Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Norway-based StormGeo has been selected by the Kajima Corporation to provide weather forecasting services for the first multi-turbine offshore wind farm in Akita, Japan.

Kajima, which is the operator of the Akita Offshore Wind Corporation, believes that StormGeo can help it safely navigate the twenty-month construction period, which is now underway. The Norwegian firm will assist with weather, wave, and typhoon forecasting.

Koki Taguchi, Kajima’s general project manager, stated, “We chose StormGeo because they are one of the most experienced providers of metocean forecasting services for offshore wind, with more than one hundred offshore wind projects both in and outside of Europe. StormGeo also has Japanese staff located in Japan who will support us locally. StormGeo’s deep industry knowledge, long-term experience in the waters surrounding Japan, and decade-long experience in typhoon forecasting make StormGeo the ideal weather service provider for the Akita and Noshiro Wind Farm Project.”

Jostein Maelan, chief operating officer of Weather Insights at StormGeo, added, “This project is another important milestone for offshore renewables in StormGeo. Building on our many years of experience from both Europe and Taiwan, it is inspiring to be able to contribute to the success and growth of offshore wind in Japan.”

Forecasting will be delivered from StormGeo’s regional weather center in Dubai, and typhoon warnings delivered by StormGeo tropical forecasting center in Houston, Texas. The StormGeo staff in Tokyo will assist in Japanese language translation.

On January 12, the first ship carrying monopiles arrived at Akita Port, with a view to initiate the construction of the offshore foundations next month.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Toyota Motor has reached an agreement to supply its hydrogen fuel cell technology to a consortium led by Corvus Energy that is developing maritime fuel cells, aiming to power zero carbon emissions shipping.

Energy storage firm Corvus Energy is set to start development and production of sustainable, large-scale maritime hydrogen fuel cell systems, at a base located in Bergen, Norway.

Thiebault Paquet, director of the Toyota Motor Europe Fuel Cell Business Group, commented, “Decarbonization is inevitable, and at Toyota we are convinced that hydrogen will play a central role in creating a better future, both environmentally and economically.”

Corvus Energy CEO Geir Bjorkeli added, “Adding fuel cell modules to our product portfolio is a natural step for Corvus and advances our vision to be the leading supplier of zero-emission marine solutions. Fuel cell technology has reached a maturity level where scale-up of systems will be the next step. Toyota is in the forefront of the development and is by far the best partner for us to make this a success.”

The consortium aims to showcase its first marine fuel cell system onboard a vessel in 2023, and to be ready for commercial delivery from 2024.

Other consortium partners include energy firm Equinor, the two shipowners Norled and Wilhelmsen Holding, the ship design company LMG Marin, the NCE Maritime CleanTech cluster, and the state-run University of South-Eastern Norway.

The state agency Innovation Norway has also provided funding of around €5.2 million (US$6.2 million) for the project.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Akihabara News Editor-in-Chief Michael Penn interviewed Brad Bennett, owner and founder of the Tokyo bike tour company Freewheeling Japan.

Originally from the Seattle area of the United States, he has been in Tokyo for 28 years. The first time Bennett visited Japan was in 1990, when he picked up a part time job for six months with a friend offering bike tours in the city. Bennett fell in love with the country and he flew home, sold all his belongings in the States, and bought a one-way ticket back to Tokyo.

Freewheeling differs from other tours of the capital city by offering a biking introduction to Tokyo for everyday people. The overarching theme of these tours is to show people the backstreets and local areas, to give them a sense of how and where the people of Tokyo live.

The company grew organically with Brad showing his friends on tours, but he decided to get serious and begin a company due to anticipation for the Olympics and increasing tourism. With Bennett’s twenty years of experience living in Tokyo, he has gained vast knowledge of the city from English newspapers, Japanese friends, and local governments. Bennett would purposefully get lost in order to discover the back roads and his way around the city.

Watch our interview below and learn more at the Freewheeling Japan website.

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Foundation: 2015

Headquarters: Shibuya Ward, Tokyo

President: Takuya Kitamura

Website

Sensyn Robotics is a Japanese startup focused on development, application, and deployment of industrial drone services. Its annual income is undisclosed.

News Timeline

2021

January

-Sensyn Robotics unveil “Sensyn Explorer,” a small drone about the size of the palm of one’s hand, which is designed to operate within tight indoor spaces.

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Foundation: 1919

Headquarters: Chiyoda Ward, Osaka

President and CEO: Kuniharu Nakamura

Website

Sumitomo Corporation is one of the largest Japanese general trading companies, with roots reaching back to the 17th century establishment of a book and medicine shop in Kyoto by Masatomo Sumitomo. Its annual income is in the range of US$30 billion.

News Timeline

2021

January

-Sumitomo signs a front end engineering and design contract with JGC Holdings, aiming to produce green hydrogen in the city of Gladstone in Australia’s state of Queensland.

2020

May

-Sumitomo Corporation concludes an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on the preliminary trial installation and verification of smart poles.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — NTT Docomo and glass manufacturer AGC announced that they have developed a prototype metasurface that allows 5G radio signals to pass through closed windows, solving one of the key limitations of 5G technology.

With the application of the metasurface, tests have shown that 28-GHz 5G radio signals received from outdoors can efficiently pass through building windows to indoor locations with the signals remaining strong.

Although 5G technology is bringing much faster speeds to wireless devices, it has the drawback of not being able to travel over long distances and being relatively easily blocked by large physical objects such as buildings in urban settings. Potentially, the metasurface could thus reduce the number of 5G base stations that are needed to form a network.

The metasurface lens material developed by Docomo and AGC is a transparent film that can cover virtually the entire inside surface of a window. The material has no effect on LTE and sub-6 band radio waves, so it can be used to improve indoor reception of 28 GHz radio signals without affecting the performance of legacy wireless frequencies.

Trials also verify that structural design technology can be deployed to enable the metasurface lenses to allow high-frequency radio signals to penetrate glass that has been coated for heat insulation.

This technology is believed to be a world’s first.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Sensyn Robotics has unveiled its “Sensyn Explorer,” a small drone about the size of the palm of one’s hand, which is designed to operate within tight indoor spaces.

The Shibuya-based firm aims to become a leader in utilizing drones for equipment inspection, security monitoring, and disaster countermeasures.

The Sensyn Explorer is built for use in narrow spaces such as chimneys, tanks, and large ducts or pipes that are difficult for people to enter. The drone can act as an eye to penetrate these confined areas, capturing images and taking video footage.

These drones can fly for about 12 minutes before needing to be recharged.

Initial tests in oil plants and steelworks, with high ceilings and narrow environs have confirmed the tiny drones’ utility.

Sensyn Robotics operates the Sensyn Explorer as part of full services to Japanese companies, including the planning, execution, and reporting on inspection tasks.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Sumitomo Corporation is taking practical steps to realize green hydrogen production in Gladstone, Australia, by the end of 2023.

“Green hydrogen” denotes hydrogen fuel that is itself produced through a zero carbon emissions process, unlike the current production processes which contribute to global warming.

Sumitomo’s latest move sees it signing a front end engineering and design (FEED) contract with JGC Holdings.

The city of Gladstone in the State of Queensland has an existing industrial infrastructure and rich solar radiation with long daylight hours, making it ideal for capturing the solar power that would go into the green hydrogen production process.

The initial green hydrogen production plant eyed for a 2023 opening is expected produce 250-300 tons of hydrogen annually, with plans to scale up production thereafter.

Sumitomo is also collaborating with other companies to explore possible fuel ammonia production projects.

Last month, the competing Global LH2 Consortium was announced, consisting of the Iwatani Corporation, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Fortescue Metals Group, an Australian mining firm. These firms signed a joint agreement to explore the possibility of producing green hydrogen in Australia to be exported to the Japanese market.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Seino Holdings and Aeronext, a technology startup promoting next-generation drones, have formed an alliance to create a new smart logistics business.

Seino currently focuses on smart supply chains by optimizing, automating, and eliminating the need for human operation in production and delivery, utilizing digital transformation in logistics.

Aeronext aims to enable drones to become indispensable to people’s lives and to improve social conditions by looking to a future in which the sky becomes a significant transportation and commercial zone.

This alliance plans to establish a new smart logistics service that connects and integrates existing logistics with drone logistics. This will most prominently involve the joint development of SkyHub, the name for the proposed service.

In this connection, Aeronext recently signed an agreement with Kosuge village, Yamanashi Prefecture, to run practical tests in drone delivery that it intends to scale up in the future.

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Foundation: 2017

Headquarters: Shibuya Ward, Tokyo

CEO: Keisuke Toji

Website

Aeronext is a Japanese startup focused on research and development of structural design technology for industrial drones. Its annual income is undisclosed.

News Timeline

2021

January

-Aeronext and Seino sign Business Alliance for connecting and integrating existing logistics with drone logistics

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Foundation: 2019

Headquarters: Kyoto city, Kyoto

Co-Founder & CEO: Taka Nagao

Website

Kyoto Fusioneering describes itself as Japan’s first startup dedicated to the production of fusion energy. Its annual income is undisclosed.

News Timeline

2021

January

-Kyoto Fusioneering reaches more than US$3.3 million in funding since its October 2019 launch, after an additional US$1.1 million is raised through third-party allocation of shares from Coral Capital.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — NTT East has entered the drone industry with the forthcoming establishment of NTT e-Drone Technology.

This new firm, scheduled to begin operations on February 1, will initially focus on operating drones for agricultural use, helping Japan’s farm sector cope with an increasingly severe labor shortage.

NTT East has two partner companies in establishing NTT e-Drone Technology, which are OPTiM Corporation, a Tokyo-based AI company, and WorldLink & Company, a Kyoto-based firm with previous experience in the drone business. While it is known that NTT East will possess the largest share in the venture, the precise financial split between the three was not revealed.

The grouping has described their overall objective as follows: “Currently, the drone market is expanding rapidly, and it is expected that drones will be utilized in many industrial fields. Under these circumstances, NTT East, OPTiM, and WorldLink will establish this joint venture to bring together the strengths of each company and to promote the social implementation of drones, thus contributing to the creation of sustainable local communities and the revitalization of local economies and industries.”

The inaugural president of the firm will be Hiroshi Tanabe of NTT East, and its headquarters will be in Asaka city, Saitama Prefecture. It’s initial capitalization will be in the neighborhood of US$4.7 million.

The first of its drones will be pesticide spraying drones that it is taking over from the failed firm Enroute Co., which is transferring its business to NTT e-Drone Technology at the end of the month. Most of Enroute’s nearly fifty employees are losing their jobs.

Enroute’s drones, which will become NTT e-Drone Technology’s first fleet of drones, are medium-sized with payloads of four to eight kilograms. They can spray 2.5 hectares of farmland with a single battery charge.

NTT e-Drone Technology has set a target of reaching ¥1 billion (US$9.6 million) in sales by March 2022 and ¥5 billion (US$48 million) annually within five years.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Ammonia technology has been earmarked for a significant role in Japan’s green energy plans, a fact underlined by a new deal reached with state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Japan is planning to adopt ammonia use for power generation under its 2050 decarbonization strategy, which was released last month. According to the outline, the government foresees that 10% of all power generation in the country will be produced by hydrogen and ammonia within thirty years.

Currently, these technologies do not produce any of Japan’s industrial or commercial power.

In this connection, last week the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and ADNOC signed a cooperation deal to accelerate joint development of commercially-feasible ammonia fuel technology. METI has a plan to start testing co-firing of ammonia at a commercial coal-fired power generation unit during FY2021, aiming to achieve a 20% co-firing rate. It will also develop ammonia-fired gas turbine technology.

Aside from the ADNOC deal, some private companies and the governmental Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) are getting in on the act, having last month launched a feasibility study to develop an ammonia supply chain in Russian Siberia.

Ammonia, a compound consisting of three parts hydrogen and one part nitrogen, contains about 18% hydrogen by weight, and it releases zero carbon emissions when combusted in a thermal power plant.

The drawback of ammonia fuel as a climate change tool is similar to the problem of hydrogen fuel: While it produces no carbon emissions when combusted as fuel, the process of making the fuel itself requires a great deal of energy which is currently supplied mainly by fossil fuels, thus undermining the potential benefits for the environment.

However, efforts are underway to create supply chains to produce “blue ammonia,” created with less polluting natural gas, and ultimately “green ammonia,” in which all stages of the process are linked to renewable energy sources.

Currently, Japan is prioritizing the development its supply chain for blue ammonia and not green ammonia due to the financial costs involved. Last September, Japan imported the world’s first shipment of blue ammonia from Saudi Arabia.

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Foundation: 2019

Headquarters: Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo

CEO: Hisashi Asai

Website

AirMobility is a Japanese startup aiming to build infrastructure for sales and services of future flying cars and taxis, also called eVTOL (Electric Vertical TakeOff and Landing). Its annual income is undisclosed.

News Timeline

2021

-AirMobility forms a tie-up with the more established Terra Drone on undisclosed terms.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Terra Drone has flagged its interest in entering the air taxi business by forming a tie-up with AirMobility, both of them Tokyo-based technology firms.

Terra Drone is an established player in its industry, was recently selected as the world’s No. 1 industrial drone service company in the Drone Service Provider Ranking 2020, compiled by Drone Industry Insights.

AirMobility is a newer firm, established in August 2019, aiming to build infrastructure for sales and services of future flying cars and taxis, also called eVTOL (Electric Vertical TakeOff and Landing).

The two companies have released no details about the full scope or possible financial terms of their agreement, but it does signal that this grouping will become one of Japan’s most serious players in the air taxi space, given Terra Drone’s established heft.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — JR East has reached an agreement with a Singapore-based startup to deploy AI-powered robot baristas to selected train stations by July.

The Singapore firm, called Crown Technologies, counts its arrangement with JR East as its first major business deal since its launch. The unmanned robot barista, named Ella, can make up to two hundred cups of coffee per hour, and is designed for contactless retail operations in a high-volume environment. It can operate around the clock if called upon to do so.

Ella takes orders through a mobile app, and it makes coffee as well as specialty drinks. When completed, the robot barista notifies customers that their order is ready and serves the drink. The entire process is autonomous and contactless.

It was designed before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, but fits in very well with contemporary health concerns.

On the AI front, Ella uses predictive analytics to forecast coffee serving demand, and is monitored to ensure that there are no malfunctions.

The financial terms of the agreement between JR East and Crown Technologies have not been released.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — There is an emerging trend in Japan of megabanks starting to partner up with major mobile phone carriers.

The first move of this sort took place last June when SoftBank and Mizuho Financial Group announced that they would partner on delivering financial services via smartphones. Now comes news that the largest players in their respective fields, NTT Docomo and MUFG Bank, are also on the verge of forming a comprehensive tie-up on financial operations.

While the details of these partnerships are likely to have variations in terms of the range of financial services that they encompass, they hold in common the characteristic that customers of a certain mobile phone carrier will be given preferential treatment with the partner megabank.

In this way, it seems likely that mobile carrier services and banking services in Japan may increasingly be seen as part of a package deal.

Docomo and MUFG Bank have yet to publicly confirm their agreement, but in regard to its own arrangement with SoftBank last June, Mizuho commented, “The two companies will work to support and assist customers in realizing new lifestyles by cultivating the next generation of financial services that tailor finance businesses to different scenarios in people’s lifestyles, enabled by smartphones, as well as by offering highly convenient, new online services.”

If the Docomo-MUFG Bank deal goes forward, it seems only a matter of time before the other two major mobile carriers, KDDI and Rakuten, make their own bank partnerships, though only one megabank, SMBC, remains open for such an arrangement.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — GMO Internet has won approval from the New York Department of Financial Services to establish a limited purpose trust company, which will issue the world’s first regulated Yen-pegged stablecoin.

GMO-Z.com Trust Company, called GMO Trust for short, will soon launch both a Yen-pegged stablecoin (GYEN) and US Dollar-pegged stablecoin (ZUSD), both of which can be purchased and redeemed directly from GMO Trust.

These stablecoins will be 100% fiat-backed and always redeemable at a 1:1 rate and ne powered by Ethereum blockchain technology.

Ken Nakamura, president and CEO of GMO Trust, commented, “We’re breaking ground with our move to issue the first regulated Yen-pegged stablecoin, which many see as a safe haven asset. But we are also pioneers and innovators in this space who envision building new applications of blockchain technology that transform our relationship with traditional financial services.”

Kurt Bierbower, the firm’s senior vice-president of business development, added: “We seek to dramatically reduce execution times and expand the digital options for retail and institutional clients in trading, settlements, payments, lending, and remittances. But our goal is also to leverage our twenty-year history in this space to meet the highest standards of reliability and security as a regulated entity.”

Tokyo-based GMO Internet Group operates an online FX trading platform. It also operates a Financial Services Agency (FSA) regulated internet bank. In 2017, it launched a digital currency exchange regulated by the FSA and a large Bitcoin mining operation.

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Foundation: 1918

Headquarters: Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo

President and CEO: Takehiko Kakiuchi

Website

Mitsubishi Corporation is Japan’s largest trading company. It has seven business segments, including finance, banking, energy, machinery, chemicals, and food. Its annual income is in the range of US$50 billion.

News Timeline

2021

January

-Mitsubishi Corporation’s Food Industry Group signs an MoU with Aleph Farms of Israel to bring whole-muscle steaks cultivated from cells to Japanese dinner tables.

2020

June

-Mitsubishi Corporation and NTT Anode Energy Corporation agree to study collaboration in the energy sector.

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Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The PlayStation 5 console may be a hot item in much of the world, but recent data reveals that its launch in Japan has been rather unimpressive.

According to Shukan Famitsu sales data for the week of December 14-20, a total of 15,122 PS5 consoles sold in Japan. In terms of game hardware ranking, that put it far behind the 211,000 Nintendo Switch gaming system and not much higher than the PS4, which sold more than 10,000 consoles during the same week. As of December 20, fewer than 200,000 PS5 consoles had been sold in Japan.

Some analysts, notably Hideki Yasuda of the ACE Research Institute, suggested that Sony Interactive Entertainment may be increasingly disrespecting its home market in Japan and prioritizing international markets. He even goes so far as to assert that, in response to this perceived neglect, many Japanese users justifiably “feel a sense of hopelessness” about Sony’s new direction, and even that “early PS5 trends have shown that the PlayStation brand in Japan is in decisive decline.”

However, not everyone seems to agree with Yasuda’s dramatic view. Analyst Serkan Toto of Kantan Games, for example, tweeted skeptically, “The PS5 barely launched and a Japanese analyst says it is already in decline over here. Well, then.”

It is likely far too premature to declare the PS5 a failure in Japan, but it is fair to say that, unlike the response in much of the rest of the world, the initial reception in its homeland has so far been a little bit cooler.

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