A Shinto priest at a historic Kobe shrine has been busted red-handed for taking a shot up a woman’s skirt at a pachinko parlor with a camera-equipped mobile phone, police said. When a female employee of the parlor came close to the seat he had taken up, the 42-year-old priest thrust his mobile phone under her skirt and took a photo.
Last year, NTT DoCoMo exported the successful i-mode concept overseas. A crucial part of that concept is the much talked-about mobile content and service provider “ecosystem” and – sure enough – Japan’s ecosystem players are following Big D’s path. Today we focus on three smaller players that have found honest-to-goodness cash revenue in Europe due at least in part to their Japan antecedents. Ironically, none are working with any of the baby i-modes over there, showing you don’t need DoCoMo to do what DoCoMo does – anywhere.
A man has been arrested after he used tear gas in a futile attempt to escape from a Tokyo video store where he had been caught filming up a woman’s skirt, police said Saturday. Police said that the man used his camera-equipped mobile phone to film up the skirt of a 20-year-old woman who was browsing through videos and CDs in the shop.
A local assemblyman from Tottori Prefecture was busted Thursday for purchasing narcotics, police said. The arrest of Susumu Ota, member of the Kurayoshi Municipal Assembly, was followed up by raids on six locations. Ota denies the allegation.
A report by the National Police Agency found that a record 122,115 people were victimized through illegal loans in 2002, suffering a combined loss of about 15.98 billion yen. Police said the incidents often involved dealers lending small sums of money over and over again.
While a slowdown in new announcements can be expected during the upcoming shogatsu New Year holiday period, 2003 promises to provide even more activity now that UK-based Vodafone has launched a 3G network in Japan and is expected to seek know-how and technology from Japan for its operations elsewhere. Further, Japanese software developers are sure to continue looking outside this country’s near-saturated market for new sales opportunities.
