I just uploaded a very short Youtube video. It's just a quick message. The Fuji video will come in the near future!

JapanSoc – An Honest Evaluation

Posted June 1st, 2008. Filed under General

Back in January, I posted a short update about JapanSoc, the new social bookmarking site and latest project of Nick Ramsey. That was back in January, not long after it had first kicked off. Now it’s been running for over half a year, I thought I’d give it a review – say what I do and don’t like about it and where I’d like it to go in the future.

As far as popularity goes, the site is doing amazingly. Actually, at the time of writing I don’t have anything to do with JapanSoc on this blog, but now it’s really taken off I’m going to do something about that. It’s pretty much essential for people wanting to read blogs about Japan, and for us bloggers to see what other people are writing about. I’ve discovered some really cool sites through JapanSoc, and as the community is relatively small there’s not too much content, so I do read quite a lot of stuff I never would.

Furthermore, the site is nice and clean, and easy to navigate. If I had to be picky, and I do, I’d have to ask why the theme is orange and not red. I mean, Japan’s official colours are red and white, so it doesn’t make sense really. But that’s not really a huge issue. The JapanSoc ‘soc this!’ buttons are really cool but I wish they came in other colours other than orange, or were offered in different sizes and designs. I know you guys are probably wondering why I don’t shut up and make some myself, but the truth is I have absolutely no idea how to. At all.

The new sumo (most successful members) and Genki (most active members) charts are pretty cool, if only to see who’s contributing a lot to the site. It often reminds me that I need to contribute more myself, but I do worry it encourages people to put too much stuff on the site.

That leads me to my one biggest worry about the site. Whilst most of the content that makes it onto the front page is good, I fear some people, especially when the site gets bigger, will simply post every blog post they do onto the site. I’d hate to have a Digg situation with thousands of stories getting submitted and only three or four being interesting. (Although I’ll be submitting this story, and it’s probably not that interesting….) Perhaps a ‘one/two stories per day’ limit would be good.

Ultimately though, it’s a great site. I mean, it had some teething problems but look – I’ve tried to be pretty harsh here and I’ve come up with a few points, and most of them aren’t even very good. I strongly suggest anyone, blogger or not, to get signed up and involved with JapanSoc.

If you have any suggestions or whatever for JapanSoc, comment here with them and I’ll try to get them across to Nick as soon as I can. Oh, and he totally didn’t pay me to write this post. What? This new car? Oh no, I just found it..

Photography Update

Posted May 29th, 2008. Filed under General

I know it’s taken me a long, long time, but…

I actually remembered not only to take my camera with me today, but also to update my Flickr page. So head over there and tell me what you think! I’m going to be uploading a lot this month, trying to catch up on all of them before the end of May, so keep on checkin’!

I have one new update lined up that I want to write this weekend, and another one in the planning stages, but I’m unsure if it will see the light of day. I know it’s been a bit of a slow month for updates, partly due to exams and partly because I’m really lazy, but obviously it’ll pick up quite a bit when I head over to Japan in 18 days. Wow, that’s not long.

Plans For Japan Is Doomed

Posted May 13th, 2008. Filed under General

I know, I know. I do one of these posts every couple of months and hardly any of the things I write about actually happen, but this time it’s serious business as I have a trip to Japan coming up and I want to sort things out here before I go.

I have a couple of things I want to do with the site. Here they are, in a handy list!

1. A New Design
Done!

2. Poll
I’m going to have a poll on the site every week or so, and hopefully I can use some of the data I get from them to write updates. Sort of a ‘What Japan Thinks’ approach, but on a much smaller scale. You’ll notice there’s a poll archive link at the top with all the old polls in it. Actaully, whilst you are reading this, why not vote right now on the most important poll ever on Japan Is Doomed? (Incidentally, the only poll so far on Japan Is Doomed…)

3. Forums
I really want a small community for the site, and I’m convinced a lot of the people who comment on here would make fantastic forum members. Maybe one day.

4. New Hosting (& A New Name Possibly)
I’ve been using Dreamhost since 2006 and whilst their service used to be good, these days I find the site loads painfully slowly half the time. I’ve contacted them plenty of times about it but it never seems to get better. If it doesn’t soon, I’ll be moving the whole blog to a new host. I may have to get a new domain if I do that, I don’t know much about moving domains, but it will probably be japanisdoomed.co.uk or something.

5. 日本語
日本語を練習するために、時々日本語でブログ更新を書いてみたい。日本語の間違いがあったら、自然な日本語で説明してください。

6. More Hilarious Photos Of Me

Ok, that was more ‘weird’ than ‘hilarious’, but you get the idea…

So please, if you have any suggestions for anything, post them in the comments of this post. You guys rock so I owe you big time! :)

Birthday!

Posted March 29th, 2008. Filed under General

20 Today!

(19 is gone)

See you at 21!

The Return To Japan : June 17th – September 25th

Posted March 9th, 2008. Filed under General

That’s right! It’s a long return to Japan! With some generous help from my parents and relatives and a great deal of eating nothing but cup Ramen from myself, I’ve managed to scrape together enough money to fly over to Japa and not die from malnutrition! I discussed a few ideas for things I want to do this year, and I’m still hungry for more information and suggestions so please do drop a comment if you have any ideas. I’m going to be staying with the school I taught at in 2006-2007, and will be able to attend a few of their events, such as sports day and the graduation ceremony. I’m going to make my camera an even closer friend than last time, and blog even harder and more frequently. I promise.

So the countdown begins. I make it just 99 days until I fly off from London, so exactly 100 (or thereabouts) before I touch down in Tokyo!

I don’t really have much more interesting information so I’m going to leave this as a nice short post. Expect usual service to resume when I can be bothered soon.

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