Google thinks I'm Transport for London

This blog has been a bit thin recently, I've been spending far too much of my time on my other hobby of maintaining the JapanBlogList which ends up with me visiting a lot of other blogs and generally getting nothing else much done. If I'm not reading other people's blogs I'm posting random stuff on Facebook to amuse my friends such as The Chihuahua pulling a sled from Japanprobe, "Hug your wife day" from Japanalooza, the link between Pink tentacle posting an article on LED Smiles on Jan 17th, which got picked up the NY times on the 21st Jan and the Guardian on the 25th Jan as real craze , but swiftly debunked by the Japan Times on the 30th Jan.

My favorite was the 'incident writeup' for a recent problem when shinkansen trains were halted for more than an hour. seems they forgot to update some hard coded limits in the scheduling system. ( But then I am in IT, and part of my job is incident write ups to explain to our users what happened when things went wrong.)

But for a change, for no good reason this evening, I thought I would see if anyone does still bother to visit this blog. Heading over to trusty Google analytics I was surprised to see a steady stream of visitor's averaging around 100 per day. But what is most confusing is when I looked to see the key words they come for :



"TFL Map" TFL Tube Map, London Underground Map... and other variations account for eight out of the top ten hits.

Sure enough if you do a google search for TFL Map, in the section of images, the link on the first image of the underground map is a link to a post I did in 2007 titled "Seoul on the Jubilee Line"



In the post I had a link to a diagram showing all the cities which have, are building or are planning to construct an urban rail sytstem, arranged in the style of the London Tube map. I also included a link to the real map on the TFL Website to compare. So how come my blog rates higher than the real TFL site for their own image? Go figure.

Win $50 cash at Japan Photo Guide Blog

I've had Blogs on Japan on my blogroll for several months now, but it was only yesterday that I discovered the man behind it, Evan Pike, has two other blogs. He runs Japan Photo Guide which, as you might expect, is a site dedicated to giving you advice on where, when and how to take great photos in Japan.

Another of his blogs is Japan Daily Photo. Subscribe to his RSS feed and get images like this or this every day in your feed reader.

To promote his photography and his blogs, he has started a contest, the prize is $50 to your PayPal account. There are several ways to enter the contest: writing a blog entry to promote the contest, mentioning his blogs or buying his photos.

So, go on over to Japan Photo Guide and check out some of his photos.

Blogging in Japan

The Japan Times often features bloggers. Today's item was on Brent Warner at Konbini Life blog.

Brent has been writing about some of the interesting and unusual items he's found in Japanese convenience stores (Konbini) since June 2006. Some of his recent finds have been Kiwi Flavoured Kit-Kats, the Moist Smoked Cheese Bar and Bikkle which he describes as "Maybe something like TUMS crushed into liquid form and made drinkable. A bit like drinking bones, in a good way."

According to the Japan Visitor blog there are between 40,000-50,000 konbini stores nationwide. They are renowned for selling all manner of easy to eat items, being open 24hrs, customers browsing the "adult" magazines and being able to pay utility bills . We have one at each end of the road, both are less than three minutes walk away. But we have something even better than that. Almost directly outside our house is a small grocery store run by a very elderly couple. They sell real food, they are always pleased to see us and their prices are no higher than the konbini. They are so sweet, their English is getting better thanks to our frequent purchases, in sharp contrast to our still non existent Japanese language skills.

Saturday's Japan Times item was on how Japanese is the number one language of blogs. A story they also covered before, back in April. Technorati calculated that 37% of the 70 million blogs they monitor are in Japanese and 33% are in English. The newspaper article described one lady who has been blogging every day about what she ate for lunch for three years. She blogs anonymously but she would never dream dream of giving a bad review to a restaurant she had eaten at.

Some previous interviews were with What Japan Thinks and Japan Probe.

In other blogging news : I left a comment on Annie's London Underground blog, which was about sleeping passengers on London's trains needing stickers saying "Wake me at station X". I said :

They need some here in Japan too.
I felt really guilty this week when I saw someone fast asleep on the train coming into Shibuya (the terminal station on my line). Everyone else streamed off after arrival, and then we all streamed on.

He didn't wake up, and no one else who got on, bothered to wake him up, so after 4 minutes the train set off again out of town. He was still blissfully unaware 10 mins later when I got off. I wonder how long before he woke up, poor chap.

I have resolved to always wake up any sleeping passengers at Shibuya from now on.

Someone in Washington DC noticed my comment and it was published in the local free newspaper the Washington Express. Thanks to Heather for spotting that and passing it on.

Korean Blogs that have lasted the year

Today marks the first anniversary of this blog. Yes, one year ago I tentatively began this blog about our impending trip to Seoul. 150 posts later I'm still blogging and still bringing a small but loyal band of readers a mixture of news, events, photos and items of interest on my life in Seoul.

To celebrate this anniversary I decided to take a visit to The Korean Blog List to see how many other bloggers that added their blog to the list around the same time as I did are still blogging.

Feet Man Seoul Continues to grow his blog with daily posts on Korean fashion tips and stars and has expanded with Korean language posts as well.

Art Life and Everything Penelope stopped posting in December 2006.

Azikiwe Chandler Azikiwe is still blogging and writing a book.

Lazy Saturday Suegene is still busy blogging about knitting from New England.

Just Wandering Jackie is still blogging and has decided to stay another year in Korea. She's just got a new job at a University.

A Year In Korea Not sure what he's called, but he lasted the year and he is about to leave Korea very soon.

Deeper Shade Of Seoul Jes is still here blogging about her life.

Dae Han Min Decline Jon is busy DJing and has pictures of people vomiting and other happier scenes from punk rock concerts on his blog.

I Dream Therefore I Am Jimong has moved his blog to wordpress and continues to blog about Korean items of interest from Vancouver.

A Canadian In Korea Eric has posted a few updates and is back in Canada soon.

A Welshman With Seoul :P Now defunct.

DeiHanMinGuk Discoveries Goulash updates his blog on an occasional basis.

Living On The Flipside Amy provides very detailed updates on her life almost every day.

Flora In Seoul Flora's stopped in April, and has started facebooking. (Is that a verb yet?)

Show Dae Jang Geum On BBC Alice in London started a blog about her quest to get the BBC to air the Korean drama 'Dae Jang Geum' in the UK. Her latest post in May indicates that the BBC would love to share it with the British viewers, but sadly there just isn't enough time in the day to show it.

Seoul Searching This one disappeared.

Seoul Brotha Adrian was on my blogroll until last month when I noticed he stopped posting in December last year.

Simply Korean This one has disappeared too.

Hidden Confessions Jon stopped posting in Sep 2006.

Beloved Babbling Beloved is back in the US and still babbling occasionally.

Noraebang He hasn't posted since April

Peace Of Rice: 1/150,000 KADs Soon Young is still blogging frequently.

Almost Urban -Canadian Student Henry has been blogging steadily during the year. His postings on his trip to Mt Kumgang in North Korea are excellent.

The Daily Kimchi The indefatigable Gdog has continued to blog a post every day since he began his teaching job last year. His blog also provides the largest number of referrals to this blog for which I am always grateful.

So, out of the 24 blogs started only 8 have stopped blogging. That is quite a good record I would say. Congratulations to all those that have lasted a year. Here's to another year of blogging, and to the 36 blogs that have been added to the Blog List since my last roundup in April can you last the year?