When I first arrived in Japan last August I
decided to start this travel blog to tell you all about the strange new things
I was encountering in my journey. As you
have noticed, the blog hasn’t seen much activity in the last few months. The thing is, I am no longer a traveler in
Japan – I live here. The strange and
incomprehensible things that gave me something to write about when I first
arrived are still as strange as they ever were, but now they are familiar. You can’t write a travel blog about the place
you live.
So I need to reboot this blog, give it a
new purpose. I got an idea from a fantasy novel I recently finished. In the book a girl runs away from home and ends up living in a temple
in a foreign city. The priest agrees to
feed, clothe, and educate her if she will commit to joining the temple. One portion of her education involves her
going into the city during the week and selling clams from a cart. At the end of each week she reports back to the priest three things she learned during the week. It doesn’t matter what the three things are as long as they were new to her. Maybe she learned some
new gossip around town, maybe she learned where to find the best clams, maybe
she learned how to do a cartwheel – if it was something new, the priest was
satisfied.
And that’s my idea for the blog. It doesn’t matter what I write about, as long
as it is something I have learned in the past week. (You should never stop learning, right?) So what can you expect? Less posts about Japanese culture or events,
but more posts on more general things that currently interest or intrigue
me. Maybe this plan won’t solve my
problems, but at least I’ll have one less excuse for neglecting the blog.
I might as well get started right here with
this new plan. And what is the new thing
I have learned about? A little thing
called “blog etiquette” (insert snarky comment here). I (obviously) didn’t give it much thought
before; I didn’t realize that such a thing existed, or if I did realize it I
never thought it applied to me. Here is
my blog, my own personal journal of a sort, and I just happen to be putting it
on the internet for any interested party to view. But I was reading a different blog the other
day and was surprised by a post the author made. He made a post just to say that his next
actual post would be a week late, but he wanted his audience to know that he
was still there, still writing for them.
It made me think of the way I’ve treated my audience (whoooops). I mean, I have a handful of websites on my
toolbar that I check for regular updates (mostly webcomics, but a couple of
traditional blogs too), and I appreciate the regularity and punctuality of
their posts. And if they aren’t able to
make a post, they take the time to let me know that they are still there for
me, they are just running a little behind.
I just never thought to apply the same concept to myself as a blogger,
but that’s what I am now, eh?
So, for those of you that enjoy reading
what I write here, thank you. For those
of you that checked here in the past few months hoping for a new post, thank
you, and I’m sorry I left you all in the dark for so long. I’ll do my best for weekly updates (maybe by
Sunday each week?), and if I don’t have new material I’ll try to at least let
you know I’m still around and to expect a new post before too long. Since the topics I’ll be writing about has
significantly expanded now, feel free to leave comments of things you want me
to write about. No promises, but maybe
your idea will spark my next post.
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| Double points if you get the reference. |
