Pokemon Go has finally come to Japan! Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be very hyped up, but we’re studying/analysing Pokemon Go in one of my zemi’s, so I actually caved and downloaded the app. (Although my teacher told us that becoming trainers was not the main goal. He’s not going to stop us though… And when he plays Pokemon Go, it’s called ‘research’).

The FIRST THING I see (although I hear that it was there from the start)

And I wasn’t even the first. When I got to school, I saw a classmate standing outside. When I asked why, his reply was “there’s supposed to be a Pokemon here”

And my first catch!

Tada! So cute, right? But after I caught the Charmander, my friend told me that there was a hack to make Pikachu your first catch. Basically, just walk away from the three pokemon a few times, and Pikachu will appear.

By the way, I had a lot of problems deciding on the name. I’m probably too uncreative, because in the end, I just combined two of my nicknames. Which means I’m now “TacoYuu”. Most of my friends just added numbers to their names haha

A random pokestop. I’ve been swiping every time I pass one. My senpai went out, rode his bicycle for one hour plus, and he found twelve pokemon! And mastered the art of visiting pokestops without actually stopping the bicycle.

I found a lot more Pokemon around my house though. There weren’t many in school, but perhaps it’s because there are more players in school?

Oh, and since we’re analysing it for zemi, we talked about Pokemon Go today. Some topics we discussed include:

How is Nintendo making money from this? (We still can’t figure this out.) To ask another, similar, question: how is Niantic making money from Pokemon Go (Nintendo owns part of Niantic and The Pokemon Company), but how does Niantic plan to monetise Pokemon Go?

– Early investigation suggests that while in-app purchases form a part of it, sponsored locations might be what they’re considering. Not to mention hardware sales or related games.

– Speaking of sponsored locations, MacDonalds is the first partner, and all MacDonald shops are gonna be either gyms or pokestops (apparently). It will be interesting to see if this helps MacD’s bottom line, though anecdotal evidence suggests that Pokemon Go could be good for businesses depending on foot traffic.

– And for the game itself, how does the Pokemon appear? Lure modules appear for all players, but at other times, it seems player specific. For example, two Pokemon appeared in Sensei’s office, and it’s not a pokestop or anything. Any there was a time when a Pokemon appeared for me, but not for sensei, even though he was standing right next to me. And a few minutes before that, a Weedle appeared to my Senpai, but not to me, even though I was seated right beside

– How long will Pokemon Go last? (Is it a fad or not?) Why is it so popular? (We started debating if it’s nostalgia or something, and if Pokemon is even popular in the States).

– Data privacy concerns: Like the ‘mistake’ that gave Pokemon Go nearly all access to a user’s Google Account. Not to mention the T&C which lets them share data to third parties.

So now you get an idea of some of the stuff we discuss in Zemi. It’s definitely an interesting topic, since it’s unfolding in real time 😀