What Has Japan Taught Me About England?

This is my last minute entry into November’s Japan Blog Matsuri. I was going to skip it this month, as the question, “What has Japan taught you about yourself?”, would require me to take a deep look inside and pull out something wise and intelligent. Instead, here are a few things Japan has taught me about England… Ascending the throne When I first came to Japan, people would say “Give […]

Reviving the Japan Blog Matsuri

I’ve been working behind the scenes with other members of JapanSoc to revive the old Japan Blog Matsuri. This is a monthly blog “carnival” where given a theme to write about, bloggers everywhere are invited to share their stories with everyone else. It’s a great opportunity to find new blogs and attract new readers to your own. Organization and Announcements The Japan Blog Matsuri Newsroom is where things are being […]

Introducing the JapanSoc Community Blog

At universities across the UK, student clubs and societies are known as “socs”. Each of these socs is intended to bring together people with common interests, and nearly every campus has a Japan Soc. With its Japan-related news and stories, the website of the same name has done a good job of focusing on the “Japan”. Now, though, I’d like to give as much attention to the “Soc”, by sharing […]

Nick Ramsay Google Battle Update

In October last year, I laid down the gauntlet and swore I would take the number one spot in Google’s search results for my own name. My opponent was none other than the politician, Nick Ramsay, who happens to be a fellow Brit, born in the same year as myself! Supported by internet powerhouses Wikipedia and the British Conservative Party, it was going to be tough… Rising to the top […]

Using JapanSoc to Boost Blog Traffic

From time to time, I’ll be posting about my new project, JapanSoc, so if you’re not sure what it is, please read the article JapanSoc Brings Social Bookmarking to Japan so that you understand these posts! Over on the Daily J, Chris B posted a comment about JapanSoc’s voting system, suggesting that people could cheat it by asking their friends to vote up their submissions. I responded by explaining how […]

Happy Birthday LongCountdown!

Today marks the first anniversary of starting this blog. Can you believe it’s been a year already? The first year saw Mami and I buy a house and have a baby, and while that will be hard to top, the next year should make for very interesting reading, particularly if you’re following the progress of our son, Rikuto. There have been exactly 153 posts and 300 comments so far. I’d […]

LC’s 100th post!

I started writing this blog on September 23rd, 2006, with a post describing my arrival in Japan. Now, one hundred posts later, I thought I’d take a look back through the archives and point out some of my favorite articles which you may have missed. September 2006: What is Yakudoshi? I wrote this when we were looking for a house to buy. There were all kinds of problems at first, […]