Japan's Bloggers Rule

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I was really surprised when I came across this article and I am sure many of you will be too. Here goes...

Although English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by more than 5-1, slightly more blog postings are written in Japanese than in English, reported Washington Post citing Technorati, the interenet search engine that monitors the blogosphere. By some estimates as much as 40% of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by communters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world's most extensive network of subways and commuter trains.

Blogging in Japan, though is a far tamer beast than in the US and the rest of the English-speaking world. Japan's conformist culture has embraces a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly non-confrontational medium for fetting along. Bloggers here shy away from politics and barbed language. They rarely trumpet their expertise. While Americans blog to stand out, the Japanese do it to fit in, blogging about small stuff: cats and flowers, bicycles, breakfast and gadgets. Compared with Americans, they write at less length, they write anonymously, and they write a whole lot more often.

"Behavior is more important than technology," Joichi Ito, a board member at Technocrati and an expert on how people around the world use the internet, told the Washington Post. "In Japan, it is not socially acceptable to pursue fame."

Technorati found that of all recorded blog postings in the fourth quarter of last year 37% were written in Japanese, 36% in English and 8% in Chinese.

Source: Agencies, Tokyo