English Weblog in China
Last time I checked, there weren’t too many weblogs written in English by Japanese people. They include KEC Journal, Cronica di Eri, Japanish, and Kitakyushu Views, a student project modeled on Tawawa. Then there’s Joi Ito’s Web, whose author didn’t grow up in Japan but who’s Japanese, and Butuki, whose author isn’t Japanese but grew up in this country.
There do seem to be a couple of Chinese weblogs written in English.
Via pketh, who has posted some comments here on Tawawa, I’ve just discovered the weblog of a Chinese history student writing in English from Hangzhou, China: Leylop: lively, engaging personal writing — well done!
Plus: Leylop features a big Photolog.
Comments
Kiyo :: September 30, 2003
I have a link to leylop’s site as well. It’s a really awesome blog. She expresses herself very well. :)
konnichiwa, sensei!
pketh — I don’t see anything wrong with media commentary. The whole weblog format started out that way, see for example Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom WebLog page from December 1997. Jorn came up with the name “weblog” and in this Usenet post from June 1998 he calls it a “news digest”. What gave Metafilter (one of the most widely read community weblogs) its name, after all, is the idea that a weblog is both “meta”, as in “about other web pages” and a “filter”, as in “picks out the good (or exceptionally bad) stuff on the Web that you don’t want to miss.” In a great essay on the early history of weblogs, Rebecca Blood deplores the loss of that original approach, which, she claims, was brought about by the introduction of Blogger in 1999 and other weblogging tools later on, which made the format available to the unwashed masses that preferred a more diaristic approach.
I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think the strength of the weblog format is its openness and flexibility; it allows people to write about what’s important to them, whatever it is. Meeting up with Jenny and having a cheese sammich for lunch isn’t a bad subject matter, and some people write amazingly about everyday occurrences like that. While others — well, don’t. I guess your complaint was about the others.
What it all boils down to is that weblogs allow people to find their voice and learn how to use it. That, incidentally, is also what makes them valuable in an educational setting.
pketh :: October 1, 2003
I stand corrected on many points,
however, I meant many media commentary sites in general ad nausuem - there are great exceptions (many of whom are on my links page), but the overwhelming majority of sites in that style (and this is only my personal opionion btw) don’t really appeal to me personally.
I do mean what I say about blogs that go nowhere and would only interest themselves or those closest to them. I’m not against their very existence or anything like that, it’s just that I wouldn’t really read them or be interested. It’s true I was being overly generalized (I went w/ the majority of blogs and that’s never a good idea) and vague however, so I don’t regret the reprimand ;)
pketh :: October 1, 2003
kiyo,
I just found your blog through the links and I really thought it was great , so I’ll add you to my links too when I can
posting this here, cause I couldn’t get to your comments (got an error)
thx
Kiyo :: October 1, 2003
pketh,
My site is now in the process of moving to a different server at the same web hosting company. Probably that’s why, and for some reason I don’t know, I can’t log in to MT on the new server now. I’m working on it. Sorry for the inconvenience. By the way, I’m glad you like my blog. :)
Rudolf-san, thank you very much for letting me know about the problem.
Kiyo :: October 2, 2003
Phew. Seems like my blog is working all right now. A kind of server upgrade, but mainly for larger space.
Commenting on this entry is closed.
Lively, engaging personal writing is my favourite part of the whole blogging thing -and it’s how I try to write. I’m generally not really a big fan of the whole post news tidbits and comment on them style. However, the absolute worst thing (sadly, the most common) is the ‘I went for a walk w/ jenny today, we saw a dog, here’s what I had for lunch, etc etc.’ type blog.