I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Rakuten in Jun 2014
Interview
Everything was done online, first was the registration and creation of personal page, after fill in an application form, an web test needs to be taken, it comprises of two parts, first is about personality and the other is something like intelligence test, a really hard one. Remember to prepare a paper and pen to take notes of some details in order to answer the questions in time.
Then comes the first online interview, which is prerecorded, contains 5 or 6 questions. After the person asked the question, you will have 20 sec to think and around 2 min to answer. The question would be like: describe yourself, why you choose Rakuten, what is the most difficult task you have met and how did you deal with it.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Actually most questions were predictable, but, even though I took the interview in English, in the end they will ask you to answer the final question in Japanese, I were not familiar with the language anymore since it's been 5 years I haven't used it. Nevertheless, the question was pretty simple: why do you want to work in Japan? Anyway, I couldn't make it in Japanese, that's why I failed.