2013-06-18 Asahi Shinbun (Major Japanese Newspaper)

[jonwaller]

Paywall:
http://www.asahi.com/shimen/articles/TKY201306170680.html

Full article and English translation:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1gkfsm/bitcoin_article_in_asahi_shinbun_japans_no2/

Summary:
Positive. Mostly accurate. Covers remittance, exchanges, volatility, Bitcoin's similarity to gold, and a comment from the ECB.  

Sebastien Gari a Currency Strategist at the large French finance [group] Societe Generale says "Because a problem in the design of bitcoin, it became used for speculation.", however he goes on to say, "This [new] type of "electric money" is extremely promising. Possibly in the future people will build various kinds of new currencies and ways of settling payments."

[jinni]

Wow, this is huge. Japan has had almost know recognition of Bitcoin yet and now the second biggest newspaper writes about it!

Does anyone know if it was in the print edition as well?

[BitChick]

Wow, this is huge. Japan has had almost know recognition of Bitcoin yet and now the second biggest newspaper writes about it!

Does anyone know if it was in the print edition as well?

I thought Japan was very involved with BTC already?  I guess I just assumed?  Of course this is great news!!  Hopefully they see the potential and jump right in!  

[solex]

Mt Gox is in Japan but the rest of that country seems to be ignoring Bitcoin.

Not even appearing in this list:

We like to throw these numbers around a lot, but counting the number of downloads of a country is meaningless. What's more important is per capita downloads. I made a chart here below of countries with at least 10000 downloads.

Country	Per capita downloads	Population	Downloads
Finland	0.005005	5435200	27203
Sweden	0.004789	9566945	45813
Netherlands	0.004454	16786100	74759
Norway	0.003881	5051275	19602
Canada	0.003689	35056064	129327
Denmark	0.003592	5602628	20124
Australia	0.003488	23019264	80292
New Zealand	0.003218	4466900	14375
United States	0.002964	315840000	936050
United Kingdom	0.002838	63181775	179301
Ireland	0.002810	4585400	12885
Germany	0.002533	82029000	207814
Austria	0.002475	8489482	21013
Switzerland	0.002465	8036900	19807
Israel	0.002311	8012400	18513
Slovakia	0.002254	5410836	12198
Poland	0.002010	38533789	77451
Bulgaria	0.001866	7282041	13590
Czech Republic	0.001790	10516125	18828
Belgium	0.001766	11151495	19692
Portugal	0.001435	10562178	15161
Greece	0.001250	10815197	13523
Russia	0.001175	143369806	168512
Ukraine	0.001117	45529408	50854
Hungary	0.001116	9906000	11052
Romania	0.001112	19043767	21172
Spain	0.001021	47059533	48038
France	0.000825	65635000	54165
Italy	0.000793	59530464	47213
Argentina	0.000555	40117096	22245
South Africa	0.000235	51770560	12162
Brazil	0.000203	193946886	39367
China	0.000194	1354040000	262613
Mexico	0.000136	112336538	15294
India	0.000018	1210193422	21776

[jonwaller]

Bitcoin is almost unknown here. Hopefully this will change things.

Does anyone know if it was in the print edition as well?

Yes, it was.

[Kupsi]

This created a boost in google searches for Bitcoin in Japan

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%E3%83%93%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%82%B3%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3#q=%E3%83%93%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%82%B3%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q