Mike Clarke was feeling a little lonely. When he and his wife moved to Japan in 1998, they didn't speak Japanese and had few friends here. "I don't meet a lot of people," said the native Canadian. "I don't feel socially sated." That's all changing now. Through a Web site originally designed to serve as a work portfolio, Clarke has become one of the country's most recognized bloggers, posting his photos and accompanying thoughts about Japan to Hunkabutta.com. Last month, Clarke won the Best Travel Photo Blog award from the 2003 Photobloggies, hosted by Photojunkie.org in Boston. Along with fellow blogger Nadine Zukoski, Clarke recently organized a Tokyo bloggers' party that attracted dozens of other expat bloggers living in and writing about Japan. "Until recently, it was not really a scene. Only five to 10 blogs," said designer Kristen McQuillin, owner of Media Tinker. "But in the last few months, so many more people are doing it." Now, 42 Japan bloggers belong to a new Yahoo discussion list for Japan bloggers. Japan blog Easterwood.org lists almost 100 Japan blogs, and more than 40 people showed up at Clarke's blogger party. The world's largest daily paper, The Yomiuri, recently ran a series of articles on blogging, predicting that blogging "might become an explosion in personal journalism" in Japan. While some blogs are light on skill, others are crafted by professionals like Web design guru Adam Greenfield -- formerly with top-flight Web consulting firm Razorfish Japan -- and like McQuillin, who recently re-jiggered the formerly dowdy Web site of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. The new site features a number of blogs. With the ubiquity of digital cameras here, pictures are almost a blog requirement. Some bloggers are now moblogging -- posting updates via mobile devices. Mobloggers snap pictures with cell phones and thumb-punch text into the phones' keypads. Some sites, like Tokyo Tidbits, boast that all the pictures are taken with cell phones. Some mobloggers, including Greenfield at v-2.org, are using slicker tools like Sony's Clie to post from the road. Greenfield and a small group of local bloggers announced recently that they'll be hosting the world's first moblogging conference in Tokyo this summer. Zukoski started her site, Tokyo Shoes, last October and has been listed -- along with Hunkabutta -- as one of the "Best of Japan on the Web 2003" by Japanzine magazine. Through Digital Eve Japan, a women's group that promotes "digital lifestyles," she's recently started teaching blogging classes in Tokyo using the popular Moveable Type blogging software. Like several of the Tokyo bloggers, Jeff Laitila, an environmental engineer, started his blog, Sushicam.com, to avoid having to write and send pictures to his friends and family. "They never looked at the damn thing," said Laitila, whose site pays homage to the mundane that makes up his life abroad: "Passed out drunks that missed the last train. Medieval squatter toilets. A kimono-clad woman straight from the 1800s who whips out a cell phone. After three years, I'm still fascinated." As yet, there aren't huge numbers of Japanese bloggers, thanks in part to a lack of Japanese-language blogging software. But Neoteny, a Japanese venture capital firm, recently issued a Japanese language patch for Moveable Type (MT says it's been downloaded 1,200 times since October 2002) and is providing server space for would-be bloggers through their Neoteny Blogging Team project. There is also a Japan Blogging Association that started in October. But Neoteny's Daiji Hirata -- who was responsible for the language patch -- says the patch only fixes part of the problem: "There are few ISP services in Japan that can completely accept a blogging application like Moveable Type, and installation is still difficult for beginners." As a result, blogging is still largely an insiders' game for Japanese techies, with high-tech the central theme of many Japanese blogs. One of the most widely read bilingual blogs belongs to Neoteny CEO Joi Ito. Japan has a long history with online diaries, and it's only a matter of time before blogging finds its place among a broader swatch of the Japanese public. Technical issues aside, though, cultural patterns may present the biggest obstacle to the development of alternative news voices in Japan. "Almost all sites are quotations of quality papers with simple comments," said Neoteny's Hirata. "To become journalism, first many Japanese have to change their minds and publish their own thoughts. Most Japanese are still too shy to go public." Bryan Shih is a freelance radio and print journalist in Tokyo. He recently received a Fulbright Research Fellowship to document "The Vanishing Artisans of Japan." Thanks to Paul Baron of IN-duce.net for the use of his photos.
|
