????在日本的一個婚禮上，伴郎森川智之拿出了兩臺iPad。盡管日本以科技發(fā)達而著稱，但在場的不少年齡較大的賓客對觸摸屏并不熟悉，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(huán)節(jié)。但在日本，這么做完全合乎禮儀。

????蘋果（Apple）iPad問世后，日本涌現(xiàn)出大量特有的本地化應用。因為本國沒有流行的替代產品，日本的程序員就自己開發(fā)了一些特別的用途，有時候還真能給人不少靈感。位于東京的日本技術分析師林伸行說：“北海道的漁民現(xiàn)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(yī)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(tǒng)上安裝。”

????日本人喜歡什么樣的應用呢？下面舉幾個例子：

婚禮助手

????在日本，婚禮的繁文縟節(jié)一大堆，所以婚禮策劃是件非常復雜的事。請人來執(zhí)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信息——比如您丈母娘的名字——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進程（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?zhí)?，手機就會詳細告訴他們，如何到達婚禮現(xiàn)場。

漫游世界

????日本的手機用戶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(fā)者井口崇人表示，Sekai Camera進一步拓展了定位功能，創(chuàng)造了“大家都夢寐以求的全新四維空間”。和其他所謂的現(xiàn)實增強應用一樣，它先計算出你所在的位置，隨后用一個攝像頭在一幅真實圖像的頂部顯示跟你位置相關的特定地理信息。這個應用的絕妙之處在于，個人和商家都能添加自己的信息。他們只需要把智能手機或平板電腦對準某個場景，就能添加包括文本、圖像和聲音在內的“標簽”，來到這個區(qū)域的其他人就能讀到這些信息。這些標簽可以變成商家提供的優(yōu)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?。蛘吲笥呀o你的旅行建議。

????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.

????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."

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

Marriage of Convenience

????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.

See the World

????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.