Japan Inc set M&A record in 2011

The extraordinarly strong yen - it has appreciated by 45% against the dollar in past four years - sent Japanese companies on a shopping spree abroad. With a cash pile of JPY60 trillion big listed companies are sitting on, it's no wonder corporate Japan spent a record $80 billion on some 620 foreign companies in 2011, exceeding the previous record of 466 acquisitions worth of $75 billion in 2008, according to Dealogic. The Economist's article sees this as not a sign of strength but weakness. The situation it argues is different from the Japan's corporate shopping spree in 1980s when the businesses in Japan were growing. Nowadays, a combination of Japan economy being sluggish, including March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster, floods in Thailand, corporate-governance scandals, ageing population, lacklustre consumption and thanks to crises elsewhere makes Japan Inc seek opportunities abroad, especially in fast-growing emerging markets. Source: The Economist | Japanese firms shop abroad: Armed with a strong yen http://econ.st/sy4CjY

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Social gaming market in Japan saw 80% growth to $3.2bn in 2011

Yano Research estimates the size of Japanese social gaming market hitting 257 billion Japanese yen or about $3.2 billion in 2011, an increase of more than 80% from last year. In 2012 the market is expected to grow by 33% to 342 billion Japanese yen.

Source: Yano

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Number of foreign nationals visiting Japan in 2011 dropped by 28% reaching 6.2 million

Statistics by top countries can be seen in table below:

Source: BizMakoto

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The Top 20 Debtor Countries: and the first place goes to Japan

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In Japan Facebook goes from niche to mass market adoption in one year

Facebook seems to break away from a niche social network for foreigners and English-speaking Japanese users to a mass market contender. Recent numbers from Net Ratings, a Nielsen Web metrics company, show that more than 10 million users accessed Facebook from PC in August this year, marking a 5.6 times increase from the last year. The Facebook reach among PC users in Japan now accounts for 17%. In comparison, Facebook is still behind Twitter (23.6%) and Mixi (23.5%) in terms of PC reach. To be honest, the PC reach metrics may not be very indicative in the country like Japan, where the majority of users access Twitter and Mixi like services from mobile phones. For the full picture, we need to know the number of Facebook mobile users. So far, Net Ratings shared just one bit of info - 20% of Facebook users in Japan access the service from smartphones only. So, my estimate is that there are about 13 million users accessing Facebook at least once a month in Japan.

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