incubator specialized in VR is the first among Japan. The company profiles are these.

Company name: Tokyo VR Startups
Address: 1-2, Nihonbashi Hakozaki-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Establishment date: December 1, 2015
Capital: 17,500,000 yen
CEO: Hironao Kunimitsu
Business: Support of the startup performing the product development that utilized a VR technology
Share-holding: gumi 100%

Clothes for the general sale made with 3D printer "3D Normcocre"


Apparel item production service STARted made clothes for the general sale made with 3D printer "3D Normcocre" with industrial designer Masaharu Ono and researcher Taisuke Oshima of the Tokyo University. This is clothes of Auxetic Materials which users can wear as everyday wear.



They studied procedures to join 3D printed objects, seamed cloth and plastic together, and comfort. They will offer various 3D print fashions based on know-how of 3D Normcocre in future. In the beginning, they start a mass production and the sale of 3D printer clothes in 2016.

11.15.2015

Safety check apps for families at the disaster

Earthquake, typhoon, flood and the volcanic eruption... the whereabouts of the family is one of the most important information at the time of the natural disaster. However, mobile communications may be regulated under such situation. Emergency application Cocodayo helps users by GPS.




The structure of this application is very simple. At first, users register the people who want to confirm safety at the time of the disaster such as a family or important friend with agreements. Then the application links emergency disaster report and informs current location information of registered people on user's mobile. Users can register to up to four people. It is available as the security measures that are easy at normal times if you have children. The downloading is free(iOS/Android), but unfortunately this is released only in Japan at present.

11.09.2015

Line for coloring of Yo-Kai Watch moves by apps

My mum bought materials of retort minced chicken bowl(そぼろ丼) which cooperated with Level-5's popular game/anime Yo-Kai Watch.


Such line for coloring of Jibanyan(ジバニャン) for children is placed in its box. However, this is also AR content.


At first we paint these in colors.


Next, we access the campaign site and download AR application. Unfortunately, the texts of a site and apps are written only in Japanese, but apps are downloadable from countries except Japan.


Scene of the Japanese festival appears when we start apps.


 When we tap scene of the Japanese festival, it changes to the image recognition screen with the camera. Let a camera recognize line for coloring of Jibanyan.


Then Jibanyan is cut out of a box and begins to move!

And he gets into scene of the Japanese festival. You can move him by tapping him and take screenshot by tapping a camera icon.





The scenes that we can use when we play this a lot increase. This is the Japanese beach.

Let's try blue Jibanyan, too.






It's confectionery company Glico to provide this(They sell also retort foods and the drinks). They performed similar AR promotion with popular anime/manga Doraemon last year.

See Also:

Line for coloring of Yo-Kai Watch is simpler than Doraemon of the last year, but children will be pleased. Worry is useless even if you do not live in Japan, you can download PDF of line for coloring in a campaign site like apps.

By the way, of course I ate minced chicken bowl properly.

11.07.2015

mixi, Disney and NHN PlayArt make Marvel Heroes "TSUM TSUM", the cute mobile puzzle game


I introduced cute mobile puzzle game Yo-Kai Watch Puni Puni a few days ago. It is the mobile game that combined LINE: Disney TSUM TSUM which NHN PlayArt developed with Level-5's popular game/anime Yo-Kai Watch.

See Also:
Level-5 and NHN PlayArt released a mobile game of Yo-Kai Watch

mixi also join TSUM TSUM. They announced that they released Marvel TSUM TSUM in the spring of 2016. This is mobile puzzle game of the joint development of mixi, Walt Disney Japan and NHN PlayArt.


In the first place, TSUM TSUM is such a stuffed toy. Originally this was sold only in Disney stores in Japan, but it7s sold abroad now. LINE: Disney TSUM TSUM was the game that served as the advertising of this stuffed toy. They produced synergy, and both of a game and stuffed toy made a hit.



See Also:
Collaboration of Disney and LINE GAME is a great success

NHN PlayArt applies this to Marvel Heroes, and mixi adds know-how of co-play and battle which they acquired by experience by their popular mobile game Monster Strike. They have not yet shown the details of the game, but it is sure that it is cute.

GREE entered the VR business and established GREE VR Studio

Now, Japanese mobile game companies pay attention to VR. Main mobile game company GREE is no exception.

See Also:
Mobile game company Colopl established the subsidiary which produce VR panorama video



They established new studio GREE VR Studio which developed VR contents and released their first VR game for smartphones to play using simple VR goggles such as Google Cardboard(iOS/Android :Now only in Japan).

This is not the first time that they challenge VR game. They exhibited demo of the social VR game in Tokyo Game Show 2015, and ironically, it was the most popular in GREE booth.



VR game released this time is a single play, but is a very cool adventure game. Players can explore in remains of Egypt,  fight against enemies, and solve the mystery of remains. They develop various VR contents including movies and experience-based contents as well as games after this.