Blogs in Japan (Japanese blogspot)
Posted by: kirin on 
Jun 25th, 2009 | 
Filed under: Learn Japanese, Rambling
I’ve set up another blog in Japan last weekend. At a moment I run 4 blogs.
No.1- Japanese Cuisine Daily Recipes and Something Kawaii From Harajuku
(Free Blogger blog that I started Feb.2008 in English and I still keep it while I update a new post only once in a while.)
No.2- Tokyo Kawaii, etc.
(This blog that I work hardest, and love most! I pay for domain and hosting server, from which you’ll see how special this blog is to me.)
No.3- Pi-chan (my dog) blog
(Free FC2 blog that I run in Japan in Japanese.)
No.4- My daily stock exchange market trading blog
(Free Seesaa blog that I run in Japan in Japanese.)
*I no longer run other 3 blogs, because I decided to focus more on this blog, “Tokyo Kawaii, etc.”.
Wow! No wonder I’m busy! But I’m spending most of the time for Tokyo Kawaii, etc. (this blog). I know I should stick to 1 blog, meaning Tokyo Kawaii, etc. only, but the first blog is still good to be kept. The third dog blog is important in order to record how my dog spends her life with us. The fourth one also is important to record what I am learning and how I’m acting in my daily trading habits.
Some of the readers from my first blog (Japanese cuisine…) might be confused to hear that I’m trading at stock exchange market because I used to work as an importer, house renovation planner, and writer. But now I’m working from home. Online stock exchange market trader from home, writer and blogger. Why such a big career change? It’s a long story so let me avoid explaining that here. :p
Instead, today I’ll introduce blogspot in Japan, as some of you are already good at Japanese and may want to browse Japanese blogs to read or to write a blog in Japanese by yourselves.
Blogsphere in Japan is totally different from the U.S or most of English spoken countries. First of all, WordPress is minor, which I think is because there are many attractive free blogs available in Japan and how to manage dashboard or how to write a post is far easier and more convenient compared with WordPress or blogger.
This is a dashboard from Seesaa blog and I was surprised to find this difference. In English blogsphere, we basically add things we want. We may join Google Analytics to track stats, and paste the code or do something to activate it if we want it, for example. To the contrary, Seesaa had everything there including stats. (not from Google, but original one) We are then deleting things we don’t need. That’s it!
Japanese people are used to this style; say everything being given in a package, and so, customizing blogs with plugins by themselves like what we do with WordPress is not accepted.
Here are major Japanese free blogs for your reference.
-FC2 (Do you know FC2 ranks in No.2 in Alexa in Japan!?)
-Seesaa
-Ameba
-Livedoor
and there are actually hundreds of more but above 4 blogs are I guess most popular ones. There are many blogs that do not allow affiliate promotion. (Above 4 blogs are OK)
If you prefer Ezine, rather than blog, there is a free Ezine stand called “Magu Magu” and this is the most popular and the largest scale in Japan. Of course you can start yourself both blog and Ezine (in Japanese it’s called “melumaga” meaning mail magazine) for free, if you want to. But I know how hard it’d be to write constantly in foreign language, so you can at least browse Japanese blogs and Ezines of your interests just as you like to improve your Japanese with fun!
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June 25th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Thank You for sharing all your delightful information. It's so interesting to read more on other cultures and new happenings around the world. I've always found that those who blog from Japan don't often use blogger or the regular blogging sites, and thanks to you, I now know why.
June 26th, 2009 at 5:58 am
Be careful not to get burned out. If you think it's too much, you can always combine some of the blogs.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Japanese free blogs also offer hundreds of new blog designs for free and we can change them with one click. So it's popular we change blog designs by months or seasonally. (I'm confused if I should call "we" or "they" because I could be both…hahaha) As for me however, I don't change them at all because I spend more time on this Tokyo Kawaii blog than Japanese blogs.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Thanks, but I'll be OK because I rarely update first English blog and my dog blog. The fourth one about online trading was very easy since I have something to write everyday as long as I keep trading from home. Moreover, I see how different and how easy it is to write in my mother language! I need no dictionary and I write a lot quicker than I do in English. :p
June 28th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
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June 29th, 2009 at 12:47 am
本当ã¯ä¸€ã¤ã®ãƒ–ãƒã‚°ã‚’ã˜ã£ãã‚Šã‚„ã‚‹ã®ãŒãƒ™ã‚¹ãƒˆã よã。ç§ã®å ´åˆã¯Tokyo Kawaii, etc.　以外ã®ãƒ–ãƒã‚°ã¯çš†ã‚«ã‚¸ãƒ¥ã‚¢ãƒ«ã¨ã„ã†ã‹…。楽ã«ã‚„ã£ã¦ã„ã‚‹ã‹ã‚‰ã€ãã†ã„ã†æ„味ã§ã¯æœ¬è…°å…¥ã‚Œã¦ã„ã‚‹ã®ã¯ã“ã‚Œã ã‘ã‹ãªãƒ¼ã€‚mixi知ã£ã¦ã„るよ。most powerful and well-known social networking service in Japanã よã。ã§ã‚‚ãªãœã‹ã€I just keep my account there but I don't actually write to it.
June 29th, 2009 at 12:48 am
I like writing, so I won't feel tired or fed up with them. Besides these, I have my own diary book which I write by hand and I keep it for over 7-8 years. In this diary I don't write what I did today. I write down struggles, worries, hope, about my dream, what I've achieved, what I've learned, and so on. This is good to soothe my mind when I feel annoyed, confused or depressed.
So writing does not mean working to me. :p ã§ã‚‚ã€æ ªå¼æŠ•è³‡ã¯å¥½ãã¨ã¯è¨€ãˆãªã„ã‘ã©ã, I just need to be skilled with it to make my dreams come true.
July 18th, 2009 at 2:41 am
thank you so much for the link. much appreciated
am always wonder how japanese blogs look like and as i expected they have more and cuter emoticons hehe
i love it so much and want to try to blog from japanese blogging sites .. too bad for me i can't speak japanese and have lousy internet connection so it may take time to load the pages fully hehe ;p
anyway, already feel happy with your review. thank you!
July 19th, 2009 at 2:16 am
I know what you mean. Japanese blogs are full of cute emoticons. (http://blog.goo.ne.jp/yarimo23225 like this blog I read is so cute, which I often go thru my dog blog in Japanese) Maybe that's the reason some English-speaking people blog from Japanese blog.
But the thing is, even if you understand Japanese to set up the blog with Japanese blog format, inside of it is basically in Japanese, such as "submit comment" in Japanese so that readers being not familiar with Japanese may feel reluctant to leave a comment.
Good news is that FC2 has made English blogging possible. With this, you can enjoy cute emoticons and English blog format at the same time! Here is a link. http://staffen.blog124.fc2.com/blog-entry-1.html
July 19th, 2009 at 2:40 am
thank you so much for the links!
yeah, once i tried to leave a comment in ameba blog and gave up cos i dont know how to
too bad she also doesnt have tagboard in her blog
glad to know that now FC2 available in english
will definitely check it out!! <3
July 21st, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Pretty cool post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say
that I have really liked reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:20 am
I hope you can enjoy FC2.
FC2 offers emoticons which are the same as we can use at 3 major mobile phones in Japan. So I find them quite familiar.
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:23 am
Thank you so much for your kind comment. I'll do my best to keep publishing posts in good quality, but if you have any specific topics you want me to deal with, any questions about Japanese culture or language, whatever relating to this blog, please feel free to write to me either from comment section, shoutbox, or from contact form beyond the title banner. (^0^)
July 31st, 2009 at 11:45 am
Nice post, thanks for all this info!
You sure are busy with blogs, but it seems you have a great time with them.
I studied Japanese for some years, but it's been a while. My reading and listening are ok because of doramas and magazines/manga but I can't write very well (I already forgot many kanji if I try to write by hand) and my speaking skills are not good as well. I was thinking about trying to begin a blog in Japanese so I could practice, at least at writing, and your post is just perfect for that!
Loved your blog, I subscribed to your RSS, that way I can always see when you post new things =)
July 31st, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Thank you, Naomi. I'm Glad to hear that my post made sense to you.
You are about to do something challenging, but ganbatte ne! If you are in trouble, feel free to ask me. There should be something at least I can help you!
September 21st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Ich liebe diese japanischen Blogs wegen den wunderbar verspielten Designs.
Grüße aus Deutschland
February 15th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
I use ameba.jp
I think this one is very good. Just thought I'd like to mention it ^_^
February 17th, 2010 at 6:38 am
Thank you. I'll take that into consideration when I open a new blog next time.
It was very hard for me to run more blogs than this one. I stopped updating all the other blogs. ^ ^;
April 14th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
I am working in a Japanese Company right now, quite amazed with your profficiency in English. Struggling to improve my conversation skill in Japanese now, nice blog btw =)
April 15th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Thank you for your visit to my blog and oh, my English…(^ ^) although I still continue minor mistakes…haha!
It'd be so hard you are tired from work and from the language you are not familiar with…
Please take care of yourself, there are many strange (sometimes unspoken) rules in Japanese society that confuse foreigners. It's very stressful to work in Japan, it's far from laid back atmosphere at the many working places. Not many Japanese people in general can speak or understand English well, but they will try to listen to you when you need them.
(I'm Japanese but I once went to a US college for 1 year and that experience made it possible for me to use English like this.)
April 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am
like your post , one of the best i read this week. will visit your site again for sure
June 13th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Hey great job, it must take a lot of openness and courage to do what you are doing. Keep it up!
June 14th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Thank you for your comment. Yes, in fact I had to overcome so many obstacles and difficulties. Still I read English slowly, need dictionary, and I have to spend extra hours to keep this blog. But I believe this blog makes me happy.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:45 am
it is easy to setup blogs on Blogspot but WordPress is one hell of a lot better*:’
August 19th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
i just discovered your blog today and im really thankful! your blog is very informative, and it really answers my question! about the blogs, I think times has changed because i see japanese bloggers showing their faces specially the lolita and gyaru bloggers and I want to eject myself into the japanese blogging community, i signed up an account on AMEBA months ago but still can’t figure out how to blog there. do you have a guide or could you help me out with that, if you dont mind?
August 23rd, 2010 at 3:38 am
I'll think of how I can explain the way to blog with Ameba. I'm thinking of making a tutorial video but I'm not sure how soon I can make it. Let me see…
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