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Japan blogging continues to get noticed

Poynter Online, the website for the 25-plus year old Poynter Institute and home to a wealth of articles and analysis of media and journalism, has taken notice of the fast-growing blogging trend among both expatriates and Japanese alike here in Japan. The notice was in the form of a post made to E-Media Tidbits, Poynter’s “group weblog by the sharpest minds in online media/journalism/publishing,” so it says. I have to say I feel a bit humbled to find this site mentioned on Poynter.org, like perhaps I should clear away the dirty underwear! (I found Poynter.org in the days after September 11th, and as a one-time journalist wannabee and son of a newspaper reporter, not to mention a media junkie, love the site, especially Romenesko’s column).

I was tipped off about the above piece by the good ol’ referral logs, which indicated quite a spike of traffic on Thursday (with residual hits yesterday). However, the biggest reason for the spike was not the Poynter piece, but that this site was mentioned on the German magazine site published by Heise called Telepolis, which I am not familiar with but appears to be some sort of Wired-style publication (its tagline is “Magazine of Net Culture,” and the first article linked on the English site is an interview with John Perry Barlow). My site was linked in an article I think translates to “Vehement anti-war protests in Japan,” which seems to be about recent protests against the the U.S. invasion of Iraq in Tokyo and other Japan cities, and about the role of the traditional Japanese media outlets in covering these protests (or perhaps, not covering them. (This is all via a threadbare translation of the article by FreeTranslation so take it with a grain of salt. If any of my readers would like to offer a better summary of this article than I’m providing, as well as more background on Telepolis magazine and its publisher Heise, please do so by leaving a comment).

Weblogs are mentioned as part of the alternative means Japanese can use to find out information, but the article takes a critical view of them, claiming that most just publish links to traditional media articles, and positing the interesting question (which forms the subtitle of the piece), “Are Japanese too shy to blog?” Hmmn…

Let me finish up this piece of “meta-blogging” by mentioning the latest additions to my Japan blogroll that seems to be gaining such attention recently (I can only hope folks are actually clicking through to the sites listed on the right when they get here!):

blogMagic
Canadian Expat@Tokyo
economist
fatblueman
Gary’s Boring Blog
Japanamac
Mike’s Meditations
Mint Dandy
oli.boblet.net
Random Rants and Ramblings from Japan

As I mentioned to one of the new bloggers the other day in his comments, welcome to the party guys and gals. ninzuu ga ooi hodo tanoshiku naru! (“the more the merrier”)

UPDATE: Found one more Japan-based blog, courtesy of Gary’s Boring Blog mentioned above:

megaperls

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Learning about one’s parents, at long last

I don’t really like to single out particular blogs from the Japan-based blogroll to the right (I don’t feel it’s important to establish which ones I enjoy, and which ones I, well, enjoy less), but among my recent finds, I wanted to make special mention of (and offer encouragement to) Meladramas. Its author, Pamela MacCarthy, is an accomplished jazz vocalist and painter, and a Japan resident of 12-plus years. She’s only been keeping a blog for the last month or so, and sporadically at that, but what there is, I really enjoy. I’m hard pressed to describe her writing without resort to cliche, but for some reason when I was thinking about it Pound’s “petals on a wet, black bough” came into my head. Apparitions and impressions, with lots of space between the lines.

Of the sage writing included therein, MacCarthy’s entry for March 21st, occassioned by her teenage son’s birthday, resonated strongly with some feelings I’ve been having of late. She paraphrases a Chinese proverb:

You learn more about your own parents when you finally become one…

and writes, “Having a baby is a good way to get to know yourself.” Since Kaika’s birth two weeks ago, I have been thinking a lot about my parents, and looking through old family snapshots and letters in a new light. The joy they must have felt when I was born, the hopes and aspirations they must have thought, the worries and hardships they must have suffered through. At the moment these thoughts oppress me, I who for much of my adult life has so blithely sloughed off my parents’ love, especially that of my mother. There’s more to this story, of course, a lot more. For the moment, however, I lack the needed strength with which to further reflect on this, here, in public.

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I haven’t done this in a while…

It’s been over a month since I did this: more blogs from Japan:

Based on a True Story
The Dynamic Duo
the good maus
Joe VS Japan
kyle@japan
Marc’s Japan Adventure
Meladramas
Misc. Ramblings by Eric
Muninn
Order of Randomness
Ore no Buloggu
Saki-otakism.inc
V-2 Organisation

While I’m at it, there’s an article on Japan Blogging over at Japan Media Review, a recent offshoot of Online Journalism Review. The article mentions that this site “lists almost 100 Japan blogs”; with the above additions, I think the list has now cleared the century mark.