On this second day after turning 31, I want to belatedly celebrate the beginning of the tenth year of keeping up with this blog. In hard numbers, what started a place to jot down my random thoughts straight out of college has gained 200,000 pageviews from 95,000 visitors. It really is not that much and much more can be done, I would admit, to attract more visitors and readers. Pictures to go along with the text would certainly be nice, and a consistent theme that keeps people coming back for more information would certainly be a great source for additional pageviews.
In a world that sees blogging as a way of making extra side incomes through advertising and affiliate promotion revenues, I have not deviated from "selling out" to make a bit of money blogging. At the heart, this blog is dedicated to documenting life changes that I as a person have come across in the past decade of working around different places in the world (a lifestyle that is increasingly coming into doubt as I get older and the anxiety of needing to find a more stable career weighs heavier). But much more than a diary of what happened here and there, it is about communicating big ideas out of small everyday events.
And as the years go by, the "big ideas" that came out of everyday events have become more frequent, and clearly, systematically enunciated in these pages. Years of living among people from different social backgrounds, with their own religions, social classes, economic difficulties, and familial concerns have illustrated that belief in some sort of social equality is not only a distant dream and ideal, but a very real need for diverse workplaces to even function properly. The resulting belief in social progressivism of all strands can be found dotted around the pages of this blog.
If documenting a global lifestyle and social beliefs that are needed in a globalized world are the two major themes of this blog, then in its tenth year, there will really have to be some changes. As a stable, long-term job becomes a more common experience in the next few years at least, documenting a global lifestyle will be limited to a few instances of business trips and recreational journeys. How to fill the other pages of the blog, during weeks of routine work while living in the now-familiar city of Tokyo, would be a major issue that sees whether weekly posts will still remain a feature of the blog.
To come up with some inspirations, it is nice to look at some of the most popular posts of the past nine years of this blog. Posts about social class differences feature regularly in the top of the rankings. A post on how people from different classes look differently has remained among the top posts for years. Plenty more can be written on the subject, even while just living in Japan. Japanese society is changing in terms of how work is perceived. Disappearing is an army of salarymen who dress the same, do similar things, and are generally paid a fixed amount based on seniority.
Replacing the salaryman system is a more diverse working style, with many people earning from multiple jobs, creative work like Youtubing and blogging, while an increasing number of people find themselves left behind by greater use of technology. While such professional-driven inequality is happening across different countries, the visual impact it has on formerly egalitarian Japan would be much more drastic and worthy of detailed documentation. Certainly, as a salaried worker in the Japanese economy, I would be in the driving seat of understanding the changes.
Equally popular are the stories of weird experiences that many "normal" people would find rather distasteful to attempt and talk about. For instance, the story of putting in English subtitles for Japanese adult videos for a part-time job remains one of the most talked-about posts. I feel that, even after years of residing in the country, I only scratched the surfaces when it comes to idiosyncrasies of Japanese society. Some of the idiosyncrasies can only be achieved at great expense and are accessible to only people of certain professions and social status. I hope to continue exploring and trying these activities as they are discovered.
All in all, it is difficult to say that the blog will become less useful when the twin pillars of travel and global affairs are no longer so prominently written about. Societies that are different what most readers experience where they are, especially in the case of Japan for many English speakers, is and will remain for a long time an alluring topic. As this blog becomes one that is more geared toward topics relevant for a settled life in the world's largest city, it also will include more topics that will be relevant for a cultural exploration of Japan and elsewhere at a deeper level. Stay tuned.
In a world that sees blogging as a way of making extra side incomes through advertising and affiliate promotion revenues, I have not deviated from "selling out" to make a bit of money blogging. At the heart, this blog is dedicated to documenting life changes that I as a person have come across in the past decade of working around different places in the world (a lifestyle that is increasingly coming into doubt as I get older and the anxiety of needing to find a more stable career weighs heavier). But much more than a diary of what happened here and there, it is about communicating big ideas out of small everyday events.
And as the years go by, the "big ideas" that came out of everyday events have become more frequent, and clearly, systematically enunciated in these pages. Years of living among people from different social backgrounds, with their own religions, social classes, economic difficulties, and familial concerns have illustrated that belief in some sort of social equality is not only a distant dream and ideal, but a very real need for diverse workplaces to even function properly. The resulting belief in social progressivism of all strands can be found dotted around the pages of this blog.
If documenting a global lifestyle and social beliefs that are needed in a globalized world are the two major themes of this blog, then in its tenth year, there will really have to be some changes. As a stable, long-term job becomes a more common experience in the next few years at least, documenting a global lifestyle will be limited to a few instances of business trips and recreational journeys. How to fill the other pages of the blog, during weeks of routine work while living in the now-familiar city of Tokyo, would be a major issue that sees whether weekly posts will still remain a feature of the blog.
To come up with some inspirations, it is nice to look at some of the most popular posts of the past nine years of this blog. Posts about social class differences feature regularly in the top of the rankings. A post on how people from different classes look differently has remained among the top posts for years. Plenty more can be written on the subject, even while just living in Japan. Japanese society is changing in terms of how work is perceived. Disappearing is an army of salarymen who dress the same, do similar things, and are generally paid a fixed amount based on seniority.
Replacing the salaryman system is a more diverse working style, with many people earning from multiple jobs, creative work like Youtubing and blogging, while an increasing number of people find themselves left behind by greater use of technology. While such professional-driven inequality is happening across different countries, the visual impact it has on formerly egalitarian Japan would be much more drastic and worthy of detailed documentation. Certainly, as a salaried worker in the Japanese economy, I would be in the driving seat of understanding the changes.
Equally popular are the stories of weird experiences that many "normal" people would find rather distasteful to attempt and talk about. For instance, the story of putting in English subtitles for Japanese adult videos for a part-time job remains one of the most talked-about posts. I feel that, even after years of residing in the country, I only scratched the surfaces when it comes to idiosyncrasies of Japanese society. Some of the idiosyncrasies can only be achieved at great expense and are accessible to only people of certain professions and social status. I hope to continue exploring and trying these activities as they are discovered.
All in all, it is difficult to say that the blog will become less useful when the twin pillars of travel and global affairs are no longer so prominently written about. Societies that are different what most readers experience where they are, especially in the case of Japan for many English speakers, is and will remain for a long time an alluring topic. As this blog becomes one that is more geared toward topics relevant for a settled life in the world's largest city, it also will include more topics that will be relevant for a cultural exploration of Japan and elsewhere at a deeper level. Stay tuned.
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