Introducing NihontoWatch: The Entire Market in Your Pocket

[Marcin]

2 hours ago, Hoshi said:

Hello, 

 

 

Great to hear, yes - it is built as a modern app for tablet and mobile. 

 

We're now up to 66 dealers worldwide and over 8000 items to choose from and compare, updated 12 times daily. 

 

 

Yes, a great amount of AIs are running tirelessly behind the scene to normalize, triage, translate, assign and understand the data coming in from unstructured websites across languages. This would not have been possible without recent advances in frontier models. 

 

Now a question for you @Rawa - What would make this app even more valuable for you? 

 

Cheers,

 

Hoshi

 

For collectors? Easy.

Quick „save as pdf” button? 
Not going through print as pdf in  version for pc. 
It happens that you don’t have internet all the time…

[Hoshi]

Hi, 

 

What would you “save as PDF” - the listing image and metadata? 
 

Tell me more about it, I’m curious, and I want to make sure I understand.
 

Best,

 

Hoshi 

[Marcin]

59 minutes ago, Hoshi said:

Hi, 

 

What would you “save as PDF” - the listing image and metadata? 
 

Tell me more about it, I’m curious, and I want to make sure I understand.
 

Best,

 

Hoshi 

Minimum listing alone. It would be easiest to do.
Also no drama with possible bugs and mistakes with summary made via site. You can always save summary usual way.

[Marcin]

Also adding „want to buy”/shinsa proxy/togishi needed features where some buyers having maybe rating to avoid literal retards or trolls would be able to get additional service.

[Marcin]

That’s If you really want to made opus magnum app for nihonto.

But it would need literal gestapo as moderators or upfront deposit fee.

Edited April 3 by Rawa

[Lewis B]

@Hoshi, is there a notification feature? Where you can set particular smiths or schools, paper levels etc. 

[Hoshi]

Hello,

 

Yes, this is a core part of the product BETA features we are testing out. 

 

Oh my, I'm really dismayed you did not find the feature on the app immediately. 

 

Please let me know how to make it more obvious @Lewis B

 

After running a search, simply press the "Get Alerts" button. It will add the alert to your account, and send you an email. Because the app is not an iOS native app, the notification will happen through your email notification on your phone. 

 

 

You can also go on the Artist pages, and select an artist you're interested in: 

 

 

Set your alert parameters: 

 

 

Alternatively, the easiest path is to conclude the onboarding via "Update my collecting preferences" in the app triple dot menu button. This will trigger a short questionnaire and tailor alerts to your preferences. 

 

 

You will then get email alerts as soon as an item appears in the market in the next 15 minutes. 

 

 

Best,

 

Hoshi

 

[Lewis B]

17 minutes ago, Hoshi said:

Hello,

 

Yes, this is a core part of the product BETA features we are testing out. 

 

Oh my, I'm really dismayed you did not find the feature on the app immediately. 

 

Please let me know how to make it more obvious @Lewis B

 

After running a search, simply press the "Get Alerts" button. It will add the alert to your account, and send you an email. Because the app is not an iOS native app, the notification will happen through your email notification on your phone. 

 

 

You can also go on the Artist pages, and select an artist you're interested in: 

 

 

Set your alert parameters: 

 

 

Alternatively, the easiest path is to conclude the onboarding via "Update my collecting preferences" in the app triple dot menu button. This will trigger a short questionnaire and tailor alerts to your preferences. 

 

 

You will then get email alerts as soon as an item appears in the market in the next 15 minutes. 

 

 

Best,

 

Hoshi

 

 You know me too well. Excellent capability. Who doesn't want to know a Norishige posts 15 mins after it hits the dealer site. 

Edited April 3 by Lewis B

[Hoshi]

Hello, 

 

@Rawa, you can now download a structured PDF of the item from the listing page. It takes about 10-15 seconds to generate a .pdf, which you can save on your computer. 

 

 

Press the "download document" button to begin the generation process. 

 

 

It will show you, in order: item, item photo, artist overview, and market comparables. 

 

Few observations:

1) On-demand PDF gen really hammers the server hard. I will be gating this behind login and possibly adding a per-user cap. 

2) It will take time to polish in order handle complex edge-cases such as long dealer photos that need computer vision for page-size segmentation before vectorizing. 

 

Before I invest more time into this, I would love to hear from other users of the platform if they value this feature, so - let me know. 

 

Best,

 

Hoshi

[Hoshi]

Hello, 

 

After discussing with experienced friends in the business, generating credible and professional .pdf brochure is basically equipping scam sellers with nuclear-grade fraud material. 

 

My north star is to create a more trustworthy and reliable market for the field. So, can't have that, at least not in its current form. 

 

Shortest lived feature on NW, it will be accessible in a gated form at some point in the future. 

 

Cheers, 

 

Hoshi

 

[Toryu2020]

Just set up my collector profile (though I have been using NW since go) - I am a little hurt that the New York Token Kai is included in your list of clubs and not the NCJSC (Northern California Japanese Sword Club), we who bring you the annual San Francisco To-ken Taikai...

 

-t

[Lewis B]

@Hoshi FYI Seem to be having an issue logging in. I had previously registered my account in early March. Now when I try to log in the platform says it's sending a code which never arrives. Tried twice over a 20 min period. 

 

OK, they eventually arrived but had expired by the time I received them. 

Edited April 3 by Lewis B

[Hoshi]

Hi,

 

The codes can be finicky at times due to the way Email works. Check your spam folder, and if still nothing - retry a few times. It’s working over here.

 

best,

 

Hoshi 

 

[Lewis B]

2 minutes ago, Hoshi said:

Hi,

 

The codes can be finicky at times due to the way Email works. Check your spam folder, and if still nothing - retry a few times. It’s working over here.

 

best,

 

Hoshi 

 

Hi Hoshi, They eventually arrived but had expired by the time I input the codes. Can you extend the allowable time to say 30 mins?

[Hoshi]

Hi @Toryu2020

 

My apologies, It will be added very soon. 
 

It’s a good occasion for me to ask what other clubs and societies I’m missing. Do we have a directory somewhere of active societies? 
 

Best,

 

Hoshi 
 

 

[Hoshi]

Hi @Toryu2020

 

I've added your society. As for the other ones I'm missing - please reply in thread and I will add your society. 

 

[Lewis B]

Setting up the notifications I find the options a little generic and not adequately customisable. Like if a want to receive notifications for specific rather obscure makers eg Senjuin Yoshihiro. A keyword search function for notifications would be useful. Or maybe I've overlooked this option. 

[Toryu2020]

Sacramento Japanese Sword Club

Nanka To-ken Kai (Southern California Japanese Sword Club)

[Scogg]

PNW Token Kai, for the pacific northwest USA states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Although our club is in our infancy, and I am still figuring stuff out 

https://www.pnwtokenkai.com/

Including it might get me some more traction and members,
but also no biggie if it's included or not.
-Sam

[atm]

I’ve been very impressed with how receptive and responsive @Hoshi has been with suggestions and criticisms. This is clearly an important project to him, and we all benefit from his labor. Great work!

[Hoshi]

Hi,

 

Thank you for all the club suggestions, I've added them all. 

 

Quote

Setting up the notifications I find the options a little generic and not adequately customisable. Like if a want to receive notifications for specific rather obscure makers eg Senjuin Yoshihiro. A keyword search function for notifications would be useful. Or maybe I've overlooked this option. 

 

It's possible to set specific alerts based on specific makers, even obscure makers. 

 

Here is the artisan Senjuin Yoshiro: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/yoshihiro-YOS1441

 

You need to click: Set alert for new listings - and anytime an item with the artisan code YOS1441 comes to the market, you will get an email notification within 15 minutes. 

 

 

Quote

 

I’ve been very impressed with how receptive and responsive @Hoshi has been with suggestions and criticisms. This is clearly an important project to him, and we all benefit from his labor. Great work!

 

 

 

 

Thank you. Feedback is super important, especially during the public BETA. 

 

Keep it flowing. 

 

Best,

 

Hoshi 

 

 

[PNSSHOGUN]

A small quality of life improvement for filters: currently all options need to ticked to then exclude any items/dealers you don't want to see. A simple show/don't show box would be welcome. 

[Hoshi]

Hi @PNSSHOGUN,

 

Could you elaborate? On my side, I can tick specific options by taping the filter without activating all the filters for a given attribute category. 

Best,

 

Hoshi 

 

 

 

[ROKUJURO]

Hi Hoshi,

this must be a lot of work! My respect and admiration!

However, I have a question about the accompanying descriptive texts: Are they written by you or are they original to the sellers? 
Reason for my question is that most TEIMEI (= SADANAGA) TSUBA are described as signed SADANOBU, so it looks like a 'serial' mistake.

[PNSSHOGUN]

@Hoshi Yes the filter is great for options you want to see, being able to as easily exclude a dealer would be handy as well. 

[Hoshi]

Dear @ROKUJURO,

 

The dealer’s description is automatically translated into English, you can also press “view original” for the original Japanese description. The translations are high quality, but there can be mistakes, and it’s always good practice to check with different translation software. 
 

Regarding the artisan identifier, this is a much more complex issue. The listing is matched to a database of 13’000+ known artists, this means that if the artist is not in the database, faulty matches can occur to a “near match” as is the case here. It is not an exact science, especially for tosogu where innumerable unlisted tosogu artists exist. To correct the case above, I have to add the missing artisan to the database. I do regular passes on this to improve the system, but it takes time. 

Best,

 

Hoshi 
 

 

[eternal_newbie]

I've noticed recently that swords from Yahoo Auctions are starting to show up. This is making me wonder if auction sites need their own category or filter, because:

 

a) the vast majority of these are going to be gimei big names (and indeed that seems to be the case for the ones added so far)

b) the scraper appears to be picking up books and catalogs as actual swords, presumably because at least one of the swordsmiths exhibited is listed in the description

[Hoshi]

Hi @eternal_newbie

 

Oh my, you're fast. I just started working on this - it's highly experimental, the data is currently filled with errors, and it needs a lot of tuning. 

 

They will live under their own category, and hidden by default. If a user wants to venture deep into this swamp, a disclaimer will be shown...

 

"DRAGONS AWAIT THE DUMPSTER DIVER"

 

Best, 

 

Hoshi

 

[eternal_newbie]

1 hour ago, Hoshi said:

They will live under their own category, and hidden by default.

 

Thank you, I think this will be a good compromise allowing users to easily summarize the auction site playing field without burying known and trusted dealers under mountains of low-quality/unreliable listings.

[Lewis B]

I'm curious why NW shows my Senjuin as Juyo when it has TH papers

 

https://nihontowatch.com/artists/senjuin-SEN12?listing=4317