Japan on the Web

Every Spring Japanzine magazine announces its Best of the Web, a list of Japan-related blogs, forums and websites. Readers are invited to submit websites (either their own or someone else’s) for inclusion on the Japanzine website’s voting list and, although I suspected this list was simply an excuse to get people to become members of the site, I joined and submitted Big On Japan anyway.

When the 2007 list was published in this month’s Japanzine my suspicions were confirmed - most of the sites submitted on the voting list weren’t featured in the final Best of the Web list, including (boo hoo) Big On Japan. In fairness, James Hadfield (the guy who compiled the final list) made some good selections, but I thought there were some omissions that should have been included from the voting list.

In the interests of objectivity I won’t mention Big On Japan any more, so instead I’ll swiftly move on to Japan Visitor. I mentioned this site in my Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum piece a while back and although Japan Visitor has since become more cluttered, that’s only to be expected when there’s so much information being crammed on there. It has all the usual stuff a visitor to Japan might require such as hotels and embassies, but with the thoughtful addition of a sex section.

Mike’s Blender is a site I had already discovered while researching a forthcoming series of articles about Japanese toilets (yes, really). A photo on the site was the only Google Image result that showed an unflushed toilet, which was pretty grim. Fortunately the rest of the site is less appetite-destroying, the highlights being a Japangrish section that covers the same ground as Engrish.com and the eponymous Mike’s Ramblings blog.

Other sites that failed to make the final list include the comprehensive All About Teaching English In Japan, Japan blogging community site Your Japan (a useful source of links to Japanese blogs) and Cosplay.com, for those of you who like to dress to impress.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Articles in English, Other Websites and blogs, Website Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.