世論 What Japan Thinks

As promised, here are reviews of the blogs that didn’t make the cut for the First Annual (anyone wish to sponsor thm?) Japan Blog of the Year Awards, roughly in the order that they were nominated. Reviews of the candidates will take place after voting finishes. Please remember to vote, and remember that all commenters on that thread will be eligible for a drawing for a small prize!

Herro Flom Japan: I must admit that the name really grates on me! This is the very first (probably) podcast from Japan, and it’s now expanding into video too. I downloaded the latest podcast, recorded whilst walking through Tokyo; interesting talk, but also interesting background noises which were in fact rather distracting, but also fascinating trying to imagine where he was walking through!

Geisha, Interrupted: Interesting personal blog about life in Japan as a translator. I found this post rather thought-provoking.

Japan Focus: Not really a blog as such, but since someone nominated it, I’ll mention it regardless. A set of scholarly (and sometimes not so scholarly) articles on issues related to Japan.

LongCountdown.com: The first article had some interesting stuff on networking with other Japanese bloggers; I understand that everyone wants to get they eyeballs, but the problem is having too many networking opportunities – for instance there’s at least three English-language Japanese blog social bookmarking/digg-like things but each with only one or two votes per story.