LinkedIn Corp. on Thursday launched its online professional networking service in Japanese, the first Asian language platform for the rapidly growing company as it pushes to expand in the region. Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn also established a small Tokyo office, following the opening of its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in May.

Kashiwa Sato is the face behind many of Japan’s most famous designs — from the logos for Fast Retailing’s casual-clothing chain Uniqlo to artwork for Japan’s popular boy band SMAP and premier fashion designer Issey Miyake. Now he is taking on a new challenge as the creative mind behind the country’s new logo and message representing “Cool Japan,” the government’s campaign to promote modern Japanese culture abroad. It will be used by Japanese agencies and companies.

Amazon.com Inc may enter the Japanese e-book market this year and launch its Kindle readers in the market, the Nikkei business daily reported. The largest internet retailer, which plans to set up an online e-book store this year, is in final stages of negotiations with publishers like Shogakukan Inc, Shueisha Inc, Kodansha Ltd and Shinchosha Publishing Co, the Nikkei said.

NTT DoCoMo on Tuesday unveiled its 2011 winter - 2012 spring product lineup of 24 models for launch in or after November, including 14 smartphones, the largest and most diverse collection ever released by DoCoMo. The new smartphone lineup meets a broad range of needs for users in Japan, including smartphones for DoCoMo’s extra-high-speed next-generation LTE service, Xi, for mobile data communication at up to 75 Mbps; and smartphones equipped for mobile-wallet, infrared-based data exchange, one-seg mobile TV and tethering.

The Japanese smoker is becoming an increasingly rare breed. According to a new survey, 21.7% of Japanese adults are smokers, the lowest proportion recorded since the annual report conducted by Japan Tobacco Inc. began in 1965. The smoking population in Japan declined for the 16th consecutive year, but the latest figure is 2.2 percentage points lower than 2010, reflecting the steepest annual drop seen in recent years.

The Justice Ministry has decided to station about 50 foreign-language interpreters next fiscal year at immigration clearance counters of 18 airports and seaports across the country, a move apparently designed to cope with the increase in visitors from other Asian countries. It is estimated hiring such interpreters from the private sector will cost 300 million yen, the ministry said. 

It may look like a glorified salon chair, but a new Japanese hair-washing robot replicates the dexterous touch of a human hand to care for the locks of the elderly and the infirm. Its creators at electronics firm Panasonic say the machine features the latest robotic technology and could help replace human care-givers in this rapidly aging nation without degrading the quality of the service.

The Asahi beer is ice-cold. Naoki Doi takes sips from it between bites of curry. The bespectacled tour guide has asked me and my family to eat fast: he's taking us around some of Kyoto's outstanding shrines and temples, and there's a lot of them to see. He is, he says, relieved to have some business again. In March this year, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of East Japan, sending a devastating tsunami towards the shore. 

Smartphones detecting bad breath and radiation, twistable remote controls and a super-thin tablet computer featured among the cutting-edge gadgets at Asia's biggest tech fair in Japan on Tuesday. Around 600 firms unveiled their innovations at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (Ceatec) exhibition in Chiba, near Tokyo, expected to draw 200,000 visitors during its five-day run, organisers said.