Livedoor
was a Japanese company that functioned as an Internet service provider and operator of a web portal and blog platform before being brought down by a scandal in 2006. The company was founded and led in its first 10 years by Takafumi Horie, known as "Horiemon" in Japan. Livedoor grew into one of Japan's premier Internet businesses, putting over 1,000 employees on its payroll at its peak. Its reliance on Mergers and acquisitions, acquisitions and stock swap mergers to achieve growth also made it one of the country's most controversial enterprises. Its growth came to a resounding halt when scandal erupted in early 2006. An investigation of securities law violations led to a nosedive in the company's stock price. The Tokyo Stock Exchange delisted Livedoor on April 14, 2006. The floundering company's properties were purchased by South Koreabased NHN Corporation in 2010. The Internet Service Provider, ISP and blog services that bear the Livedoor name used to be operated by Line Corporat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2004 Nippon Professional Baseball Realignment
The 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment was a series of events that occurred during the 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball season that changed the landscape of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). In June of that season, the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave announced that, due to financial difficulties, the two teams planned to merge into one for the start of the 2005 Nippon Professional Baseball season, 2005 season. Both teams were in the Pacific League (PL), and a merger between the two would result in a team imbalance with the PL's opposing league, the Central League (CL). Soon, it was announced that a second merger was being explored between two of the remaining four PL teams. With the possibility of the PL losing a second team, discussion about possibly restructuring NPB's two-league system into one ten-team league began. PL and CL executives continued to discuss the merits of both systems until it was finally decided that the two-league system would remain ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Takafumi Horie
is a Japanese entrepreneur who founded Livedoor, a website design operation that grew into a popular internet portal. After being arrested and charged with securities fraud in 2006, he severed all connections with the company. His trial began on September 4, 2006. On March 16, 2007, Horie was sentenced to imprisonment of 2 years and 6 months. He is popularly known as due to his resemblance to Doraemon, the chubby robot cat in a popular Japanese cartoon. The name Horiemon was also given to a racehorse he owned, after the name had been chosen by voting on a Livedoor website. Early life Horie was born in Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, and was raised in a respected household by a ''corporate'' father and mother from a farming landlord family. He was a student at the department of literature at the University of Tokyo and was going to major in religion, but dropped out after establishing a company called Livin' on the Edge in 1995 with friends and classmates, which became th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles
The , often shortened as the , are a baseball team based in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. It has played in Nippon Professional Baseball's Pacific League since the team's formation in November 2004. The team is owned by the Internet shopping company Rakuten. History 2004: Origins and formation During Nippon Professional Baseball's (NPB) 2004 season, the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave announced that the two teams planned to merge into one for the start of the 2005 season. Both teams were in the Pacific League (PL), and a merger between the two would result in a team imbalance with the PL's opposing league, the Central League (CL). As a large number of players and personnel were expected to lose their jobs when the merger was finalized, the players conducted a two-day strike on September 18–19, 2004. With the threat of further strikes looming, team representatives agreed to ease the rules of entry for new teams into NPB and that one would be allowed t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Line (application)
Line is a freeware app and service for instant messaging and social networking, operated by the Korean-Japanese company LY Corporation, co-owned by SoftBank Group and Naver. Line was launched in Japan in June 2011 by NHN Japan, a subsidiary of Naver. Initially designed for text messaging and VoIP voice and video calling, it has gradually expanded to become a super-app providing services including a digital wallet (Line Pay), news stream (Line Today), video on demand ( Line TV) and digital comic distribution (Line Manga and Line Webtoon). Line became Japan's largest social network in 2013 and is used by over 70% of the population as of 2023; it is also popular mainly in Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand. History Launch Naver launched a messaging app called Naver Talk for the South Korean market in February 2011. However, rival Korean company Kakao dominated the market with its KakaoTalk app, launched in March 2010 Naver/NHN co-founder and chairman Lee Hae-Jin and a team of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Minato, Tokyo
is a Special wards of Tokyo, special ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is also called Minato City in English. Minato was formed in 1947 as a merger of Akasaka, Tokyo, Akasaka, Azabu and Shiba, Tokyo, Shiba wards following Tokyo City's Local Autonomy Act, transformation into Tokyo Metropolis. The modern Minato ward exhibits the contrasting Shitamachi and Yamanote geographical and cultural division. The Shinbashi neighborhood in the ward's northeastern corner is attached to the core of Shitamachi, the original commercial center of Edo-Tokyo. On the other hand, the Azabu and Akasaka areas are typically representative Yamanote districts. , Minato had an official population of 243,094, and a population density of 10,850 persons per km2. The total area is 20.37 km2. Known as one of Tokyo's largest business areas, Minato is home to the headquarters of many large domestic companies, including Honda, Mitsubishi Motors, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, NEC, Nikon, SoftBank Group, Sony and Fuj ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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E-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is the largest sector of the electronics industry and is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry. Defining e-commerce The term was coined and first employed by Robert Jacobson, Principal Consultant to the California State Assembly's Utilities & Commerce Committee, in the title and text of California's Electronic Commerce Act, carried by the late Committee Chairwoman Gwen Moore (D-L.A.) and enacted in 1984. E-commerce typically uses the web for at least a part of a transacti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rakuten
is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around the online retail marketplace Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing Fintech, digital content and communications services such as the messaging app Viber, e-book distributor Kobo, and Japan's fourth-most used mobile carrier, Rakuten Mobile. Rakuten has more than 28,000 employees worldwide, operating in 30 countries and regions, and its revenues totalling US $12.8 billion as of 2021. Rakuten was the official sponsor of the Spanish football club FC Barcelona from 2017 until 2022,"Gross Merchandise Sales & Number of Employees" Rakuten and the [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sendai, Miyagi
is the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,098,335 in 539,698 households, making it the twelfth most populated city in Japan. The modern city was founded in 1600 by the ''daimyō'' Date Masamune. It is nicknamed the ; there are Japanese zelkova trees lining many of the main thoroughfares such as and . In the summer, the Sendai Tanabata Festival, the largest Tanabata festival in Japan, is held. In winter, the trees are decorated with thousands of lights for the , lasting through most of December. The city is also home to Tohoku University, one of the former Imperial Universities. On 11 March 2011, coastal areas of the city suffered catastrophic damage from a magnitude 9.0 offshore earthquake,] which triggered a destructive tsunami. History Edo period Although the Sendai area was inhabited as early as 20,000 years ago, the history of Sendai as a city begins from 1600, when the ''daimyō'' Date Mas ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Home Ground
In sports, home is the place and venue identified with a sports team. Most professional teams are named for, and marketed to, particular metropolitan areas; amateur teams may be drawn from a particular region, or from institutions such as schools or universities. When they play in that venue, they are said to be the "home team"; when the team plays elsewhere, they are the ''away'', ''visiting'', or ''road'' team. Home teams wear home colors. Venue Each team has a location where it practices during the season and where it hosts games. This is referred to as the home court, home field, home stadium, home ballpark, home arena, home ground, or home ice. When a team is serving as host of a contest, it is designated as the "home team". The event is described as a "home game" for that team and the venue that the game is being played is described as the "home field." In most sports, there is a home field advantage whereby the home team wins more frequently because it has a greater ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch (baseball), plays, with each play beginning when a player on the fielding team (baseball), fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a Baseball (ball), ball that a player on the batting team (baseball), batting team, called the Batter (baseball), batter, tries to hit with a baseball bat, bat. The objective of the offensive team (batting team) is to hit the ball into the field of play, away from the other team's players, allowing its players to run the Base (baseball), bases, having them advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "Run (baseball), runs". The objective of the defensive team (referred to as the fielding team) is to prevent batters from becoming Base running, runners, and to prevent runners base running ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kintetsu Buffaloes
The were a Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) team based in Osaka, Japan, which was in the Pacific League. In 2005 the team was merged with the Orix BlueWave to become the team now known as the Orix Buffaloes. The team played in Fujiidera Stadium, and later in Osaka Dome. Although the team won four Pacific League championships, they lost all four Japan Series in which they played. The team's batting lineup was known as ''Itemae Dasen'' ( いてまえ打線). Logo design A stylized buffalo's head with angry-looking red eyes (designed by Okamoto Taro), or "Buffaloes" in red script, outlined with white. Another logo featured the "Buffaloes" in red script, while also featuring Buffie, the Buffaloes mascot. Franchise history The team was founded in 1949 and began play in 1950 in the newly organized NPB. Owned by Kinki Nippon Railway Co. (later known as Kintetsu Railway), the franchise was known as the Kintetsu Pearls from 1950 to 1958, Kintetsu Buffalo from 1959 to 1961, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |