iPad的日式生活料理

Best-man Toshiyuki hands out two iPads at a Japanese wedding reception. He's something of an early adopter while some of the older guests are unfamiliar with touch screens, despite their country's tech-savvy reputation. But the tablet's intuitive quality wins them over as they begin happily perusing a slide show of images from the betrotheds' lives -- not something wedding guests might do outside of Asia but which, in Japan, is de rigueur.

在日本的一個婚禮上，伴郎森川智之拿出了兩臺iPad。儘管日本以科技發達而著稱，但在場的不少年齡較大的賓客對觸控式螢幕並不熟悉，在他們面前，森川算是較早精通這款產品的人了。不過，當這些客人在iPad上開心地瀏覽一對新人的生活照時，平板電腦便捷好用的特性立刻征服了他們。在亞洲以外的國家，婚禮上不太可能安排這個環節。但在日本，這麼做完全合乎禮儀。

Applications unique to Japan are blossoming here thanks to Apple's (AAPL) iPad. In the absence of a popular home-grown alternative, domestic app makers have come up with some unusual -- sometimes inspiring -- approaches. "The fishermen in Hokkaido are using the iPad to record where they have fished to avoid over-fishing. In Saga prefecture, all the ambulances uses iPad to quickly locate where the patient has to be transferred. In Kobe, physicians using iPads during operations," says Tokyo-based tech consultant Nobuyuki Hayashi. "I could name another cool 50. There is almost nothing on Android tablets."

蘋果（Apple）iPad問世後，日本湧現出大量特有的本地化應用。因為本國沒有流行的替代產品，日本的程式設計師就自己開發了一些特別的用途，有時候還真能給人不少靈感。位於東京的日本技術分析師林伸行說：“北海道的漁民現在開始用iPad記錄自己捕撈過的地點，以防過度捕撈。在佐賀縣，所有救護車都用iPad快速定位病人需要轉診的地點。神戶的外科醫生則在手術中使用iPad。我還能再舉出另外50個很酷的應用，但它們大多都不能在安卓系統上安裝。”

What is working in Japan? Here are a few examples:

日本人喜歡什麼樣的應用呢？下面舉幾個例子：

Marriage of Convenience

婚禮助手

With heaps of protocol to observe, wedding planning in Japan is a complex affair. What an expensive, human wedding planner might otherwise do, the Chabio app promises to accomplish with minimal fuss. Not only will it keep tabs on all the necessary information -- such as your fiancée's mother's name -- but it also sports a huge pre-populated to-do list. It is divided by time frame (e.g. six to 12 months prior to wedding, four to one day before the wedding, etc.), so users won't be shouting "get me to the church on time" on the big day. Guests can also use Docomo's popular "i-concier" service to point their mobiles at a wedding invite and be told how exactly to get there.

在日本，婚禮的繁文縟節一大堆，所以婚禮策劃是件非常複雜的事。請人來執行婚禮策劃成本很高，但一款名為Chabio的應用卻能保證基本不掉鏈子地完成任務。它不僅能標出所有必需的資訊——比如您丈母孃的名字——還能提供一大張預先填好的事項清單。這張清單按照時間段來劃分婚禮籌備程序（比如婚禮舉行前的6到12個月，婚禮前的4到1天等），到大喜日子到來的那一天，新人就不用大喊“送我準時趕到教堂！”之類的話了。來賓們也能使用移動運營商多科莫公司（Docomo）的人氣服務“i-concier”。只要把手機對準婚禮請帖，手機就會詳細告訴他們，如何到達婚禮現場。

See the World

漫遊世界

Japanese cellphone owners have long enjoyed location-based services and spiffy mobile navigators. But the Sekai Camera app goes further to generate "a new, fourth dimension everybody has dreamed of," says Takahito Iguchi the application's creator. Like other so-called augmented-reality apps, it calculates your position, then, using the camera, displays location-specific information graphically on top of a real-world view. But the genius of Sekai Camera is that individuals and businesses can add their own information. They just point a smartphone/tablet camera at the landscape adding "tags" that can include text, images, and sound that can be picked up by others in the area later. Tags can translate into coupons from businesses (a free Guinness when you stop at a bar serving the black stuff for example) or travel tips from friends.

日本的手機使用者很早就開始使用各種定位服務和導航服務。但新應用Sekai Camera的開發者井口崇人表示，Sekai Camera進一步拓展了定位功能，創造了“大家都夢寐以求的全新四維空間”。和其他所謂的現實增強應用一樣，它先計算出你所在的位置，隨後用一個攝像頭在一幅真實影象的頂部顯示跟你位置相關的特定地理資訊。這個應用的絕妙之處在於，個人和商家都能新增自己的資訊。他們只需要把智慧手機或平板電腦對準某個場景，就能新增包括文字、影象和聲音在內的“標籤”，來到這個區域的其他人就能讀到這些資訊。這些標籤可以變成商家提供的優惠券（比方說，你可以在一家黑啤酒吧領取一瓶免費的吉尼斯黑啤），或者朋友給你的旅行建議。

Waiting for Godot

等待戈多

As witnessed in post-tsunami Japan, looting is rare. So, hand out an iPad in a pub with a menu on it, or in a restaurant, and you are very likely to have it returned. Without fear of theft, many restaurants now use iPhones and iPads as order-taking devices (for the waitress). What's unique at Toku, a Korean BBQ restaurant in Kyoto, is it uses the iPad as a menu/ordering system for direct use by customers. It could make waiting on tables obsolete.

就像大家在海嘯之後的日本看到的那樣，很少有人搶劫。所以在酒吧或飯店給客人一個帶有選單的iPad，客人多半會把它還給店主。因為不怕被盜，現在很多飯店都開始用iPhone和iPad作為服務員的點單裝置。而京都的一家叫Toku的韓國烤肉店則更有特色，它讓顧客直接拿iPad點餐，服務員就不需要在飯桌邊等候了。

Golden threads

量體選衣

Former Fashion model Kaoru Igarashi had a theory, based on the golden mean ratio, that there might be an algorithm capable of calculating what fashion best suits you using your vital stats and facial dimensions. A tie-up with online fashion retailers Digital Fashion generated that algorithm. The result is an app that proves her theory used by a department store in Kobe to recommend suites and dress. An iPad is used to snap the customer, and the program does the rest.

曾經當過時裝模特五十嵐馨有一套基於黃金分割律的理論，就是說可能有這樣一種演算法，它能用你的關鍵尺寸和臉部比例算出你最適合哪種時裝。她和線上時尚服飾零售商數碼時尚（Digital Fashion）合作開發了這套演算法。現在，神戶的一家百貨公司就藉助一款採用了這個理論的應用，向顧客推薦服裝。用一臺iPad迅速掃描一下客戶的身材尺寸後，程式就會自動完成剩下的任務。