WW-111 -- Girl's Talk!

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J@pan Inc presents the Wireless Watch Newsletter:

W I R E L E S S W A T C H

Commentary on Japan's Wireless World
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Wireless Watch Newsletter
Issue No. 111
Thursday, November 6, 2003
TOKYO

Subscribe for FREE:
http://www.japaninc.com/newsletters/index.html?list=ww

CONTENTS

++ Viewpoint: Girl's Talk!

=======** IRIS BAKER REPLIES FROM LONDON **======
32-year-old Nick Baker now sits in a Japanese prison. He is charged
with smuggling drugs into Japan -- a charge he vehemently denies.
Now his mother is speaking out, collecting signatures and demanding
a fair trial.
[**THIS JUST IN: Baker's mother, Iris, responds to J@pan Inc.
Read her letter:
http://www.japaninc.com/feedback/letter/index.html?id=0083]

Get the entire feature story in the red-hot November issue of J@pan
Inc magazine. Read it here now:
http://www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=1227
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====== PAN PACIFIC LEISURE PACKAGE ==========
At Pan Pacific Yokohama, you can have a relaxing experience prepared
for you at only 20,000 Yen per night -- which includes a real American
breakfast.
For details, please check http://yokohama.panpacific.com/
=============================================

================= EVENT ====================
GARTNER'S SYMPOSIUM/ITXPO 2003
Date: Nov. 19-21, 2003
Location: Le Meridien Grand Pacific (Odaiba, Tokyo)

Business today is all about reducing time, increasing speed, and
improving profits. Technology is the enabler.
Keeping up - and looking ahead - is your challenge and our strength.
Join over 2500 senior IT decision makers to hear Gartner's leading
global and Japanese analyst address technology issues that will
have the biggest impact on your enterprise over the next year.

View complete Symposium information at:
http://www.gartner.co.jp/symposium/eng/

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++ Viewpoint: Girl's Talk!

Everyone knows Tokyo's Shibuya district as THE place where hip
high-schoolers hang after school. The latest fashion, youth slang
and mobile culture can be found in this hyper-crowded hood.
Shibuya is a haven for trend watchers and a "must see" locale
for everyone visiting Japan.

According to research from IPS, 52 percent of youths younger than 19
only communicate through mobile email. About 60 percent had their
virginal Internet experience through their mobile phone, and a
whopping 70 percent of the mobile content market is generated by teens.

Nowadays, Japanese schools tend to be a lot quieter -- because students
don't have time to talk anymore. They prefer instead to spend their
free time sending and reading emails or browsing the Web during
breaks. And since the very start of the mobile Internet in Japan,
high-school girls have been the driving force behind new mobile
communication trends.

Mobile mail and chatting is usually text-based mixed with smileys and
"kao-moji" (face characters) -- like (;_;) (to express sadness) or
m(__)m (to express humbleness) -- and carrier proprietary pictorgraphs
("e-moji"). Kao-moji and e-moji are usually pre-installed on mobile
phones.

In the GSM world, youths often use an abbreviated language to reduce
the time and effort to type an SMS message. Japanese girls, however,
now prefer to communicate amongst each other using special
characters that require more time to input. These characters are called
"gyaru-moji" (gyaru is the slang word for girl). The words made from
gyaru-moji are a mixture of Japanese syllables, numbers, mathematical
symbols and Greek characters. It's like a secret code used by teenagers;
at first glance, the code resembles hieroglyphics.

Typing gyaru-moji takes at least twice as long as inputting standard
Japanese. A year ago, the first gyaru-moji were introduced. These were used
for email greetings such as "ohayo" (good morning) and "oyasumi"
"good night." When we asked a Japanese girl in Shibuya about gyaru-moji,
she told us that she likes to use them because it makes her emails look
more artistic. "Plus," she added, "people who want to read over my shoulder
cannot understand gyaru-moji, and in this way we keep our group language."
For those people not familiar with gyaru-moji, several mobile and Web
sites offer conversion tools from normal written Japanese to gyaru-moji.

Recently a new trend to send personalized messages was introduced by
these girls. They do not send emails to friends anymore. Instead, they
jot down their message on a piece of paper, take a photo of it and
send it as a picture message to their friends. In whatever form it
takes, "Girl's Talk" is generating a lot of revenue for the mobile
carriers.

-- Arjen van Blokland

============ J@PANINC MAGAZINE ================
Subscribe NOW and get 12 issues of Japan's best English-language magazine
on Business, Technology and People. In-depth coverage and award-winning
journalists delivered to your door for just 5,600 yen ($49).
To subscribe: http://www.japaninc.com/mag/sub_form_pop.html
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===== J@PAN INC. COST CUTTING SEMINAR ======
November's keynote speaker is Mr. Dhananjaya "Jay" Dvivedi,
the CIO of Shinsei Bank. Jay has played a key part in helping
to turn around Shinsei and make it one of the most profitable
in Japan. As an insider, he will cover the challenges, solutions,
and some vignettes about cost-cutting and transforming a
Japanese company into an international one.

Date/time: November 21, 2003 (Friday), 14:00-16:00
Venue: Ran Room, Imperial Hotel
Charge: Free (sponsored by Ibaraki Pref. Govt.)
For more details: see http://japaninc.net/ibaraki, or contact
yukiko.hosoya@japaninc.com.
=============================================

==============ADVERTISEMENT==================
J@PAN INC magazine - the journal of business, technology and people in
Japan - invites you to participate in an "EDUCATION" special ad
section scheduled for the January 2004 issue.

Your company will be interviewed for the ad section article and will
be included in the Directory Listings page, providing a tremendous
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For more information please contact us at: sales@japaninc.com
================================================

================ EVENT ====================
Entrepreneur Association of Tokyo - November Seminar

Lance E. Lee, President of the American Chamber of Commerce Japan
(ACCJ), IGC Japan and The Resource Group will be discussing his
experiences in doing business in Japan over the past 30 years and
how the ACCJ helped him along the way.

Date: Tuesday, November 4th http://www.ea-tokyo.com
Email: info@ea-tokyo.com
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SUBSCRIBERS: 6,057 as of November 6, 2003

STAFF
Written by Arjen van Blokland; Edited by Roland Kelts
(editors@japaninc.com)

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