how could those bloggers prevent others from linking to their pages? unless a blogger requires a login/password to get to their pages, i consider the blog "public info" and they're s.o.l. if i choose to link to it, eh?

Consider the following comment, from Yuki's blog:

"i hate soba
i dislike ramen
i avoid eating pasta
i'd like thai noodle for lunch
i want more udon"

Now, imagine she'd put the names of politicians in there instead of foods. It might seem more "political", but would it have more impact? More cultural relevance? More inherent interest? Someone reading Yuki's thoughts on food 100 years into the future will certainly have forgotten about all those politicians and their tiny legislative projects, but soba, ramen, udon etc will still be important and recognisable topics, rich in cultural and personal significance. Writing about noodles has impact, universality, profundity and even elegance for everyone... except academics, it seems.

Marxy,

You may want to start reading the following blog: http://akashraman.blogspot.com

It is by a 9-year old Indian boy who is about to move to Tokyo and his thoughts on the new city.

I expect it to continue to be great.

Vali

Someone reading Yuki's thoughts on food 100 years into the future will certainly have forgotten about all those politicians and their tiny legislative projects, but soba, ramen, udon etc will still be important and recognisable topics

Only if there are still people to read these thoughts in 100 years. Survival of (in ascending order of alarmism) a political system, a culture, a people, a species is not a fact guaranteed by some higher being, and if all people talk about is noodles, then the non-noodles-talking people with unsavoury ideas will win. And if people use bigger and bigger cars (as the bad guys want them to) to drive to nice places with nice noodles, it's not looking too great for there being a place called "Japan" in only a few multiples of your 100 years.

(Put Kindergarten ideas in, get Kindergarten ideas out.)

Your method for making the world a better place (let's all *only* talk about noodles, clothes, and strange textures) only works if indeed everybody would comply. In reality, it can only make the world a worse place.

It might seem more "political", but would it have more impact? More cultural relevance?

Oh, come now: this argument is totally specious and dishonest. Political blogs do not write things like:

Andrew Jackson > Van Buren > Monroe

And Yuki's blog usually deals directly with 1) her place in Japanese society and 2) critical thinking on her place in society. That is to say, she's normally describing her daily life AND what it means. More than "political discussion," the important aspect of blogs is the opening up of new access to information, and also, providing new forums for discussion. Diary entries about non-controversial issues - what I ate today, this dog is fluffy, i like sleeping and eating - don't provide anybody with any information or space for communication.

Now where we as Westerners are mistaken is that we think the Japanese would immediately begin to create critical blogs once given the chance - as if technology was the only factor limiting voluntary dissent. Critical discussion is socially-unacceptable in Japan and essentially absent from the education process, so no one is going to publicly start questioning the social system once given an electronic soapbox.

However, look at 2-ch: when given anonymity, the Japanese go totally insane and flame, yell, insult, question, criticize like crazy. There's little productive criticism on 2-ch, but it shows that the surface of totally consensus is false to a certain degree. Clearly, the social structure is a massive weight bearing down on Japanese minds, and once removed from its gravity, dissenting opinions start to appear. Whether blogs will be the vehicle for full freedom remains to be seen.

Vali: thanks for the link. This isn't a prank, is it?

hmmmm .... am not an expert but weren't Japanese journals, memoirs always of "superficial" nature ... just like poetry? /haiku etc/ ... it's just power of a pattern maybe ...

and what's wrong about it?

in America you have 10000 blogs about bad Bush and your goverment does what it wants anyway ... oh i forgot a Pamela Abdul case- that was a victory always to rememeber! ;]

Momus: Noodles are as valid a topic for discourse as any, but Yuki's comments are a list and express, really, nothing at all. One from the Jeans Now school of blogging.

Something tells me that if they'd been written by a native English speaker you'd be laughing at their inarticulacy.

Surely we should apply the same criteria to a text regardless of who's written it?

If I were to write:

I respect Marxy
Duckworth too
I'm ambivalent towards Momus
Jeans Now sucks

Would you be equally impressed?

That is a legitimate criticism, but I see some obvious benefits to American-style blogs:

1) Better information in the market leads to better consumer choices.
2) Democratization of speech/liberalization of access to opinions.
3) Revitalization of a citizen's relation to the political process.

Bush still won, but nobodies have been able to push new pieces of information into the mainstream media circuit. I'm not claiming it's the perfect solution to everything, but can you honestly say that the possibilities are not interesting?

jeff said:

I respect Marxy
Duckworth too
I'm ambivalent towards Momus
Jeans Now sucks

and duckworth say: awww...shucks! thanks, jeff.

I wrote about Japanese blogosphere-media relations here.

Basically, I noticed that while NHK was reporting about blogs becoming popular in Japan, they totally ignored political blogs... and they are out there.

jeff also seZ: Something tells me that if they'd been written by a native English speaker you'd be laughing at their inarticulacy.

and robert be sayiN: now here the boy has hit upon something interesting.

if we consider all of the umpteen million hits that Jeans Now gets a month (remember he has maxed out his bandwidth/server due to access in the past), and then if we compare this number with the number of comments his page tends to get per post (a quick check of his page today gives him about 2 comments per post per week on average), we can make the simple conclusion that whatever he is blogging about, it seems not to merit comment.

am i saying that is bad? no.
i'm just saying that if the visit/comment ratio is that off...perhaps something else is 'off' too, no?

now of course marxy/david's been the darling of the LA times and everything recently, but i'm sure his total hits aren't shit compared to JEANS NOW! but over the past month, the comments on these posts are sometimes going over 100!

what's gonig on. (as if we don't know.)

your thoughts?

Diary-style blogs certainly don't hurt anyone, but they don't become a forum for discussion.

"Today I ate Indian Curry in Nakameguro. It was good. The Iced Chai Tea is especially refreshing in spring."

How do you respond to that?

Jean's info site has as a similar problem about comments, but he does provide a information service for his readers. Perhaps, we don't all meet and greet there, but it creates standardized topics for the Japan-interested world.

(By the way, Jean gets about double the daily visitors I do.)

Marxy:

No sir. This is not a prank. I actually know this kid. (He is the younger brother of a friend and really is 9 years old and very charming and earnest. So I hope everyone who comments on his blog is nice to him and encourages him to post frequently.)

Vali

Sounds good. I will keep reading the blog.

(By the way, everyone, Vali's blog "Vali's Views" is definitely worth a glance...

For example, "I don’t think it’s right for both 'dough' and 'bread' to be slang terms for money. Dough can be turned into bread. If someone says, 'I need some bread,' I’ll give him some money. And if someone says, 'Can you spare me some dough,' I’ll give him some stock tips.")

My opinion is that blogs are most successful when they all the theorizing is well-grounded in specifics; facts, examples of culture, and personal experience.

Therefore I think we should point out that although Yuki's most recent posting about noodles does seem a bit silly or light-hearted when compared to subjects on this blog such as, "knowledge: pursuit and consensus" it does seem to be in the same key as "proto-blogging" or "nirvana." Also, Yuki's other recent posts have been about a small theater in Kichijyouji, the gross food at Makudo, or (my fav) how shopping arcades are "too artificial to get close to." Now, I don't know exactly where she is coming from, but it does seem to me that there is potential in these personal comments for social or political content; just in a different manner than in this blog. In fact it seems quite honest and down-to-earth. Maybe there is something that we could learn from that... Why does she get less posting? It might be because a lot of us are too lazy, far-away, uninformed or outside-the-system to go out and find things like a small theater in a small suburb. Perhaps she does not get much heavy critical theory type posting not because her comments are not worthy of our lofty theories but because our theories do not relate well to specific personal experience and critique. That said, I think there is a lot of potential for rapid change in blogging in Japan (and abroad) and that the different personality, style and theoretical approach of the bloggers is what makes the whole thing interesting. If yuki started posting in the marxy style we would be losing something (and visa-versa).
(I must be in a really good mood right now, I feel so teachery... How about something negative - the whole no-posting on my site thing is chotto ibatteru and totally sucks...)

I meant, "no linking"...

I think blogging is most compelling when the blogger is telling you something you don't already know.

Yuki can talk about having noodles, but you know what? I've had noodles. No new info there.

Now, if she is going to tell me why these particular noodles are special in some way, or if while eating them, she had an epiphany that changed the way she looks at life, well, that might be getting us somewhere.

r. said:
"i'm just saying that if the visit/comment ratio is that off...perhaps something else is 'off' too, no?"

no.
I dont think the low visit/comment ratio is an indication that something is "off" in Jean Snow's blog.
I can only speak for myself, but I go to Jeans blog for different reasons than this one.

Yeah so what if he is still harps on the graphic design/font, cafe, stencil grafitti thing...
I occasionaly find interesting tidbits/things to do here in Tokyo from Jean's narratives which dont really warrant a discussion, debate or even comment (other than the intermittent thanks)

I visit here to (not unlike the majority) name drop, or try to one up the intellectual dillettanti by relating everything to Postmodernism or mentioning Georg Simmel, R. Desnos etc.

Two very different reasons indeed.
well anyways, keep on a'bloggin!

"Today I ate Indian Curry in Nakameguro. It was good. The Iced Chai Tea is especially refreshing in spring."

you can't imagine how exciting such sentence sounds for me, it' like poetry ... but i am a 'warhol way' enhusiast so it's a matter of taste ... i remeber yuki posted about some teenage starlet blogging stuff "i am watching tv- it's fun !!!!"- instant boner!

anyway- vita activa vs vita contemplativa, everyone has a choice and both are 'good' maybe ..

http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2005/05/neithernor-redux.html

This discussion resembles the debate over the virtues of blogs among mainstream journalists in the U.S. The problem? People are conflating a type of publication with a medium of publication. A bible and a New York Post are both printed with ink on paper, but they are far different animals.

Kissui.net (and Yuki's other blog) provide social interaction, and occasionally information about cool stuff in Tokyo or elsewhere. I read it because I've enjoyed interacting online with and meeting Yuki.

Jean Snow's site uses the same medium to deliver an events-tracking stream with personality in a language foreign to the location. I enjoy it because, since I'm not there right now, it reminds me what I'm missing. Meeting Jean one day at a Kiiiiiii show was cool, but not as important (sorry Jean).

Marxy's site uses the medium to engage in and provoke discussion. (This will be comment number 20-something for this post, which was new when I got to work today in New York.) It's built a community of people who, whether they agree or not, all seem to care about a particular topic. Marxy is also a funny guy, who comes up with absurd shit to post sometimes, and keeps the tenor of the site dynamic.

Just as U.S. journalists can't agree on whether blogs are journalism (the obvious answer is, "SOMETIMES!!"), Momus and the rest of us have to remember that we can't talk about all reverse-chronological, frequently updated websites as equal.

So what does Graham think about Robert's blog? No comment? Ha, ha!

I wonder what Prof. Hattori would say to my question:

Why does talk of food disqualify a blog from being a healthy cultural indicator, but talk of aggregrates make it a sign that things are really on the up and up?

Or professor Marx, for that matter.

talk of food, and only food is as bad a sign as talk of aggs. and only aggs.
just like blogging about this
http://szksrv.isc.chubu.ac.jp/lms/lms1.html
would be a drag unless you really balanced it with some cheeze-puff level entertainment.

of course, i'm sure you are into the law of LEAST SQUARES as much as anyone else, so...

First I want to clear up that I think Yuki's blog is a good version of the diary-type site and not typical of the Japanese blog scene.

Second, the main point of that JMR piece was not just that Japanese bloggers aren't tackling serious topics - to some extent they are - but that the mainstream media is going to fight tooth and nail to make sure they stay marginal. Japan's whole society and economy work on the principle of cartelized information - free information will change the balance of power.

Third, talk of food is fine, but it rarely provokes discusssion. As Graham suggested, we don't benefit from calling food/pet diaries "blogs" or conversely, narrowly defining blogs in the dailykos, andrew sullivan, boingboing manner. As far as I know, there aren't really Japanese versions of those sites yet, but maybe it's best to think of Japanese internet culture as being like America in the mid-90s. 2-ch reads a lot like old BBS's - eventually flaming lost its appeal to most people in the U.S.

But again, I want to make the point that Japanese society does not lend itself to blogging very well to start with, and it's a bit much to accuse bloggers of failing to do critical tasks. On the other hand, the Japanese system will most likely alienate and marginalize bloggers who do attempt to offer new info and critical analysis.

marxy: I agree with you about centralized information control, but I disagree that the "Japanese society does not lend itself to" the creation of web pages such as this one. If were talking about online diaries, there was homegrown software for that here a few years before the current "boom" and there were online diarists writing about a variety of topics other than noodles. If we are talking about ideologically or topic specific sites such as those you mentioned, they exist as well. If you want to stretch this idea further, wouldn't the publication of the diaries we know know as "Genji Monogatari" be evidence against your thoery? What about Asobi Geisha/Weekly Tennou Bee Woman's page? Its kind of like boingboing without that stupid bitch corey's blathering. Also the use of keijiban scripts serving much the same function as this type of server software has been popular here for a long time as well.

all: I think part of the problem here is we are discussing something without a hell of alot of first hand experience on the topic. The only case specific example I'm seeing repeated is Yuki's page. While not eveyone here's first language is English, I bet all of us read alot more English language online media than Japanese language (and then there is momus...).

Additionally, to pick up one of my ongoing rants, I think the whole debate about what these kind of web pages are is pointless to begin with. This is a web page, other web pages using the same or similar content management may operate on entirely different principles but they are still web pages. grahm pointed this out above. So by extention, this little inward looking discussion about the nature of Japanese language web pages is also a bit silly. In any language you will find web content on damn near any topic you may choose.

P.S. to marxy: "flaming" does indeed go back to the BBS days of the late 70s/early 80s but the word came into usage when the same practice jumped mediums to Usenet.