Apple claims 1 million iPhone 3Gs sold worldwide in the first three days (a sales feat that took the first iPhone 74 days), along with over 10 million applications from the App Store. Not surprisingly, the gadget press in Japan this past week has been focused on the iPhone 3G, and applications from Japanese developers. Here are a few of the Japanese apps appearing in the news:

Rakuten Shoken's stock trading software "iSPEED" released its iPhone version on July 11. Use a couple of fingertips to zoom in and out of stock charts, just as you do with photos.
http://www.rakuten-sec.co.jp/ITS/ispeed/

For those going places, Navitime Japan's free "NAVITIME" application comes to the iPhone, dispensing street directions, train travel times, locations of WiFi hotspots and gasoline stands, and more. The company will later follow with more feature-packed paid versions.
http://corporate.navitime.co.jp/topics/20080711.html

Or choose "Ekitan Express iPhone/iPod touch", a native version of the popular Ekitan transportation info application. Check train and flight schedules, train transfers, up-to-date info on delays, and so on from wherever you are. It's free for now, though a paid service is under consideration. (Should Ekitan go all paid on you, try an iPhone-friendly web service like http://touch.jorudan.co.jp/ )  
http://ekitan.co.jp/news/press/2008/07/0711100739.html

Game developer Hudson Soft Co. wants to help iPhone owners kill time with "Bomberman Touch", "Aqua Forest" (JPY900 each), and "Sudoku" (JPY700) games. The company offers additional games for the device's Safari web browser.
http://corporate.navitime.co.jp/topics/20080711.html

SUNSOFT is offering "Puzzle Game Shanghai", a version of the classic tile-stacking game, for JPY1200. In the US, it's sold as "Mahjong Solitaire" for $9.99.
http://www.sun-denshi.co.jp/soft/iphone/

Were you looking for something a little more "exotic" from Japan's developers? How about this one: Asial Corporation Japan's free "Abacus" application. It turns your sideways iPhone/iPod touch into a clickety-clackety abacus you work with a fingertip. (The interface looks a little pokey to respond in the video, so you'll get beaten down in speed competitions by old shopkeepers with their real abacuses. But the way you reset the virtual abacus by shaking the iPhone is kind of neat.)   
http://www.asial.co.jp/pressrelease/238
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4mvenfn84

Other offerings with a Japan feel include a Golgo 13 comics reader, a postal code lookup utility, the "Gengou Free" conversion utility for Japanese/Western calendar years, and "The Wisdom" E/J dictionary. They're all easy to find inside the Japanese App Store, so have at it, iPhone fans.