Terrie's Take

Terrie's Take 388 -- Are lithium batteries safe? ebiz news from Japan

General Edition Sunday, August 27, 2006 Issue No. 388

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

Logistics Factility Tours So Fast Offering Tours of Its Warehouse So Fast Corporation, an innovative logistics company, is offering tours of its Heiwajima warehouse. See why 8 of 10 foreign CEOs choose So Fast after a visit. Read in the Fall issue of J@pan Inc Magazine why SNOVA Corporation selected So Fast and are glad they did. For details or appointment, contact Katsuhiko Kakuchiyama. Phone: 03-5753-3101 Email: [email protected] Logistics tour dates: Sep 1st through Oct 31st Times: 8:45a.m. - noon http://www.so-fast.co.jp/en/index.html

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+++ WHAT'S NEW

back

Back at the end of June (Terrie's Take 380), we carried a news item about a Dell laptop that exploded into flames at a conference here in Japan and which was caught on video.

Little did we know at the time, but this presaged one of the largest recalls of electronics products in history, starting with 4.1m notebooks from Dell and followed ten days later with 1.1m notebooks from Apple.

The batteries were made by Sony Energy Devices, and we're sure that many were wondering just how severe the fall-out would be in terms of Sony's stock price after the two recalls. To be sure, there was a hit on the stock price, but it wasn't as bad as many expected, with the stock dipping just 5% after the both incidents.

This got us to thinking, how is it that a faulty product which could literally bring down an airplane (think fire in an overhead storage compartment) have such a small effect on Sony's shares?

We think there are three main reasons:
1. Although the news was very visible and negative, the battery business is just a fraction of the company's overall sales, and overall Sony appears to be on the mend. Investors have factored in the recall cost and decided the company can get past it.

2. The battery problem can be partially blamed back on to the manufacturers -- on the basis that their design to do rapid recharging of batteries pushes the performance envelope for Lithium-ion cells too far.

3. The quality of PR spin. Sony has put out that although the battery problem is "rare," the company and its partners are concerned about public safety and are playing on the safe side by conducting a general recall.

Let's look closer.

Firstly, we see the small stock market impact of this very negative problem as being an excellent indicator of how well the company is doing again. Clearly if the company was still down on its knees instead of being on the mend, then the doomsayers would be having a field day at the moment.

The fact that they are not shows that the market anticipates that even if Sony has to eat all the potential JPY39.4bn
(US$342m) cost of replacing the batteries, it may still turn a small profit next quarter thanks to booming sales of other devices.

So the markets, it appears, are unphased.

The technical causes of the batteries overheating were well explained in a recent Nikkei interview of a professor at Kyoto University, who is an expert on battery technology.
He points out that there are two possible, complementary reasons for the Dell notebook fires -- one of which offsets some of the blame from Sony.

Firstly, there was the well publicized manufacturing failure, consisting of metal particles that were introduced into the battery electrolyte and which can eventually lead to internal short circuits and thus overheating. Sony takes full responsibility for this.

The second reason, however, is probably not so well known, but allows Sony to share the blame with with Dell and Apple.

Apparently some PC designs by both companies push the Lithium-ion battery technology past its safe point by virtue of the fast recharging cycle the makers have implemented. According to the professor, when Lithium cells are exposed to rapid charging, they can form metal fragments through chemical reaction betwen the electrodes and a high concentration of Lithium atoms.

Once formed, these conductive metallic fragments can penetrate the plastic separator between the positive and negative electrodes, causing major short-circuits and thus catastrophic over-heating. This failure in circuit design is probably why Sony investors are betting that the company won't have to cover the entire cost of the recall.

[Continued below]

Corporate Translation Does your translator have 15 years' experience? Professional translator Michael House does. Michael House can take your Japanese documents and translate them into clear, concise and accurate English. With special expertise in the IT, business and insurance sectors, Michael's 15 years' translating means you get top quality. Why go through an agent when you can go direct? Email Michael now for competitive rates and dates. Email: [email protected]

OK, so what about public perception? Aren't people worried about laptops blowing up in their hands? Are they buying less Sony products?

The media has it that the number of batteries to actually combust has been less than 5 units among 5m machines, and thus by inference the level of malfunction is probably acceptable. This almost lets Sony off the hook, but it is worth noting that the company has had overheating problems in its batteries before, due to manufacturing errors, and resulting in a general recall of InfoLithium cells back in
1999 and 2000. In that case also, there was very little negative reaction from the public.

Clearly then, Sony has been doing a great job with its PR and damage control in general.

In the press release put out on Sony's global site, phrases such as, "Sony is committed to the safety of consumers and supports this recall" and "The recall arises because, on rare occasions..." all represent a masterful spin on the fact that even though the fault is there, Sony is going the extra mile to make sure that we the consumers are protected. Of course, the company has NO choice but to recall the batteries anyway since a US federal agency has told them to -- but at least our safety comes first, sort of...

But perhaps Sony's shareholders and customers should not be sanguine. Already a Washington DC personal injury law firm called Schmidt & Clark have on their website an appeal for consumers who have been injured or have suffered losses due to defective batteries in Dell notebooks. The site lists several known incidents which have had the makings of a major damages suit but which were luckily caught in time.

Such an incident was a notebook at a food processing plant which caught fire and required a fire brigade response.
Another was a truck exploding in Nevada after a glove box fire (where the PC was located) ignited gun ammunition which then shot out the gas tank! A third was in February when a UPS cargo plane in Philadelphia caught fire for unknown reasons... but coincidentally the airplane was transporting lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries are used in millions of consumer electronics devices, not just laptops. If it is found that the technology in general is inherently unsafe, especially in the presence of perhaps more unexplained UPS-type fires, then this could have major repercussions for Sony. The problem would no longer be the batteries themselves but the fact that without the dense, compact energy that Li-ion can provide, most modern electronic gadgets won't work.
And that's a problem.

This is not a far-fetched scenario. For example, the Schmidt & Clark website points out that among the products recalled by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission
(CPSC) in the last 6 years were 12 recalls for consumer electronics products such as a Disney children's DVD player.

If the more non-PC devices claims surface now that public awareness has increased, and the US media picks up on the batteries being at fault, then Sony could be headed for another period of turbulence.

...The Information Janitors/
 

---

Furnished Apartments in Tokyo Century 21 SKY Realty has been the leader in Tokyo's real estate market for more than 20 years. We offer a wide selection of rental and sales properties for residential and commercial use. Our bilingual agents are skilled at helping people find the ideal location to accommodate their lifestyle. We also help businesses find room to work, with our vast computerized inventory of commercial and office space, not only in central Tokyo but also throughout most of Japan. Visit our website for up-to-date listings and more features: http://www.c21sky.com/c2/

+++ SERVICES LINE-UP

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Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
  [email protected].
   
• Get a low-cost office in Tokyo, at the Venture Gas Station incubator. Just JPY80,000/month, in Minami-Aoyama. Spaces closing fast -- enquire now. 
  [email protected]
   
• J@pan Inc. magazine is quarterly. Subscriptions are just JPY3,600 a year. Sign up at
  http://www.japaninc.com/mag/subs.html
   
• Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
  [email protected] Ph: 03-3499-3040

+++ NEWS

back

- Medical services data to be made public
- Firms line up to buy Ashikaga Bank
- Execs arrested for illegal tech exports
- Iranian connection with Mitsutoyo
- AIM bans Japanese GAAP

-> Medical services data to be made public

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has said that from next year it will require prefectural governments to post local medical services data online for the public. The data will include doctor's resumes and resources info for local hospitals and dental clinics. Still to be decided is whether to make the data even more specific, including information on law suits, volume of surgery, average length of stay, and patient survival rates. (Source: TT commentary from ihealthbeat.org, Aug 22, 2006.)

http://www.ihealthbeat.org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemID=124413

->Firms line up to buy Ashikaga Bank

A selection of leading local and foreign banking firms are lining up consortiums to bid for the troubled Ashikaga Bank. Among the interested parties are Nomura, Daiwa Securities, Nikko Cordial, and JP Morgan and Chase. The FSA will begin selection procedures for a buyer early next month and make its final decision in March, 2007. The bank is expected to sell for about JPY350-JPY400bn and the buyer will probably need to inject another JPY150bn to JPY200bn in additional capital to bring the bank up to the BIS minimum of 8%. Ashikaga went under because of bad loans made in the 90's and last year had a negative net worth of JPY387.9bn (US$3.37bn). (Source: TT commentary from mainichi-msn.co.jp, Aug 25, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/galsx

->Execs arrested for illegal tech exports

Five executives of the Mitsutoyo company, a precision instruments maker, were arrested this week for allegedly exporting to Malaysia sensitive measuring equipment that could be used for making centrifuge parts to separate uranium for nuclear weapons. The measuring equipment was sold in 2001, without government permission, to Scomi Precision Engingeering, a firm reportedly related to Dr.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakastani scientist who is said to have sold nuclear technology to Libya in the past. At least one of the Mitsutoyo devices was then on-shipped to Libya on an Iranian flagged vessel. (Source: TT commentary from nytimes.com, Aug 25, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/flpmo

->Iranian connection with Mitsutoyo

Further implicating the 5 arrested Mitsutoyo execs, the Nikkei reported just yesterday that an Iranian trading company was raided by Tokyo police on Friday for brokering the export of the Mitsutoyo products along with other unauthorized software and hardware useful in the production of nuclear arms. The same firm is suspected of exporting sophisticated optical sighting devices and milling machines suitable for manufacturing anti-tank rockets and guided missile parts. Police are now analyzing a list of companies that the trading house was ordering from.
(Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 26, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060825D25JFA18.htm

-> AIM bans Japanese GAAP

The London Stock Exchange's AIM market has decided that Japanese companies listed on AIM will not be able to use Japanese GAAP accounting as their corporate accounting system, and instead will need to follow International Accounting Standards (IAS), US GAAP, or some other internationally recognized standard. ***Ed: Effectively this puts the kabosh on any more Japanese firms listing on AIM.
The cost of maintaining two separate accounting systems wouldn't be worth the effort.** (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 25, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060826D26JF086.htm

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

Health Insurance How Much of Your Money has Your Health Insurance Company Given Back to You During the Past 4 Years? Our customers have received total Cash Back averaging $3,241 each, while enjoying the benefits of full coverage, tailored to their individual needs. You can too. http://www.expathealthassurance.com

+++ CANDIDATE ROUND UP

back

DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        -> Network operation/maintenance team leader
        Male, late 30s, native Japanese and Portuguese, fluent English and Spanish.

        Experience:

• 10 years IT operation/support
• Strong troubleshooting skills
• Management of Cisco PIX, VPN/ACS, Catalyst (IOS)
• Installation, administration, support and maintenance of Solaris, Linux, Windows Client/Server systems
• Task coordination, progress management, planning, testing, introduction, implementation of new technologies
• Training subordinates and end-users

　　　Technologies:

• OS: Red Hat Linux, Solaris,, Windows XP/2003/2000/ NT3.5-4.0, Mac OS 9.x-X, DOS
• Network: Cisco Catalyst/PIX Firewall/VPN / ACS, NetScreen, Fortigate, Mirapoint RazorGate
• Hardware: IA, Macintosh PowerPC, Sun SPARC, RAID, NAS, DDS, DLT, LTO, Network printers / UPS
• Databases: MS SQL 6.0-7.0, MySQL, Oracle
• Programming: Turbo C, Pascal
• Software: MS Office, McAfee VirusScan, Norton AntiVirus,TrendMicro VirusBuster, InterScan 3.8/IWSS/IMSS
• Internet:IIS, Apache, Sendmail, Squid, Samba, Active!Mail
• Design: MS FrontPage, Adobe GoLive/ PhotoShop
• Others: Snort, MS Visio, VMWare

          * Looking for JPY6M. Available 1 month notice.

        --------------------------------------------

        -> Microsoft Solution Systems Engineer
            male, 30, native Japanese, business English

        Experience:

• 10 years as supervisor
• Microsoft Solution Engineer
• Web design, site construction and operation
• Supervised projects
• Produced multimedia content: dispatching system from design to operations
• WAN Admin and development leader
• Liason between engineers and users, creating interfaces to meet user requirements
• Maintained WAN intranet enviroment.
• Software design, database development and maintenance
• ServerNetwork and Database Management
• Vendor negotiations

　　　Technologies:

• OS: Windows 2003/2000/NT, MacOS
• Networks: TCP/IP, WAN/LAN (Router, Server)
• Languages: VBA, VB(C/S, Web), ASP, VB and JScripts (Web, Batch), HTML, T-SQL, .Net(Web, C/S)
• Hardware: SCSI, PC/AT, Cisco

        Certifications: MCP(SQL), MCA, Apple

              * Looking for JPY7M. Available 1 month notice.

      --------------------------------------------------------------------------

        -> IT Marketing Planner
        Female, late 20s, native Japanese, business English

        Experience:

• 4 years marketing in global IT company
• Pricing, promotion planning, demand-supply matching  of hardware
• Responsible for revenue and gross margin of PCs
• Started online shop for consumers and start-up SMB portal
• Responsible for cost reduction and operational performance
• Setup operational flow and rules
• Bid managing, sales training, channel promotion planning

          * Looking for JPY7M. Available 1 month notice.

--------------------------------------------

              DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
              [email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

             

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+++ UPCOMING EVENTS/ANNOUNCEMENTS

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Entrepreneur Association of Tokyo - September 12th Speaker: Alex Serge Vieux, Publisher, CEO of Red Herring "Building great companies in the face of adversity" Mr. Vieux has kindly offered to fly out from California to speak at EA-Tokyo's September seminar. He will be drawing on his extensive expertise as a high-tech journalist, entrepreneur, professor, and advisor to the French government. Mr. Vieux is currently responsible for steering the growth of the organization and guiding the publication's vision. Date/Time: September 12th 7:00 pm Location: City Club of Tokyo - Maple Room (Canadian Embassy) Language: English Website:http://www.ea-tokyo.com Email: [email protected]

ICA Events - Sep 21 Speaker: Andrew Perons, Manager, Risk & Compliance, Strata Works K.K. Topic: "Corporate Governance - Changing Regulations         and Implications" Details: Event details at http://www.icajapan.jp/  (RSVP) Date: Thursday, Sept 21, 2006 Time: 6:30 Doors open, buffet dinner included Cost: 3,000 yen (members), 5,500 yen (non-members) Open to all - Location is Foreign Correspondents' Club

IT events announcements are priced at JPY50,000 per week. For more information, contact [email protected]

>>>>--------------------------------------------------<

Tyler Foundation Event Tyler Foundation for Childhood Cancer presents: Sports Extravaganza 2006, September 29 through October 1. Cricket and rugby celebrities from the UK, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand will come to Tokyo for 3 days of sport, fun and fundraising! Sports Dinner at the Grand Hyatt, Golf Day and Celebrity Cricket match. All proceeds benefit children with cancer in Japan. Shine On! www.tylershineon.org For more information on Sports Extravaganza 2006, please see: http://www.tylershineon.org/index.php/events/sports_extravaganza

END

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+++ ABOUT US

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Go to: www.japaninc.net/mag/subs.html for details.

General Edition Sunday, August 27, 2006 Issue No. 388

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

---

Back at the end of June (Terrie's Take 380), we carried a news item about a Dell laptop that exploded into flames at a conference here in Japan and which was caught on video.

Little did we know at the time, but this presaged one of the largest recalls of electronics products in history, starting with 4.1m notebooks from Dell and followed ten days later with 1.1m notebooks from Apple.

The batteries were made by Sony Energy Devices, and we're sure that many were wondering just how severe the fall-out would be in terms of Sony's stock price after the two recalls. To be sure, there was a hit on the stock price, but it wasn't as bad as many expected, with the stock dipping just 5% after the both incidents.

This got us to thinking, how is it that a faulty product which could literally bring down an airplane (think fire in an overhead storage compartment) have such a small effect on Sony's shares?

We think there are three main reasons:
1. Although the news was very visible and negative, the battery business is just a fraction of the company's overall sales, and overall Sony appears to be on the mend. Investors have factored in the recall cost and decided the company can get past it.

2. The battery problem can be partially blamed back on to the manufacturers -- on the basis that their design to do rapid recharging of batteries pushes the performance envelope for Lithium-ion cells too far.

3. The quality of PR spin. Sony has put out that although the battery problem is "rare," the company and its partners are concerned about public safety and are playing on the safe side by conducting a general recall.

Let's look closer.

Firstly, we see the small stock market impact of this very negative problem as being an excellent indicator of how well the company is doing again. Clearly if the company was still down on its knees instead of being on the mend, then the doomsayers would be having a field day at the moment.

The fact that they are not shows that the market anticipates that even if Sony has to eat all the potential JPY39.4bn
(US$342m) cost of replacing the batteries, it may still turn a small profit next quarter thanks to booming sales of other devices.

So the markets, it appears, are unphased.

The technical causes of the batteries overheating were well explained in a recent Nikkei interview of a professor at Kyoto University, who is an expert on battery technology.
He points out that there are two possible, complementary reasons for the Dell notebook fires -- one of which offsets some of the blame from Sony.

Firstly, there was the well publicized manufacturing failure, consisting of metal particles that were introduced into the battery electrolyte and which can eventually lead to internal short circuits and thus overheating. Sony takes full responsibility for this.

The second reason, however, is probably not so well known, but allows Sony to share the blame with with Dell and Apple.

Apparently some PC designs by both companies push the Lithium-ion battery technology past its safe point by virtue of the fast recharging cycle the makers have implemented. According to the professor, when Lithium cells are exposed to rapid charging, they can form metal fragments through chemical reaction betwen the electrodes and a high concentration of Lithium atoms.

Once formed, these conductive metallic fragments can penetrate the plastic separator between the positive and negative electrodes, causing major short-circuits and thus catastrophic over-heating. This failure in circuit design is probably why Sony investors are betting that the company won't have to cover the entire cost of the recall.

[Continued below]

Corporate Translation Does your translator have 15 years' experience? Professional translator Michael House does. Michael House can take your Japanese documents and translate them into clear, concise and accurate English. With special expertise in the IT, business and insurance sectors, Michael's 15 years' translating means you get top quality. Why go through an agent when you can go direct? Email Michael now for competitive rates and dates. Email: [email protected]

OK, so what about public perception? Aren't people worried about laptops blowing up in their hands? Are they buying less Sony products?

The media has it that the number of batteries to actually combust has been less than 5 units among 5m machines, and thus by inference the level of malfunction is probably acceptable. This almost lets Sony off the hook, but it is worth noting that the company has had overheating problems in its batteries before, due to manufacturing errors, and resulting in a general recall of InfoLithium cells back in
1999 and 2000. In that case also, there was very little negative reaction from the public.

Clearly then, Sony has been doing a great job with its PR and damage control in general.

In the press release put out on Sony's global site, phrases such as, "Sony is committed to the safety of consumers and supports this recall" and "The recall arises because, on rare occasions..." all represent a masterful spin on the fact that even though the fault is there, Sony is going the extra mile to make sure that we the consumers are protected. Of course, the company has NO choice but to recall the batteries anyway since a US federal agency has told them to -- but at least our safety comes first, sort of...

But perhaps Sony's shareholders and customers should not be sanguine. Already a Washington DC personal injury law firm called Schmidt & Clark have on their website an appeal for consumers who have been injured or have suffered losses due to defective batteries in Dell notebooks. The site lists several known incidents which have had the makings of a major damages suit but which were luckily caught in time.

Such an incident was a notebook at a food processing plant which caught fire and required a fire brigade response.
Another was a truck exploding in Nevada after a glove box fire (where the PC was located) ignited gun ammunition which then shot out the gas tank! A third was in February when a UPS cargo plane in Philadelphia caught fire for unknown reasons... but coincidentally the airplane was transporting lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries are used in millions of consumer electronics devices, not just laptops. If it is found that the technology in general is inherently unsafe, especially in the presence of perhaps more unexplained UPS-type fires, then this could have major repercussions for Sony. The problem would no longer be the batteries themselves but the fact that without the dense, compact energy that Li-ion can provide, most modern electronic gadgets won't work.
And that's a problem.

This is not a far-fetched scenario. For example, the Schmidt & Clark website points out that among the products recalled by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission
(CPSC) in the last 6 years were 12 recalls for consumer electronics products such as a Disney children's DVD player.

If the more non-PC devices claims surface now that public awareness has increased, and the US media picks up on the batteries being at fault, then Sony could be headed for another period of turbulence.

---

Furnished Apartments in Tokyo Century 21 SKY Realty has been the leader in Tokyo's real estate market for more than 20 years. We offer a wide selection of rental and sales properties for residential and commercial use. Our bilingual agents are skilled at helping people find the ideal location to accommodate their lifestyle. We also help businesses find room to work, with our vast computerized inventory of commercial and office space, not only in central Tokyo but also throughout most of Japan. Visit our website for up-to-date listings and more features: http://www.c21sky.com/c2/

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
  [email protected].
   
• Get a low-cost office in Tokyo, at the Venture Gas Station incubator. Just JPY80,000/month, in Minami-Aoyama. Spaces closing fast -- enquire now. 
  [email protected]
   
• J@pan Inc. magazine is quarterly. Subscriptions are just JPY3,600 a year. Sign up at
  http://www.japaninc.com/mag/subs.html
   
• Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
  [email protected] Ph: 03-3499-3040

-> Medical services data to be made public

->Firms line up to buy Ashikaga Bank

->Execs arrested for illegal tech exports

Five executives of the Mitsutoyo company, a precision instruments maker, were arrested this week for allegedly exporting to Malaysia sensitive measuring equipment that could be used for making centrifuge parts to separate uranium for nuclear weapons. The measuring equipment was sold in 2001, without government permission, to Scomi Precision Engingeering, a firm reportedly related to Dr.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakastani scientist who is said to have sold nuclear technology to Libya in the past. At least one of the Mitsutoyo devices was then on-shipped to Libya on an Iranian flagged vessel. (Source: TT commentary from nytimes.com, Aug 25, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/flpmo

->Iranian connection with Mitsutoyo

Further implicating the 5 arrested Mitsutoyo execs, the Nikkei reported just yesterday that an Iranian trading company was raided by Tokyo police on Friday for brokering the export of the Mitsutoyo products along with other unauthorized software and hardware useful in the production of nuclear arms. The same firm is suspected of exporting sophisticated optical sighting devices and milling machines suitable for manufacturing anti-tank rockets and guided missile parts. Police are now analyzing a list of companies that the trading house was ordering from.
(Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 26, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060825D25JFA18.htm

-> AIM bans Japanese GAAP

The London Stock Exchange's AIM market has decided that Japanese companies listed on AIM will not be able to use Japanese GAAP accounting as their corporate accounting system, and instead will need to follow International Accounting Standards (IAS), US GAAP, or some other internationally recognized standard. ***Ed: Effectively this puts the kabosh on any more Japanese firms listing on AIM.
The cost of maintaining two separate accounting systems wouldn't be worth the effort.** (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 25, 2006)

->Iranian connection with Mitsutoyo

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

Health Insurance How Much of Your Money has Your Health Insurance Company Given Back to You During the Past 4 Years? Our customers have received total Cash Back averaging $3,241 each, while enjoying the benefits of full coverage, tailored to their individual needs. You can too. http://www.expathealthassurance.com

DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        -> Network operation/maintenance team leader
        Male, late 30s, native Japanese and Portuguese, fluent English and Spanish.

        Experience:

        --------------------------------------------

        -> Microsoft Solution Systems Engineer
            male, 30, native Japanese, business English

        Experience:

        -> IT Marketing Planner
        Female, late 20s, native Japanese, business English

        Experience:

Terrie's Take 387 -- Paper-thin batteries, ebiz news from Japan

General Edition Sunday, August 13, 2006 Issue No. 387

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

Logistics: The So-Fast Corporation========Why Choose the So-Fast Corporation? Failed logistics is a frequent reason why foreign import/retail companies in Japan eventually pull out. In the start-up phase, management is focused on just getting the business up and running, and so it is tempting to abdicate the logistics to a large trading or transportation firm. But the reality is that the convenience is soon replaced by frustration -- as any change request, any problem resolution takes forever and becomes "too hard to do". Now, So-Fast Corporation offers its "Start Logistics Package" which includes: 1. A reasonable and set price, 2. Simple distribution, and 3. Quick, customer-oriented service to satisfy end-users One customer that did switch is Guthy-Renker, featured alongside So-Fast in the Spring 2005 issue of J@pan Inc, www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=1429. Guthy-Renker is one of Japan's largest TV marketing companies. If logistics are a key part of your success in Japan - get connected with So-Fast. Email: [email protected] http://www.so-fast.co.jp/en/index.html

---

+++ WHAT'S NEW

back

With its great public transport system, Japan is one of the world's truly personally mobile cultures. There are portable gadgets of all kinds, not least of which include cell phones and music players. Have you ever wondered just how many batteries are needed annually to feed this mobility? We decided to check, and apparently Japanese consumers own more than 100m cell phones and 200m+ personal entertainment and information devices. As a result, they consume about 4.6bn batteries worth JPY700bn (US$5.98bn) yearly, of which about 78% are primary (disposable) batteries.

Thus any breakthrough in making batteries better or cheaper is big news to consumers and electronics makers alike.

In our latest (Summer) issue of the Japan Inc. magazine, we are featuring a Tokyo-based venture company called Ion Technology which has created a true paper-thin battery (not a capacitor). This amazing product can be printed on to paper, card, and plastic media, applied as a paste-and-foil combination, much the same as ink and plastic coatings are printed today.

The availability of a small, cheap printed battery, when combined with integrated CPUs, sensors, and e-paper makes possible a whole range of new ubiquitous devices. Think smart bandaids with healing displays, audible due-by date warnings on food packages, talking alien registration forms, e-paper free newspapers, supermarket RFID tags with onboard transmitters, credit cards with onboard CPUs, and lots else besides.

Ion Technology's breakthrough has been in the development of an activated, solid electrolyte made of natural minerals which can be printed between a pair of graphite and aluminum plate electrodes. Although the content of the electrolyte is a patent-pending trade secret, lab testing and now trial runs of sample product are proving that that the formulation not only works, it produces about 4-10 times the energy density for a given volume than other "paper-thin" batteries. As added benefits, Ion Technology says that their disposable batteries are environmentally friendly and only cost about 50% of conventional cells to produce.

If you're technical, then these specs might be interesting:
* Ultra-thin version, measuring just 0.2mm in height, provides 3.5 volts at 400uA/hr per 4cm2
* 0.6mm version, suitable for credit cards, offers triple the output -- i.e., no loss of capacity when stacked
* 1mm version, suitable for prepaid cards, can supply 14 volts output, enough to power an onboard display and data transmitter
* As a comparison, current paper-thin batteries of 0.6mm profile offer just 1.5 volt output and 30uA/hr of power

As you can imagine, with energy specifications like these, coupled with the low manufacturing costs, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Chinese consumer electronics manufacturers are lining up to deal with Ion Technology. After producing lab prototypes late last year (2005), the company quickly moved to funding and received its first round in February 2006.

But money alone is not enough according to Ion Tech's paranoid CEO. His primary concern is that as he gains a higher profile, he will be targeted by some of the heavyweights in the industry.  He expects patent and, PR challenges from companies claiming paper-thin products but who have not yet cracked the energy density riddle. For this reason, Ion Technology is actively courting foreign manufacturers and partners to produce licenced products and conduct further product developement.

The CEO of Ion Technology is 48-year old Nobuyuki Tabata.
He is a graduate of the prestigious Hitotsubashi University and is a qualified accountant with an inventive streak. An interesting guy, Tabata has seen the highs and lows of running one's own business. The low point was when in his early 30's he had a water purification company shut down by an impatient vendor and their bank. This buried him in debt and took 10 years to work off.

Hardly humbled, however, Tabata is still very much the entrepreneur. Ever since he was a kid, he has been obsessed with the study of rocks, derivative minerals, and their properties. Although he won't say which one, in 2003 while working in his lab, he recalls that he "just happened" upon a mineral which produces a weak form of electricity naturally. Sensing that this scientific anomaly could be commercialized, he set about isolating the active material and processing it into a purpose-made ceramic. Two years later, he has successfully achieved this goal and is using the resulting active material in Ion Technologies'
batteries.

As mentioned, Tabata himself is an interesting person. He told us that much of his knowledge is gained from text books that he pores over every night. To stay ahead of the curve, he tries to read 500 books a year! Of course, doing this and holding down a job at the same time would normally be impossible. But several years ago Tabata discovered an obscure title in Japanese which purports to help readers survive on just 3 hours sleep a night. The idea of gaining an extra 5 hours study time a day excited him and he embarked on the program. It worked and he reckons that he now gets by on just 3-5 hours sleep a night and yet can still function effectively during the daytime in the office.

Subscribers can find the full Ion Technology article at:
http://www.japaninc.com/contents.php?issueID=73
Contact [email protected] for subscription enquiries.

Lastly, a short notice that we will be taking our annual summer holiday break next weekend. Terrie's Take will be back on August 27th. Have a good one.

...The Information Janitors/
 

---

+++ SERVICES LINE-UP

back

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
  [email protected].
   
• Get a low-cost office in Tokyo, at the Venture Gas Station incubator. Just JPY80,000/month, in Minami-Aoyama. Spaces closing fast -- enquire now. 
  [email protected]
   
• J@pan Inc. magazine is quarterly. Subscriptions are just JPY3,600 a year. Sign up at
  http://www.japaninc.com/mag/subs.html
   
• Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
  [email protected] Ph: 03-3499-3040

+++ NEWS

back

- Mind-controlled wheelchairs
- Number portability to cost about JPY5,000
- Lonely man makes 37,760 calls
- English-language education up
- Labor shortage worsening

-> Mind-controlled wheelchairs

Straight out of the pages of a science fiction novel, researchers at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications have announced that they have developed a prototype wheelchair that responds to brain wave patterns. Intended for quadraplegics, the system involves a head cap fitted with 13 sensors to monitor the wearer's brain waves. The system is first trained by the user, and over time can be made to work with about 80% accuracy. (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 10, 2006) the first time since records started in 1968, Japan's death rate exceeded her birth rate.

According to the Internal Affairs ministry, 1,072,281 people died through fiscal year 2005, while only 1,065,533 babies were born.

As a result, the number of Japanese (not including foreigners) fell 3,505 from the year before.

People aged 65 or older now account for 20.3% of the population.

(Source: TT commentary from hindu.com, Aug 5, 2006).

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060810DA0J8101.htm

->Number portability to cost about JPY5,000

KDDI has become the first cell phone operator to publish its fee schedule for customers wanting to switch carriers but wanting to keep their number. This comes in response to the number portability law due to take effect on October 24th. KDDI said it will charge a JPY2,100 termination fee, and for those moving to KDDI from another carrier, the standard sign-up fee of JPY2,835. Since NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile are expected to announce similar rates, this means that for most people wanting to switch carriers, the switch will cost them about JPY5,000 in termination and new sign-up fees. (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 10, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060809D09JFA11.htm

->Lonely man makes 37,760 calls

A 44-year old salary man in Hiroshima has admitted making 37,760 silent calls to NTT directory assistance operators in the 5 months between March and July this year, because he was lonely. He said that after making a complaint call in March he was so taken by the kind, polite response he received, he became hooked and couldn't resist listening to female operators up to 905 times a day. ***Ed: And you think YOU need to get a life?!** (Source: TT commentary from reuters.co.uk, Aug 10, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/h3hn7

->English-language education up

While speaking English may not be the nation's strong suit, study of it is still big business. The overall foreign-language education sector in Japan was apparently worth JPY640bn (US$5.5bn) in FY2005, according to data from the Yano Research Institute. YRI also said that English conversation classes for children accounted for JPY94.6bn (US$822m), and classes for adults were worth JPY265bn (US$2.3bn). In addition to English, adult language schools are now commonly teaching Chinese, Korean, and French too.
(Source: TT commentary from guardian.co.uk, Aug 11, 2006)

http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,,1837535,00.html

-> Labor shortage worsening

After the tribulations of the last 15 years, we never thought we'd see the day, but a recent survey by the Nikkei has found that 39.8% of CEOs say that they are having problems finding sufficient staff. Of those surveyed, 9% said they think the labor shortage is getting substantially worse, 30.8% said they currently are short of staff, and only 6% said that there is excess labor. It appears that the biggest shortages are for sales and marketing staff, followed by factory workers. ***Ed: At least the manufacturing sector shortage could addressed by strategic increases in registered foreign workers in Japan. We think it is only a matter of time before visa volumes start to
increase.** (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 7, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060807D07HH007.htm

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

Charity Event -- Tyler Foundation The Tyler Foundation for Childhood Cancer presents: Sports Extravaganza 2006, September 29 - October 1. Cricket and rugby celebrities from the UK, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand will come to Tokyo for 3 days of sport, fun and fundraising! Sports Dinner at the Grand Hyatt, Golf Day and Celebrity Cricket match.  All proceeds benefit children with cancer in Japan. Shine On! www.tylershineon.org For more information on the Sports Extravaganza 2006, please see: www.tylershineon.org/index.php/events/sports_extravaganza

+++ CANDIDATE ROUND UP

back

DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        ->  HR Generalist
         Female, Early 30s, Native Japanese, Intermediate English

        Experience:

• Over 1yr in HR, recruitment and training of new grads & experienced staff
• Over 5yrs of stores management, managing up to 30 staff (hiring, training, daily operation supervision)
• New hire orientation, e-learning & mentoring systems
• Strength in service industry, strong interpersonal skills

        *Looking for JPY5M. Available 1 month's notice.

        --------------------------------------------

        -> Writer/Editor/Translator
            Male, 35, Native Japanese, Fluent English

        Experience:

• Writer/Editor of user's manuals for digital peripherals
• Translation from E-J and J-E
• Worked on localization and internationalization projects
• Recently obtained Securities and Financial Planning certifications to expand industry knowledge

              * Looking for JPY5M. Available 1 month notice.

      --------------------------------------------------------------------------

        -> System Engineer
        Male, early 30's, Native Japanese, Business English

        Experience:

• Four years system engineer at ISP/SI company
• Strength in internet security, network, anti-virus sw
• Built various servers, networks for product testing
• Strong Knowledge of Unix, Linux, Solaris, Windows
• Monitoring & finding solutions on Windows servers, Unix servers, routers and L3 switches
• CCNA 640-607J and LPIC Level 1 101J, 102J holder

　　　Technologies:

• OS: Unix, Solaris, Red Hat Linux, Linux, SuSE, Apple OS9, Windows 2000-2003 Server/XP pro/ME/2000/98/NT4.0
• Software: IIS, Apache, MS Exchange, Squid, Sendmail, Qpop
• Database Software: Lotus Notes, Remedy, Access
• Management Systems: HP Openview, SNMPc, Netkids, Dell IT Assistant, Compaq Insight Manager, HP Insight Manager, Unicenter TNG, Veritus Open Manage, Veritus Backup Exe, Global Array Manager, Visio, ISMS
• Programming: HTML, SQL

          * Looking for JPY5.5M. Available immediately.

--------------------------------------------

              DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
              [email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

---

+++ UPCOMING EVENTS/ANNOUNCEMENTS

back

Entrepreneur Association of Tokyo - September 12th Speaker: Alex Serge Vieux, Publisher, CEO of Red Herring "Building great companies in the face of adversity" Mr. Vieux has kindly offered to fly out from California to speak at EA-Tokyo's September seminar. He will be drawing on his extensive expertise as a high-tech journalist, entrepreneur, professor, and advisor to the French government. Mr. Vieux is currently responsible for steering the growth of the organization and guiding the publication's vision. Date/Time: September 12th 7:00 pm Location: City Club of Tokyo - Maple Room (Canadian Embassy) Language: English Website:http://www.ea-tokyo.com Email: [email protected]

IT events announcements are priced at JPY50,000 per week. For more information, contact [email protected]

>>>>--------------------------------------------------<

END

SUBSCRIBERS: 24,036 as of August 13, 2006
(We purge our list regularly.)

---

+++ ABOUT US

back

STAFF
Written by: Terrie Lloyd[email protected].


HELP: E-mail [email protected]
with the word 'help' in the subject or body (dont include the quotes), and you will get back a message with instructions.


FEEDBACK
Send letters (Feedback, Inquiries & Information) to the editor to [email protected].


ADVERTISING INFORMATION
For more information on advertising in this newsletter, contact [email protected].


SUSCRIBE
Get Terrie's Take by giving your name and email address athttp://www.terrie.com/subscribe.html.
BACK ISSUES
http://mailman.lincmedia.co.jp/pipermail/terrie/.
BACK ISSUES
http://mailman.lincmedia.co.jp/pipermail/terrie/.



Copyright 2006 Japan Inc. Communications Inc.

_______________Japan Inc is worth every penny!_______________

Don't forget you can get deeper analysis on Japan's hottest new businesses and technology from the quarterly edition of J@pan Inc. 1-year subscription for JPY3,600(Japan). It's so cost effective you can even get your company to pay for it!
Go to: www.japaninc.net/mag/subs.html for details.

---

General Edition Sunday, August 13, 2006 Issue No. 387

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

---

With its great public transport system, Japan is one of the world's truly personally mobile cultures. There are portable gadgets of all kinds, not least of which include cell phones and music players. Have you ever wondered just how many batteries are needed annually to feed this mobility? We decided to check, and apparently Japanese consumers own more than 100m cell phones and 200m+ personal entertainment and information devices. As a result, they consume about 4.6bn batteries worth JPY700bn (US$5.98bn) yearly, of which about 78% are primary (disposable) batteries.

Thus any breakthrough in making batteries better or cheaper is big news to consumers and electronics makers alike.

In our latest (Summer) issue of the Japan Inc. magazine, we are featuring a Tokyo-based venture company called Ion Technology which has created a true paper-thin battery (not a capacitor). This amazing product can be printed on to paper, card, and plastic media, applied as a paste-and-foil combination, much the same as ink and plastic coatings are printed today.

The availability of a small, cheap printed battery, when combined with integrated CPUs, sensors, and e-paper makes possible a whole range of new ubiquitous devices. Think smart bandaids with healing displays, audible due-by date warnings on food packages, talking alien registration forms, e-paper free newspapers, supermarket RFID tags with onboard transmitters, credit cards with onboard CPUs, and lots else besides.

Ion Technology's breakthrough has been in the development of an activated, solid electrolyte made of natural minerals which can be printed between a pair of graphite and aluminum plate electrodes. Although the content of the electrolyte is a patent-pending trade secret, lab testing and now trial runs of sample product are proving that that the formulation not only works, it produces about 4-10 times the energy density for a given volume than other "paper-thin" batteries. As added benefits, Ion Technology says that their disposable batteries are environmentally friendly and only cost about 50% of conventional cells to produce.

If you're technical, then these specs might be interesting:
* Ultra-thin version, measuring just 0.2mm in height, provides 3.5 volts at 400uA/hr per 4cm2
* 0.6mm version, suitable for credit cards, offers triple the output -- i.e., no loss of capacity when stacked
* 1mm version, suitable for prepaid cards, can supply 14 volts output, enough to power an onboard display and data transmitter
* As a comparison, current paper-thin batteries of 0.6mm profile offer just 1.5 volt output and 30uA/hr of power

As you can imagine, with energy specifications like these, coupled with the low manufacturing costs, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Chinese consumer electronics manufacturers are lining up to deal with Ion Technology. After producing lab prototypes late last year (2005), the company quickly moved to funding and received its first round in February 2006.

But money alone is not enough according to Ion Tech's paranoid CEO. His primary concern is that as he gains a higher profile, he will be targeted by some of the heavyweights in the industry.  He expects patent and, PR challenges from companies claiming paper-thin products but who have not yet cracked the energy density riddle. For this reason, Ion Technology is actively courting foreign manufacturers and partners to produce licenced products and conduct further product developement.

The CEO of Ion Technology is 48-year old Nobuyuki Tabata.
He is a graduate of the prestigious Hitotsubashi University and is a qualified accountant with an inventive streak. An interesting guy, Tabata has seen the highs and lows of running one's own business. The low point was when in his early 30's he had a water purification company shut down by an impatient vendor and their bank. This buried him in debt and took 10 years to work off.

Hardly humbled, however, Tabata is still very much the entrepreneur. Ever since he was a kid, he has been obsessed with the study of rocks, derivative minerals, and their properties. Although he won't say which one, in 2003 while working in his lab, he recalls that he "just happened" upon a mineral which produces a weak form of electricity naturally. Sensing that this scientific anomaly could be commercialized, he set about isolating the active material and processing it into a purpose-made ceramic. Two years later, he has successfully achieved this goal and is using the resulting active material in Ion Technologies'
batteries.

As mentioned, Tabata himself is an interesting person. He told us that much of his knowledge is gained from text books that he pores over every night. To stay ahead of the curve, he tries to read 500 books a year! Of course, doing this and holding down a job at the same time would normally be impossible. But several years ago Tabata discovered an obscure title in Japanese which purports to help readers survive on just 3 hours sleep a night. The idea of gaining an extra 5 hours study time a day excited him and he embarked on the program. It worked and he reckons that he now gets by on just 3-5 hours sleep a night and yet can still function effectively during the daytime in the office.

Subscribers can find the full Ion Technology article at:
http://www.japaninc.com/contents.php?issueID=73
Contact [email protected] for subscription enquiries.

Lastly, a short notice that we will be taking our annual summer holiday break next weekend. Terrie's Take will be back on August 27th. Have a good one.

---

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
  [email protected].
   
• Get a low-cost office in Tokyo, at the Venture Gas Station incubator. Just JPY80,000/month, in Minami-Aoyama. Spaces closing fast -- enquire now. 
  [email protected]
   
• J@pan Inc. magazine is quarterly. Subscriptions are just JPY3,600 a year. Sign up at
  http://www.japaninc.com/mag/subs.html
   
• Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
  [email protected] Ph: 03-3499-3040

-> Mind-controlled wheelchairs

->Number portability to cost about JPY5,000

->Lonely man makes 37,760 calls

A 44-year old salary man in Hiroshima has admitted making 37,760 silent calls to NTT directory assistance operators in the 5 months between March and July this year, because he was lonely. He said that after making a complaint call in March he was so taken by the kind, polite response he received, he became hooked and couldn't resist listening to female operators up to 905 times a day. ***Ed: And you think YOU need to get a life?!** (Source: TT commentary from reuters.co.uk, Aug 10, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/h3hn7

->English-language education up

While speaking English may not be the nation's strong suit, study of it is still big business. The overall foreign-language education sector in Japan was apparently worth JPY640bn (US$5.5bn) in FY2005, according to data from the Yano Research Institute. YRI also said that English conversation classes for children accounted for JPY94.6bn (US$822m), and classes for adults were worth JPY265bn (US$2.3bn). In addition to English, adult language schools are now commonly teaching Chinese, Korean, and French too.
(Source: TT commentary from guardian.co.uk, Aug 11, 2006)

http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,,1837535,00.html

-> Labor shortage worsening

After the tribulations of the last 15 years, we never thought we'd see the day, but a recent survey by the Nikkei has found that 39.8% of CEOs say that they are having problems finding sufficient staff. Of those surveyed, 9% said they think the labor shortage is getting substantially worse, 30.8% said they currently are short of staff, and only 6% said that there is excess labor. It appears that the biggest shortages are for sales and marketing staff, followed by factory workers. ***Ed: At least the manufacturing sector shortage could addressed by strategic increases in registered foreign workers in Japan. We think it is only a matter of time before visa volumes start to
increase.** (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 7, 2006)

->English-language education up

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

Charity Event -- Tyler Foundation The Tyler Foundation for Childhood Cancer presents: Sports Extravaganza 2006, September 29 - October 1. Cricket and rugby celebrities from the UK, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand will come to Tokyo for 3 days of sport, fun and fundraising! Sports Dinner at the Grand Hyatt, Golf Day and Celebrity Cricket match.  All proceeds benefit children with cancer in Japan. Shine On! www.tylershineon.org For more information on the Sports Extravaganza 2006, please see: www.tylershineon.org/index.php/events/sports_extravaganza

DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        ->  HR Generalist
         Female, Early 30s, Native Japanese, Intermediate English

        Experience:

• Over 1yr in HR, recruitment and training of new grads & experienced staff
• Over 5yrs of stores management, managing up to 30 staff (hiring, training, daily operation supervision)
• New hire orientation, e-learning & mentoring systems
• Strength in service industry, strong interpersonal skills

        *Looking for JPY5M. Available 1 month's notice.

        --------------------------------------------

        -> Writer/Editor/Translator
            Male, 35, Native Japanese, Fluent English

        Experience:

• Writer/Editor of user's manuals for digital peripherals
• Translation from E-J and J-E
• Worked on localization and internationalization projects
• Recently obtained Securities and Financial Planning certifications to expand industry knowledge

        -> System Engineer
        Male, early 30's, Native Japanese, Business English

        Experience:

---

Terrie's Take 386 -- ValueCommerce IPO, ebiz news from Japan

General Edition Sunday, August 6, 2006 Issue No. 386

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

Logistics: The So-Fast Corporation========Why Choose the So-Fast Corporation? Failed logistics is a frequent reason why foreign import/retail companies in Japan eventually pull out. In the start-up phase, management is focused on just getting the business up and running, and so it is tempting to abdicate the logistics to a large trading or transportation firm. But the reality is that the convenience is soon replaced by frustration -- as any change request, any problem resolution takes forever and becomes "too hard to do". Now, So-Fast Corporation offers its "Start Logistics Package" which includes: 1. A reasonable and set price, 2. Simple distribution, and 3. Quick, customer-oriented service to satisfy end-users One customer that did switch is Guthy-Renker, featured alongside So-Fast in the Spring 2005 issue of J@pan Inc, www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=1429. Guthy-Renker is one of Japan's largest TV marketing companies. If logistics are a key part of your success in Japan - get connected with So-Fast. Email: [email protected] http://www.so-fast.co.jp/en/index.html

---

+++ WHAT'S NEW

back

On Monday July 31st, although no English-language newspaper picked it up, an Internet/technology company  called ValueCommerce went public on the Mothers stock exchange.
What was notable about this IPO, apart from the healthy valuation despite recently declining IPO pricings, was that the company was founded and is still run by foreign entreprenuers.

You can get some idea of just how many non-Japanese are in senior management at ValueCommerce by visiting their home page. You'll find that not only the Founder, Tim Williams, and the CEO, Brian Nelson, but also the COO and CFO are foreigners. Which pretty much goes to show that it is indeed possible for foreign entrepreneurs to make it in Japan. There is a formula, it's not magic.

Well, OK, maybe a little bit of magic...

Anyways, ValueCommerce is having a dream run on their share price. The shares were priced at JPY310,000, the high end of the range, during the book building process, and after the IPO they quickly rose to close at JPY424,000. Then, to a lot of peoples' surprise, instead of dipping the following day, as speculators unloaded their IPO allocations, the price continued to rise and hit an impressive JPY533,000 per share on Friday. That's a 60% gain in just 4 days.

At JPY533,000, the company now has a market capitalization of JPY48.78bn (US$420m). Tim Williams must be very satisfied with the result, since he is listed as still owning 20.74% of the company, the second largest shareholder after Yahoo Japan.

ValueCommerce is a true success story. The company was built from scratch in just 7 years, and probably could have gone public even quicker, but for a pesky market meltdown in the middle, aka the global dot.com crash. The foundation for its success, and thus the rich stock price, is the high profitability of its core business. Essentially the company has created an online marketplace that lets advertisers find and advertise to focused sections of the hundreds of thousands of independent websites being operated in Japan
-- somewhat like Google's Adwords program. This business model is known as affiliate marketing, and ValueCommerce is the industry leader here in Japan.

Just how big they are can be understood from the numbers.
They serve 600m (not a typo) ads per day through 173,000 partner sites! Now, that's a lot of ads, and of course a lot of ad revenue. It also makes them one of the biggest traffic aggregators on the Japanese web.

This success has attracted a lot of attention from both allies and competitors. On the ally side, Yahoo Japan paid out more than JPY10bn for an almost 50% stake in the company in April 2005. This made a lot of sense for Yahoo, seeing as how ValueCommerce was rapidly gaining on them in terms of page views volume. Amazingly, while Yahoo was doing about 1bn page views a day at the time, ValueCommerce already had about 400m pvs. Apart from the competitive element, if Yahoo hadn't acted when it did, it is highly likely that one of the other major Japanese portals, such as Rakuten, would have moved in with an offer.

Rakuten is intensively interested in this space, and indeed went on to buy a similar business in the USA later in 2005, paying a cool JPY52bn (US$450m)for the privilege.

The quality of the affiliate marketing business model has not been lost on competitors either. In fact, a company called F@n Communications (www.A8.net), started up later with a very similar business and were able to parlay their operation into an IPO quicker -- going public in November 2005. Running almost neck-and-neck for sales and profits, for some reason the F@n Communications market cap is about JPY7bn lower. We put the difference in valuation down to the Yahoo factor, as well as ValueCommerce's outlook for a big ramp up in sales and profit this fiscal year.

Anyway, we like to celebrate foreign businesspeople doing good in Japan -- so a big congratulations from us to Tim and Brian, and the rest of the team at ValueCommerce.

...The Information Janitors/
 

---

+++ SERVICES LINE-UP

back

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
  [email protected].
   
• Get a low-cost office in Tokyo, at the Venture Gas Station incubator. Just JPY80,000/month, in Minami-Aoyama. Spaces closing fast -- enquire now. 
  [email protected]
   
• J@pan Inc. magazine is quarterly. Subscriptions are just JPY3,600 a year. Sign up at
  http://www.japaninc.com/mag/subs.html
   
• Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
  [email protected] Ph: 03-3499-3040

---

+++ NEWS

back

- Decline in population
- Loan defaults fall
- Suntech buys MSK
- Welfare cuts hit elderly poor
- Tax increase will hurt housing market

-> Decline in population

For the first time since records started in 1968, Japan's death rate exceeded her birth rate.

According to the Internal Affairs ministry, 1,072,281 people died through fiscal year 2005, while only 1,065,533 babies were born.

As a result, the number of Japanese (not including foreigners) fell 3,505 from the year before.

People aged 65 or older now account for 20.3% of the population.

(Source: TT commentary from hindu.com, Aug 5, 2006)

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200608050313.htm

->Loan defaults fall

The government has announced that the nine financing organizations it uses to provide credit to SME and special interest companies,

reported that their combined bad loan balance has dropped to JPY6.9trn (US$60bn), down a healthy 14.8% from the year before.

While this is a good result, before we cheer too much it is worth noting that in fact
3 of the 9 still lost money. More significantly, two of them focus on small companies.

So it appears that the credit shakeout for smaller firms continues.

***Ed: The nine lenders -- in case you're looking for a business loan are:
the Development Bank of Japan; Shokochukin Bank; Japan Bank for International Cooperation;

National Life Finance Corp; Japan Finance Corporation for Small and Medium Enterprises;

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Finance Corporation; Okinawa Development Finance Corp;

Japan Finance Corp. for Municipal Enterprises; and the Housing Loan Corporation.
***Ed: The great thing about government loans is that they are cheap and (typically) don't discriminate against foreign businesspeople.**

(Source: mainichi-msn.co.jp, Aug 4, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/fk3bc

->Suntech buys MSK

Chinese solar cell star, Suntech Solar, has announced that it will buy Tokyo-based manufacturer of solar cells, MSK, for US$300m. MSK is the largest producer of solar panels in Japan and has 20 years of experience in the field. Analysts say that the Suntech is seeking to secure supplies of silicon wafers, which are in short supply globally. MSK doesn't make wafers but has excellent sources of supply from Sharp, Kyocera, and Mitsubishi. ***Ed: Of course, Suntech's gaining access to the world's largest open market for solar panels is also not such a bad thing either.
Apparently Japan's output of solar cells soared 48% last year. We think this is a very savvy acquisition by
Suntech.** (Source: people.com.cn, Aug 4, 2006)

http://english.people.com.cn/200608/04/eng20060804_289816.html

->Welfare cuts hit elderly poor

An excellent article in the Boston Globe says that welfare payments to retirees with no other source of income have reduced by as much as 25%. They quote one 73-year old living in Tokyo who has to get by on JPY72,000 (US$620) a month! Less than some people spend on their dogs. According to the Welfare Ministry, there are now about 500,000 elderly who are destitute and are not being supported by their families or children. The problem is the ballooning cost of welfare overall, and the government's efforts to cut it. Welfare cost the nation US$826bn last year and will hit US$1.37trn by 2025, about 28% of Japan's GDP. ***Ed:
It's time for the government to wake up and look at making pensions means-tested. Under such a regime, the wealthy will get very little of their pension contributions back
-- many will not expect it anyway -- while the poor will be at least get a safety net.** (Source: TT commentary from boston.com, Aug 4, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/lxqwe

-> Tax increase will hurt housing market

With all the talk about increasing the consumption tax in 2009, the Japan Federation of Housing Organizations (JHO) decided to do a survey to see what the impact of an increase would be on the housing market. Not surprisingly, the JHO found from its 1,714 responses that people would cut back or not buy at all. The JHO reckons that the negative impact of a tax rise will be about JPY4trn
(US$34bn) on the national housing market. (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 1, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060731D3ZJSN10.htm

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

+++ CANDIDATE ROUND UP

back

DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        ->  Information Systems Manager
         Male, 40, Native Japanese, Business English skills

        Experience:

• Application management, system administration, security
• Compliance audit checking, financial systems support
• Vendor negotiations
• Management of engineers for global projects

　　　Technologies:

• OS: Windows 2k,NT, VMS and  Solaris
• Networks: TCP/IP, DECnet and LAT setup and maintenance
• Languages: VBA (Access, Excel) programming
• Hardware: VAX Cluster, PCs, Cisco routers
• Applications: Microsoft (Exchange server, IIS, SMS, SQL), Lotus Notes, Bloomberg, NRI (T-Star, Fund Web), Toshin Kyokai system.

        *Looking for JPY11M. Available 1 month's notice.

        --------------------------------------------

        -> Systems Administrator
            Female, 41, Native Japanese, Business English

        Experience:

• 18yrs corporate experience in Japan
• Experience developing and troubleshooting complex database systems
• Extensive knowledge of sw applications, networks, IT h/w
• Database Management
• PBX & Network Management & PC infrastructure
• SQL DB Server Maintenance & Management
• Construction of SQL reports
• Oracle support and admin

         Certifications: MCP, MCDST

         Programming: COBOL, VB, VBA, SQL, Java, C++

              * Looking for JPY4.5M. Available 1 month's notice.

      --------------------------------------------------------------------------

        -> IT Project Manager, IT Manager
        Male, mid 30's, native Japanese, high Business English

        Experience:

• 2 1/2 yrs Project Management in CRM implementations, ITIL Problem Management Process implementations and eNotify implementation projects including Hong Kong and Korea.
• 3 yrs Lead Application Support. Providing 2nd and 3rd level support for a SCA web application in APJ region.
• 3 yrs as a Customer Engineer on site; troubleshooting hardware and network problems

　　　Technologies:

• Hardware: HP UNIX servers and Workstation, Compatible PCs, Network devices, Peripherals including DLT & DDS tape libraries and Disk array systems
• Software: HPUX, MS, Windows, Apache, Oracle, Perl, SQL, JavaScript, HTML

        Certifications

• ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) Foundation
• Project Management Professional Certification
• High Availability Support Environment Certification of HP K-Series Server Certification HPUX 10.X Certification
• Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer + Internet on Microsoft Windows NT 4.0

     * Looking for JPY11M. Available 1 month's notice.

--------------------------------------------

              DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
              [email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

---

+++ UPCOMING EVENTS/ANNOUNCEMENTS

back

No announcements this week.

IT events announcements are priced at JPY50,000 per week. For more information, contact [email protected]

>>>>--------------------------------------------------<

END

SUBSCRIBERS: 24,033 as of August 6, 2006
(We purge our list regularly.)

---

+++ ABOUT US

back

STAFF
Written by: Terrie Lloyd[email protected].


HELP: E-mail [email protected]
with the word 'help' in the subject or body (dont include the quotes), and you will get back a message with instructions.


FEEDBACK
Send letters (Feedback, Inquiries & Information) to the editor to [email protected].


ADVERTISING INFORMATION
For more information on advertising in this newsletter, contact [email protected].


SUSCRIBE
Get Terrie's Take by giving your name and email address athttp://www.terrie.com/subscribe.html.
BACK ISSUES
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BACK ISSUES
http://mailman.lincmedia.co.jp/pipermail/terrie/.



Copyright 2006 Japan Inc. Communications Inc.

_______________Japan Inc is worth every penny!_______________

Don't forget you can get deeper analysis on Japan's hottest new businesses and technology from the quarterly edition of J@pan Inc. 1-year subscription for JPY3,600(Japan). It's so cost effective you can even get your company to pay for it!
Go to: www.japaninc.net/mag/subs.html for details.

General Edition Sunday, August 6, 2006 Issue No. 386

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

---

On Monday July 31st, although no English-language newspaper picked it up, an Internet/technology company  called ValueCommerce went public on the Mothers stock exchange.
What was notable about this IPO, apart from the healthy valuation despite recently declining IPO pricings, was that the company was founded and is still run by foreign entreprenuers.

You can get some idea of just how many non-Japanese are in senior management at ValueCommerce by visiting their home page. You'll find that not only the Founder, Tim Williams, and the CEO, Brian Nelson, but also the COO and CFO are foreigners. Which pretty much goes to show that it is indeed possible for foreign entrepreneurs to make it in Japan. There is a formula, it's not magic.

Well, OK, maybe a little bit of magic...

Anyways, ValueCommerce is having a dream run on their share price. The shares were priced at JPY310,000, the high end of the range, during the book building process, and after the IPO they quickly rose to close at JPY424,000. Then, to a lot of peoples' surprise, instead of dipping the following day, as speculators unloaded their IPO allocations, the price continued to rise and hit an impressive JPY533,000 per share on Friday. That's a 60% gain in just 4 days.

At JPY533,000, the company now has a market capitalization of JPY48.78bn (US$420m). Tim Williams must be very satisfied with the result, since he is listed as still owning 20.74% of the company, the second largest shareholder after Yahoo Japan.

ValueCommerce is a true success story. The company was built from scratch in just 7 years, and probably could have gone public even quicker, but for a pesky market meltdown in the middle, aka the global dot.com crash. The foundation for its success, and thus the rich stock price, is the high profitability of its core business. Essentially the company has created an online marketplace that lets advertisers find and advertise to focused sections of the hundreds of thousands of independent websites being operated in Japan
-- somewhat like Google's Adwords program. This business model is known as affiliate marketing, and ValueCommerce is the industry leader here in Japan.

Just how big they are can be understood from the numbers.
They serve 600m (not a typo) ads per day through 173,000 partner sites! Now, that's a lot of ads, and of course a lot of ad revenue. It also makes them one of the biggest traffic aggregators on the Japanese web.

This success has attracted a lot of attention from both allies and competitors. On the ally side, Yahoo Japan paid out more than JPY10bn for an almost 50% stake in the company in April 2005. This made a lot of sense for Yahoo, seeing as how ValueCommerce was rapidly gaining on them in terms of page views volume. Amazingly, while Yahoo was doing about 1bn page views a day at the time, ValueCommerce already had about 400m pvs. Apart from the competitive element, if Yahoo hadn't acted when it did, it is highly likely that one of the other major Japanese portals, such as Rakuten, would have moved in with an offer.

Rakuten is intensively interested in this space, and indeed went on to buy a similar business in the USA later in 2005, paying a cool JPY52bn (US$450m)for the privilege.

The quality of the affiliate marketing business model has not been lost on competitors either. In fact, a company called F@n Communications (www.A8.net), started up later with a very similar business and were able to parlay their operation into an IPO quicker -- going public in November 2005. Running almost neck-and-neck for sales and profits, for some reason the F@n Communications market cap is about JPY7bn lower. We put the difference in valuation down to the Yahoo factor, as well as ValueCommerce's outlook for a big ramp up in sales and profit this fiscal year.

Anyway, we like to celebrate foreign businesspeople doing good in Japan -- so a big congratulations from us to Tim and Brian, and the rest of the team at ValueCommerce.

---

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
  [email protected].
   
• Get a low-cost office in Tokyo, at the Venture Gas Station incubator. Just JPY80,000/month, in Minami-Aoyama. Spaces closing fast -- enquire now. 
  [email protected]
   
• J@pan Inc. magazine is quarterly. Subscriptions are just JPY3,600 a year. Sign up at
  http://www.japaninc.com/mag/subs.html
   
• Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
  [email protected] Ph: 03-3499-3040

-> Decline in population

->Loan defaults fall

->Suntech buys MSK

Chinese solar cell star, Suntech Solar, has announced that it will buy Tokyo-based manufacturer of solar cells, MSK, for US$300m. MSK is the largest producer of solar panels in Japan and has 20 years of experience in the field. Analysts say that the Suntech is seeking to secure supplies of silicon wafers, which are in short supply globally. MSK doesn't make wafers but has excellent sources of supply from Sharp, Kyocera, and Mitsubishi. ***Ed: Of course, Suntech's gaining access to the world's largest open market for solar panels is also not such a bad thing either.
Apparently Japan's output of solar cells soared 48% last year. We think this is a very savvy acquisition by
Suntech.** (Source: people.com.cn, Aug 4, 2006)

http://english.people.com.cn/200608/04/eng20060804_289816.html

->Welfare cuts hit elderly poor

An excellent article in the Boston Globe says that welfare payments to retirees with no other source of income have reduced by as much as 25%. They quote one 73-year old living in Tokyo who has to get by on JPY72,000 (US$620) a month! Less than some people spend on their dogs. According to the Welfare Ministry, there are now about 500,000 elderly who are destitute and are not being supported by their families or children. The problem is the ballooning cost of welfare overall, and the government's efforts to cut it. Welfare cost the nation US$826bn last year and will hit US$1.37trn by 2025, about 28% of Japan's GDP. ***Ed:
It's time for the government to wake up and look at making pensions means-tested. Under such a regime, the wealthy will get very little of their pension contributions back
-- many will not expect it anyway -- while the poor will be at least get a safety net.** (Source: TT commentary from boston.com, Aug 4, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/lxqwe

-> Tax increase will hurt housing market

With all the talk about increasing the consumption tax in 2009, the Japan Federation of Housing Organizations (JHO) decided to do a survey to see what the impact of an increase would be on the housing market. Not surprisingly, the JHO found from its 1,714 responses that people would cut back or not buy at all. The JHO reckons that the negative impact of a tax rise will be about JPY4trn
(US$34bn) on the national housing market. (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 1, 2006)

->Welfare cuts hit elderly poor

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        ->  Information Systems Manager
         Male, 40, Native Japanese, Business English skills

        Experience:

• Application management, system administration, security
• Compliance audit checking, financial systems support
• Vendor negotiations
• Management of engineers for global projects

　　　Technologies:

• OS: Windows 2k,NT, VMS and  Solaris
• Networks: TCP/IP, DECnet and LAT setup and maintenance
• Languages: VBA (Access, Excel) programming
• Hardware: VAX Cluster, PCs, Cisco routers
• Applications: Microsoft (Exchange server, IIS, SMS, SQL), Lotus Notes, Bloomberg, NRI (T-Star, Fund Web), Toshin Kyokai system.

        *Looking for JPY11M. Available 1 month's notice.

        --------------------------------------------

        -> IT Project Manager, IT Manager
        Male, mid 30's, native Japanese, high Business English

        Experience:

Terrie's Take 385 -- Loan sharks, ebiz news from Japan

General Edition Sunday, July  30, 2006 Issue No. 385

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

DENPHONE FULL FEATURED OFFICE BOX Denphone PBXs are Asterisk based, offering a wide range of features (voicemail, conferencing, selective call blocking and VoIP low cost calling) at prices lower than other proprietary solutions. Denphone also builds custom telephony & PBX solutions including CTI, IVR, call centers as well as CRM integrated telephony systems such as click-to-call, voicedrop, disaster recovery systems and voiceblast. If you have a telephony or VoIP requirement, Denphone has a solution. Denphone K.K. http://www.denphone.com

---

+++ WHAT'S NEW

back

In summer of 2003, a 61-year old cleaner, his 69-year old wife and her 81-year old brother jumped in front of a train in Yao, ending their lives together. While this is not an uncommon way to escape ones problems, the woman left behind a heart-rending letter detailing the reasons for the suicide. She laid the blame squarely at the feet of a pair of local loan sharks, who had lent her JPY70,000 between April and June 2003 and had subsequently made their lives a misery with threats and public disgrace. All up, the loan sharks managed to collect JPY300,000 in "interest" before the family decided to end it all.

Then in 2004, a group of 4 teenagers and one adult were charged with the murder and incineration of a 16-year old bar hostess married to the adult perpetrator. It turned out he had deliberately married the girl so that he could take on her name so as to get more loans after being cut off for being a deadbeat. She discovered the real reason for the marriage and threatened to leave him.

Both of these events are but punctuation marks in human history, but they were certainly the type of news that finally prompted calls for the government to start cracking down on money lenders. Probably the precipitating event was when the founder and head of Takefuji, Japan's largest consumer finance company, was found to have ordered the wiretapping of a journalist doing an expose on the company.
Takefuji became personified in the media as arrogant and being all that was wrong with the consumer lending industry. This opinion was reinforced when it emerged that a Takefuji salesperson had called one borrower and told him to sell a kidney or an eye, so he could repay his debt.

In the resulting scandal, not only did the old man have to retire, his family sold out control of the business to mainly foreign investment funds, and a raft of new legislation was introduced in parliament in 2004 to outlaw unregistered money lenders and regulate the majors.

Now, 3 years later, there is a new even more drastic law before parliament which may pass in August. This law will lower the ceiling on interest rates being charged by consumer finance companies from 29.2%, currently allowed under the Investment Deposit and Interest Rate Law, down to just 15%-20%, which is defined already in the Interest Rate Restriction Law, or less. The two conflicting laws have for some years created a "grey zone" in interest rates, which is being taken advantage of by most consumer finance firms, and the new legislation will clarify the lower cap.

Major US consumer credit firms active in Japan have responded by saying that limiting the rates to 15%-20% is going overboard and that a rate cut to anything less than 23% would deny about 9m of Japan's 20m consumer finance borrowers a source of loans, since they are too risky at the lower rate. We think this comment is disingenuous, because desperate borrowers will always find a way. The workarounds range from simply taking out multiple loans from as many as 5 companies at once, as 2.3m people with debts of more than JPY2m (considered heavy debt) are doing already, through to getting adopted or marrying to change one's name. In our opinion, for Japan's credit junkies, no interest rate cap is high enough, so 15%-20% is at least a good starting point.

As government and legal pressure has been stepped up, the consumer finance firms are feeling the pinch. On the legal side, a Supreme Court decision back in January found that a claimant did not have to pay the contracted penalty interest of 29.2% for a missed payment, and that the company had to return payments in excess of 20%. This ruling has set a precedent and now all the finance firms are being hit with claims for compensation for such excess interest payments. As a result, all four largest players reported drastically reduced profits caused by the high level of refunds. They paid out JPY40bn (US$34.8m), or an increase of 390%, in refunds over the same period last year and Takefuji's profit alone dropped 77%.

It's hard to feel sorry for those companies which have been profiting from other people's misery. So we believe it is a good thing that gradually the worst offenders are being either forced out of business or are being merged with more respectable companies that will ensure proper corporate governance. Proposed new legislation includes making moneylender staff sit a licencing exam, having moneylenders join a credit monitoring agency, and introducing more industry self regulation. There are currently 16,000 registered money lenders in Japan, but less than half are actually member of regulatory associations.

The industry is going through a remarkable transformation as a result of the crackdown, and most of the majors have seen control of their businesses transfer to more respectable companies or foreign funds. For example, Takefuji now has a significant number of foreign shareholders, Promise has Sumitomo Mitsui Financial as a major shareholder, Acom has Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, Orient has Mizuho, and Nippon Shimpan has UFJ (now also Mitsubishi).

Still, while in Japan everyone is upset that the loan sharks are charging 29.2% a year on loans, they should think themselves lucky. In the USA, loan sharks companies regularly target military personnel with 400% p.a. "payday"
loans and low-income families with 300%
automobile-collateral loans. In the US, some states still allow rates of more than 200% per annum, and in those that do have a lending rates cap, 36% per annum is normal. It is estimated that the average US savings rate is minus 0.5%, the lowest since the 1930's, and that just under 10% of american adults have used or are using consumer finance companies.

...The Information Janitors/
 

---

+++ SERVICES LINE-UP

back

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
  [email protected].
   
• Get a low-cost office in Tokyo, at the Venture Gas Station incubator. Just JPY80,000/month, in Minami-Aoyama. Spaces closing fast -- enquire now. 
  [email protected]
   
• J@pan Inc. magazine is quarterly. Subscriptions are just JPY3,600 a year. Sign up at
  http://www.japaninc.com/mag/subs.html
   
• Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
  [email protected] Ph: 03-3499-3040

 

Logistics: The So-Fast Corporation========Why Choose the So-Fast Corporation? Failed logistics is a frequent reason why foreign import/retail companies in Japan eventually pull out. In the start-up phase, management is focused on just getting the business up and running, and so it is tempting to abdicate the logistics to a large trading or transportation firm. But the reality is that the convenience is soon replaced by frustration -- as any change request, any problem resolution takes forever and becomes "too hard to do". Now, So-Fast Corporation offers its "Start Logistics Package" which includes: 1. A reasonable and set price, 2. Simple distribution, and 3. Quick, customer-oriented service to satisfy end-users One customer that did switch is Guthy-Renker, featured alongside So-Fast in the Spring 2005 issue of J@pan Inc, www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=1429. Guthy-Renker is one of Japan's largest TV marketing companies. If logistics are a key part of your success in Japan - get connected with So-Fast. Email: [email protected] http://www.so-fast.co.jp/en/index.html

---

+++ NEWS

back

- Fuji Film restructures
- Oracle doing great
- Japanese moon base planned
- Sensor mat detects pedestrian age and sex
- Advertising billings are up

-> Fuji Film restructures

It appears that Fuji Photo Film is staying the course in terms of restructuring. The company took a big hit on employment redundancy payments and related restructuring costs of JPY27.4bn (US$238m). In addition, of course, there have been the plummeting sales of color film and mini-labs.
These two ongoing factors sliced almost 70% off Q1 net profits, coming in at just JPY4.8bn (US$41.7m), down from JPY15.96bn (US$138.7m) last year. The company says that on the positive side, USA sales of its Finepix digital camera and sales of flat panel displays are doing well.  (Source:
TT commentary from forbes.com, Jul 28, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/m9s99

->Oracle doing great

Oracle has announced that its Asia Pacific (including
Japan) revenues will hit US$2bn this fiscal year, up 18% over last year. Reflecting the upturn in many Asian economies and an accompanying refocus on structural investment, the company has seen orders increase in all product lines, but with particular emphasis on its middleware products, which jumped 57%. The Fusion Middleware product family helps developers create a platform on which to base their SOA applications. Of the US$2bn, about 40%, or JPY91.5bn (US$790m), came from Japan.
Japan profits were JPY32.1bn (US$279m). Not a bad effort!
(Source: TT commentary from sda-asia.com, Jul 27, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/lkw4x

->Japanese moon base planned

A 20-year plan drawn up by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has Japan building a moon base by 2025 and staffing it with robots. The agency plan envisages using humanoid robots to actually build and maintain the base, as well as building telescopes and prospecting and mining minerals. The plan was drawn up by a team working for Keiji Tachikawa, the former president of NTT DoCoMo. ***Ed:
Joining the dots, we wonder if the base will have a web cam feeding earth images back to DoCoMo G5 users by then?
JPY300,0000 per gigabyte anyone?** (Source: TT commentary from pcwelt.de, Jul 28, 2006)

http://www.pcwelt.de/news/englishnews/ConsumerElectronics/114047/

->Sensor mat detects pedestrian age and sex

A research team at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a mat with sensors that that can detect a pedestrian's age and sex. The mat contains a layer of electrodes that output different levels of current as a person walks across it. By comparing outputs, the individual gait of a person can be identified. According to the AIST researchers, they can determine young walkers from those over 60 with 100% accuracy, while the accuracy level falls to 50% for age groups which are closer together. Gender detection is also high, at 70%, due to the fact that males and females have different centers of gravity. ***Ed: A small step for mankind... Studies in the USA have shown that humans have very individualized walking patterns and in fact recently a suspected bank robber was arrested on the basis of his gait recorded on a security camera.** (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Jul 25, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060724D24JSN06.htm

-> Advertising billings are up

A rising economy floats all ships, including the sluggish ad market. A Nikkei ranking of the 5 major ad agencies has estimated the cumulative billings of the overall ad agency sector to be up by 1.8% over last fiscal year, to JPY5.96trn (US$51bn). The top 5 companies account for 49% of all billings. By company, Dentsu was top of the heap, with JPY155.6bn in billings, Hakuhodo second with JPY70.9bn, Asatsu-DK with JPY38.74bn, Daiko Advertising (now a subsidiary of Hakuhodo) with JPY14.3bn, and Tokyu Agency with JPY12.5bn. (Source: TT commentary from Jul 28, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060728D28HH411.htm

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

+++ CANDIDATE ROUND UP

back

DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        -> System Consultant, Presales engineer
         Male, 30, business Japanese, English, fluent Mandarin

        Experience:

• 7yrs working experience in Japan
• Negotiated business between Japan and Shanghai during programming and coding phases
• Responsible for writing detailed specifications for developers and managing progress of team

　　　Technologies:

• Programming Languages: C, C++, Java, PLSQL, Perl, Javascript, VBA, etc.
• High Proficiency in J2EE Construction
• OS: Linux (Redhat, Turbo, Suse), Windows
• DB: Oracle,?DB2
• WebServer: Tomcat, Weblogic, Websphere

        *Looking for JPY7M. Available 1 month's notice.

        --------------------------------------------

        -> Systems Engineer, Consulting
        Male, 29, Native Japanese

• Experience:

  • 8yrs system development of accounting, salary, inventory control and stock control systems      
  • 7yrs PL/SQL, Oracle, also confident in VB and Delphi
  • Project leader of 5 member team
  • Windows XP/2003Server,?SQLServer2000, Delphi, etc.

               * Looking for JPY7M. Available 1 month's notice.

--------------------------------------------

-> IT infrastructure manager
Male, late 30's, native Japanese, business English

Experience:

• 9 years IT/System engineering and management
• Expertise in IT network infrastructure, server set up and maintenance, IT helpdesk, and troubleshooting.    
• Strong leader: motivating team, client management, and business managemenet.

             Technologies:

• Windows Server (NT4, 2000, 2003) Linux (Red Hat, Turbo Linux), Windows XP, DOS, Windows3.1/95/98/2000   
• DNS (Bind), Send mail, Apache, ftp, Samba
• Active Directory, IIS, Exchange, Printer Server, DHCP, File-Server
• Cisco 2900 series800, Hitachi IT-100A
• Firewall Watch Guard Fire Box V60L/1000         

              * Looking for JPY7M. Available 1 month's notice.

              DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
              [email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

---

+++ UPCOMING EVENTS/ANNOUNCEMENTS

back

No announcements this week.

IT events announcements are priced at JPY50,000 per week. For more information, contact [email protected]

>>>>--------------------------------------------------<

END

SUBSCRIBERS: 24,036 as of July 30, 2006
(We purge our list regularly.)

---

+++ ABOUT US

back

STAFF
Written by: Terrie Lloyd[email protected].


HELP: E-mail [email protected]
with the word 'help' in the subject or body (dont include the quotes), and you will get back a message with instructions.


FEEDBACK
Send letters (Feedback, Inquiries & Information) to the editor to [email protected].


ADVERTISING INFORMATION
For more information on advertising in this newsletter, contact [email protected].


SUSCRIBE
Get Terrie's Take by giving your name and email address athttp://www.terrie.com/subscribe.html.
BACK ISSUES
http://mailman.lincmedia.co.jp/pipermail/terrie/.
BACK ISSUES
http://mailman.lincmedia.co.jp/pipermail/terrie/.



Copyright 2006 Japan Inc. Communications Inc.

_______________Japan Inc is worth every penny!_______________

Don't forget you can get deeper analysis on Japan's hottest new businesses and technology from the quarterly edition of J@pan Inc. 1-year subscription for JPY3,600(Japan). It's so cost effective you can even get your company to pay for it!
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General Edition Sunday, July  30, 2006 Issue No. 385

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

DENPHONE FULL FEATURED OFFICE BOX Denphone PBXs are Asterisk based, offering a wide range of features (voicemail, conferencing, selective call blocking and VoIP low cost calling) at prices lower than other proprietary solutions. Denphone also builds custom telephony & PBX solutions including CTI, IVR, call centers as well as CRM integrated telephony systems such as click-to-call, voicedrop, disaster recovery systems and voiceblast. If you have a telephony or VoIP requirement, Denphone has a solution. Denphone K.K. http://www.denphone.com

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+++ WHAT'S NEW

back

In summer of 2003, a 61-year old cleaner, his 69-year old wife and her 81-year old brother jumped in front of a train in Yao, ending their lives together. While this is not an uncommon way to escape ones problems, the woman left behind a heart-rending letter detailing the reasons for the suicide. She laid the blame squarely at the feet of a pair of local loan sharks, who had lent her JPY70,000 between April and June 2003 and had subsequently made their lives a misery with threats and public disgrace. All up, the loan sharks managed to collect JPY300,000 in "interest" before the family decided to end it all.

Then in 2004, a group of 4 teenagers and one adult were charged with the murder and incineration of a 16-year old bar hostess married to the adult perpetrator. It turned out he had deliberately married the girl so that he could take on her name so as to get more loans after being cut off for being a deadbeat. She discovered the real reason for the marriage and threatened to leave him.

Both of these events are but punctuation marks in human history, but they were certainly the type of news that finally prompted calls for the government to start cracking down on money lenders. Probably the precipitating event was when the founder and head of Takefuji, Japan's largest consumer finance company, was found to have ordered the wiretapping of a journalist doing an expose on the company.
Takefuji became personified in the media as arrogant and being all that was wrong with the consumer lending industry. This opinion was reinforced when it emerged that a Takefuji salesperson had called one borrower and told him to sell a kidney or an eye, so he could repay his debt.

In the resulting scandal, not only did the old man have to retire, his family sold out control of the business to mainly foreign investment funds, and a raft of new legislation was introduced in parliament in 2004 to outlaw unregistered money lenders and regulate the majors.

Now, 3 years later, there is a new even more drastic law before parliament which may pass in August. This law will lower the ceiling on interest rates being charged by consumer finance companies from 29.2%, currently allowed under the Investment Deposit and Interest Rate Law, down to just 15%-20%, which is defined already in the Interest Rate Restriction Law, or less. The two conflicting laws have for some years created a "grey zone" in interest rates, which is being taken advantage of by most consumer finance firms, and the new legislation will clarify the lower cap.

Major US consumer credit firms active in Japan have responded by saying that limiting the rates to 15%-20% is going overboard and that a rate cut to anything less than 23% would deny about 9m of Japan's 20m consumer finance borrowers a source of loans, since they are too risky at the lower rate. We think this comment is disingenuous, because desperate borrowers will always find a way. The workarounds range from simply taking out multiple loans from as many as 5 companies at once, as 2.3m people with debts of more than JPY2m (considered heavy debt) are doing already, through to getting adopted or marrying to change one's name. In our opinion, for Japan's credit junkies, no interest rate cap is high enough, so 15%-20% is at least a good starting point.

As government and legal pressure has been stepped up, the consumer finance firms are feeling the pinch. On the legal side, a Supreme Court decision back in January found that a claimant did not have to pay the contracted penalty interest of 29.2% for a missed payment, and that the company had to return payments in excess of 20%. This ruling has set a precedent and now all the finance firms are being hit with claims for compensation for such excess interest payments. As a result, all four largest players reported drastically reduced profits caused by the high level of refunds. They paid out JPY40bn (US$34.8m), or an increase of 390%, in refunds over the same period last year and Takefuji's profit alone dropped 77%.

It's hard to feel sorry for those companies which have been profiting from other people's misery. So we believe it is a good thing that gradually the worst offenders are being either forced out of business or are being merged with more respectable companies that will ensure proper corporate governance. Proposed new legislation includes making moneylender staff sit a licencing exam, having moneylenders join a credit monitoring agency, and introducing more industry self regulation. There are currently 16,000 registered money lenders in Japan, but less than half are actually member of regulatory associations.

The industry is going through a remarkable transformation as a result of the crackdown, and most of the majors have seen control of their businesses transfer to more respectable companies or foreign funds. For example, Takefuji now has a significant number of foreign shareholders, Promise has Sumitomo Mitsui Financial as a major shareholder, Acom has Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, Orient has Mizuho, and Nippon Shimpan has UFJ (now also Mitsubishi).

Still, while in Japan everyone is upset that the loan sharks are charging 29.2% a year on loans, they should think themselves lucky. In the USA, loan sharks companies regularly target military personnel with 400% p.a. "payday"
loans and low-income families with 300%
automobile-collateral loans. In the US, some states still allow rates of more than 200% per annum, and in those that do have a lending rates cap, 36% per annum is normal. It is estimated that the average US savings rate is minus 0.5%, the lowest since the 1930's, and that just under 10% of american adults have used or are using consumer finance companies.

...The Information Janitors/
 

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+++ SERVICES LINE-UP

back

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

• Advertise with Japan Inc newsletters. JIN and Terrie's  Take cost just 2 yen per person to reach 54,000 people. Great for last minute offers and event advertising.
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Logistics: The So-Fast Corporation========Why Choose the So-Fast Corporation? Failed logistics is a frequent reason why foreign import/retail companies in Japan eventually pull out. In the start-up phase, management is focused on just getting the business up and running, and so it is tempting to abdicate the logistics to a large trading or transportation firm. But the reality is that the convenience is soon replaced by frustration -- as any change request, any problem resolution takes forever and becomes "too hard to do". Now, So-Fast Corporation offers its "Start Logistics Package" which includes: 1. A reasonable and set price, 2. Simple distribution, and 3. Quick, customer-oriented service to satisfy end-users One customer that did switch is Guthy-Renker, featured alongside So-Fast in the Spring 2005 issue of J@pan Inc, www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=1429. Guthy-Renker is one of Japan's largest TV marketing companies. If logistics are a key part of your success in Japan - get connected with So-Fast. Email: [email protected] http://www.so-fast.co.jp/en/index.html

---

+++ NEWS

back

- Fuji Film restructures
- Oracle doing great
- Japanese moon base planned
- Sensor mat detects pedestrian age and sex
- Advertising billings are up

-> Fuji Film restructures

It appears that Fuji Photo Film is staying the course in terms of restructuring. The company took a big hit on employment redundancy payments and related restructuring costs of JPY27.4bn (US$238m). In addition, of course, there have been the plummeting sales of color film and mini-labs.
These two ongoing factors sliced almost 70% off Q1 net profits, coming in at just JPY4.8bn (US$41.7m), down from JPY15.96bn (US$138.7m) last year. The company says that on the positive side, USA sales of its Finepix digital camera and sales of flat panel displays are doing well.  (Source:
TT commentary from forbes.com, Jul 28, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/m9s99

->Oracle doing great

Oracle has announced that its Asia Pacific (including
Japan) revenues will hit US$2bn this fiscal year, up 18% over last year. Reflecting the upturn in many Asian economies and an accompanying refocus on structural investment, the company has seen orders increase in all product lines, but with particular emphasis on its middleware products, which jumped 57%. The Fusion Middleware product family helps developers create a platform on which to base their SOA applications. Of the US$2bn, about 40%, or JPY91.5bn (US$790m), came from Japan.
Japan profits were JPY32.1bn (US$279m). Not a bad effort!
(Source: TT commentary from sda-asia.com, Jul 27, 2006)

http://tinyurl.com/lkw4x

->Japanese moon base planned

A 20-year plan drawn up by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has Japan building a moon base by 2025 and staffing it with robots. The agency plan envisages using humanoid robots to actually build and maintain the base, as well as building telescopes and prospecting and mining minerals. The plan was drawn up by a team working for Keiji Tachikawa, the former president of NTT DoCoMo. ***Ed:
Joining the dots, we wonder if the base will have a web cam feeding earth images back to DoCoMo G5 users by then?
JPY300,0000 per gigabyte anyone?** (Source: TT commentary from pcwelt.de, Jul 28, 2006)

General Edition Sunday, July  30, 2006 Issue No. 385

+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits

---

In summer of 2003, a 61-year old cleaner, his 69-year old wife and her 81-year old brother jumped in front of a train in Yao, ending their lives together. While this is not an uncommon way to escape ones problems, the woman left behind a heart-rending letter detailing the reasons for the suicide. She laid the blame squarely at the feet of a pair of local loan sharks, who had lent her JPY70,000 between April and June 2003 and had subsequently made their lives a misery with threats and public disgrace. All up, the loan sharks managed to collect JPY300,000 in "interest" before the family decided to end it all.

Then in 2004, a group of 4 teenagers and one adult were charged with the murder and incineration of a 16-year old bar hostess married to the adult perpetrator. It turned out he had deliberately married the girl so that he could take on her name so as to get more loans after being cut off for being a deadbeat. She discovered the real reason for the marriage and threatened to leave him.

Both of these events are but punctuation marks in human history, but they were certainly the type of news that finally prompted calls for the government to start cracking down on money lenders. Probably the precipitating event was when the founder and head of Takefuji, Japan's largest consumer finance company, was found to have ordered the wiretapping of a journalist doing an expose on the company.
Takefuji became personified in the media as arrogant and being all that was wrong with the consumer lending industry. This opinion was reinforced when it emerged that a Takefuji salesperson had called one borrower and told him to sell a kidney or an eye, so he could repay his debt.

In the resulting scandal, not only did the old man have to retire, his family sold out control of the business to mainly foreign investment funds, and a raft of new legislation was introduced in parliament in 2004 to outlaw unregistered money lenders and regulate the majors.

Now, 3 years later, there is a new even more drastic law before parliament which may pass in August. This law will lower the ceiling on interest rates being charged by consumer finance companies from 29.2%, currently allowed under the Investment Deposit and Interest Rate Law, down to just 15%-20%, which is defined already in the Interest Rate Restriction Law, or less. The two conflicting laws have for some years created a "grey zone" in interest rates, which is being taken advantage of by most consumer finance firms, and the new legislation will clarify the lower cap.

Major US consumer credit firms active in Japan have responded by saying that limiting the rates to 15%-20% is going overboard and that a rate cut to anything less than 23% would deny about 9m of Japan's 20m consumer finance borrowers a source of loans, since they are too risky at the lower rate. We think this comment is disingenuous, because desperate borrowers will always find a way. The workarounds range from simply taking out multiple loans from as many as 5 companies at once, as 2.3m people with debts of more than JPY2m (considered heavy debt) are doing already, through to getting adopted or marrying to change one's name. In our opinion, for Japan's credit junkies, no interest rate cap is high enough, so 15%-20% is at least a good starting point.

As government and legal pressure has been stepped up, the consumer finance firms are feeling the pinch. On the legal side, a Supreme Court decision back in January found that a claimant did not have to pay the contracted penalty interest of 29.2% for a missed payment, and that the company had to return payments in excess of 20%. This ruling has set a precedent and now all the finance firms are being hit with claims for compensation for such excess interest payments. As a result, all four largest players reported drastically reduced profits caused by the high level of refunds. They paid out JPY40bn (US$34.8m), or an increase of 390%, in refunds over the same period last year and Takefuji's profit alone dropped 77%.

It's hard to feel sorry for those companies which have been profiting from other people's misery. So we believe it is a good thing that gradually the worst offenders are being either forced out of business or are being merged with more respectable companies that will ensure proper corporate governance. Proposed new legislation includes making moneylender staff sit a licencing exam, having moneylenders join a credit monitoring agency, and introducing more industry self regulation. There are currently 16,000 registered money lenders in Japan, but less than half are actually member of regulatory associations.

The industry is going through a remarkable transformation as a result of the crackdown, and most of the majors have seen control of their businesses transfer to more respectable companies or foreign funds. For example, Takefuji now has a significant number of foreign shareholders, Promise has Sumitomo Mitsui Financial as a major shareholder, Acom has Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, Orient has Mizuho, and Nippon Shimpan has UFJ (now also Mitsubishi).

Still, while in Japan everyone is upset that the loan sharks are charging 29.2% a year on loans, they should think themselves lucky. In the USA, loan sharks companies regularly target military personnel with 400% p.a. "payday"
loans and low-income families with 300%
automobile-collateral loans. In the US, some states still allow rates of more than 200% per annum, and in those that do have a lending rates cap, 36% per annum is normal. It is estimated that the average US savings rate is minus 0.5%, the lowest since the 1930's, and that just under 10% of american adults have used or are using consumer finance companies.

---

Contact [email protected] if you want your company here.
 

---

-> Fuji Film restructures

->Oracle doing great

->Japanese moon base planned

http://www.pcwelt.de/news/englishnews/ConsumerElectronics/114047/

->Sensor mat detects pedestrian age and sex

A research team at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a mat with sensors that that can detect a pedestrian's age and sex. The mat contains a layer of electrodes that output different levels of current as a person walks across it. By comparing outputs, the individual gait of a person can be identified. According to the AIST researchers, they can determine young walkers from those over 60 with 100% accuracy, while the accuracy level falls to 50% for age groups which are closer together. Gender detection is also high, at 70%, due to the fact that males and females have different centers of gravity. ***Ed: A small step for mankind... Studies in the USA have shown that humans have very individualized walking patterns and in fact recently a suspected bank robber was arrested on the basis of his gait recorded on a security camera.** (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Jul 25, 2006)

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060724D24JSN06.htm

-> Advertising billings are up

A rising economy floats all ships, including the sluggish ad market. A Nikkei ranking of the 5 major ad agencies has estimated the cumulative billings of the overall ad agency sector to be up by 1.8% over last fiscal year, to JPY5.96trn (US$51bn). The top 5 companies account for 49% of all billings. By company, Dentsu was top of the heap, with JPY155.6bn in billings, Hakuhodo second with JPY70.9bn, Asatsu-DK with JPY38.74bn, Daiko Advertising (now a subsidiary of Hakuhodo) with JPY14.3bn, and Tokyu Agency with JPY12.5bn. (Source: TT commentary from Jul 28, 2006)

->Sensor mat detects pedestrian age and sex

NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.

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DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
[email protected], or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.

        -> System Consultant, Presales engineer
         Male, 30, business Japanese, English, fluent Mandarin

        Experience:

        *Looking for JPY7M. Available 1 month's notice.

        --------------------------------------------

        -> Systems Engineer, Consulting
        Male, 29, Native Japanese

               * Looking for JPY7M. Available 1 month's notice.