Apple Opens iTunes Music Store in Japan AP via Yahoo! News, August 3, 2005 TOKYO – Apple Computer Inc. launched its music download service, the iTunes Music Store, in Japan on Thursday with 1 million songs….
…. It could also change the local music business, where people who download music are still accustomed to paying more money for a limited lineup of tunes from sites for PCs and mobile phones that cost about 200 yen (US$1.80; euro1.50) a tune or charge monthly fees. Jobs said iTunes will have 1 million songs in Japan, including Japanese and international, with most costing 150 yen ($1.35) each. Only 10 percent of the songs cost 200 yen ($1.80), he said. Most iPod owners in Japan now either buy or rent CDs. CD rentals, offered at DVD and video rental stores, are very popular in Japan.….more…
Japanese are rather bi-polar about their MP3 collections. On one hand every video rental store in Japan also offers CD rental for 300yen per ENTIRE album — rather than Apple’s 150 yen ($1.35) each song. On the other hand, Japanese strangely willing to spend more than 300yen per song to download to their cellphones (and that music cannot be copied to their home computers, backed up on a CD or saved in an iPod-like device).
For more info on cellphone downloads of music, read Wireless.3Yen.com – Need Music? – Mobile Phones in Japan …
Via Google Sightseeing here’s a cool photo of an airplane (Boeing 737?) and it’s shadow I certainly didn’t see the first time I went to Google Earth. My house is a 20 minute drive from Haneda, but the definition of the photos in my area are kuso(ãã aka poop).
Haneda Airport, Tokyo
This is a cracking shot of a plane coming into land at Haneda Airport (AKA Tokyo International Airport). …
Over on the FG Forum, my friend “Mulboyne” found this story he entitled, “Blue Us Hippos To Swallow Japanese Kids.” However, educationally speaking of course, kids like me will be more interested in the other end of the product.
Farmington manufacturer exports sculptures to Japan
A manufacturing plant in Farmington, Mo., recently exported 210 blue hippo sculptures to Nakamura Manufacturing Corp. in Japan slated for a kindergarten program…. the sculpture, which costs $649 each, contains scientific information about the animal inside or outside of the play sculpture. The hippo sculpture has the anatomy of a real hippo molded into its tongue where children will climb through and see how the hippo digests its food…
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