tokyographers

Okay, so I’ve been talking about adding new features to the Tokyograph site, and finally, one of them is complete! Well, sort of. I’m sure there are bugs and what-not, but I’m launching it anyway as an experiment. And hopefully you all can tell me what needs fixing.

So what is it? Take a look here. I’m just calling it TokyoGraph Link for now, until I can think of something better. If you’ve ever used digg or reddit or similar sites, it’s basically like that, except with a focus on Japan. The idea is that anyone (at least those with an account in the forums) can submit links to content all over the web, and the community decides what’s worthy of attention by voting and discussing them. Find an interesting article or video somehow related to Japan? Go ahead and post it so everyone else can find out about it too!

The site’s pretty minimalistic on the visuals - I’m no graphic artist as you can probably tell. I’m just hoping everything’s functioning properly, and that the server can handle all of the database queries (I’ll be working on optimization in the future). For the moment, I’m keeping it separate from the main site, but if all goes well, I’ll have it integrated in the near future.

Anyway, just go ahead and play with it!

Just a couple announcements about the site:

1. Tokyograph is now affiliated with WorldFriends Networks, a personals service that works with a lot of other Japan-related sites. The site is free to join, so please check it out if you’re interested! Just click on the banners on the left-hand side on the main Tokyograph site.
2. I’m working on adding an Events calendar to Tokyograph. The basic page is up (here), though a few things still need to be added. I’ll also be making it easier to find from the front page (right now, you can get there by going to the “upcoming” link on the navigation bar, then clicking on “events” in the pulldown menu). I also need to add a ton of events to the current calendar, so check out for updates soon. Also, if you happen to know of any events coming up that should be listed, send an e-mail or PM!

Sorry about the sudden downtime - the server upgrades happened earlier than I thought they would. But everything should be working fine now.

Meanwhile, I screwed up my sleep schedule last night so I could finish the new Harry Potter book (I think it took me about 11 hours total, in two sittings). It was a good read, and tied things up satisfactorily.

By the way, the lack of news isn’t the fault of Harry Potter. It really was just some slow news days. Hopefully some more exciting things happen soon!

Just a heads-up for all Tokyograph visitors: we may be doing server upgrades in the near future, which will mean some downtime. I’m hoping it won’t be too much time, but I can’t say for sure. I’ll post more details in a later announcement.

Because of Anime Expo this weekend, expect all the news updates to be later than usual. Also, because of limited time, some of the news stories will get pushed until Monday, Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday (the holiday!).

So, apologies to everyone who’s expecting their news at the usual time!

It’s been way too long since I’ve written a real post! Not enough time these days, but I’ve finally managed to sneak in a bit of free time to write a post (well, it’s actually not free time since I do have some other work to do, but whatever).

So…. what to talk about?

First, props to Ina for getting that LJ feed problem sorted out (and also for making the syndicated account in the first place!) I’m glad it’s back to normal. Incidentally, I’ve also noticed that a lot of the LJ subscribers are really only subscribing for JE-related news. I’m considering setting up a special feed just for the Johnny’s stuff - I wonder if there’s demand for that, or are people okay with getting all of the news in their friend posts?

Second, yay for me finally getting a Wii! I still don’t have a lot of free time to play with it, but I’m definitely excited about it. I’m planning to do some shopping for games later this week, but I first need to finish off some other work and fill out an application for an ALT position in Japan…

Third, how crazy is Anime Expo going to be this year? With all the guests they’ve announced so far, I’m actually wondering if all the music events are going to overshadow the rest of the con. Seriously - SKIN? The Haruhi seiyus? Anna Tsuchiya? Halko Momoi? Chiaki Ishikawa? And admittedly least on the list, ORESKABAND (I love them a lot, but they’re definitely not nearly as much of a draw as the other acts - except perhaps Chiaki). I think I may be spending the whole weekend at the Long Beach Arena, with a little shopping time thrown in there. Oh, and also watching Tekkon Kinkreet. I just hope they don’t announce too much more, because I may just die from the overload.

Fourth, I’m really liking several of the dramas this season. LIAR GAME is probably my favorite at the moment - even though the acting and writing isn’t *technically* amazing, the entire series is carried by the premise and the whole psychological + mystery-solving nature of the story. It’s one of the same reasons I’m loving the Death Note series. I’ve also been enjoying Hanayome to Papa (Ishihara is so hilariously frantic) and Proposal Daisakusen (cheeeesy, but it’s at least better than I was expecting). I expect I’ll also like Joudan Janai! when I get around to watching it, and probably the Kuitan and Jikou Keisatsu sequels.

Fifth, I noticed Tokyograph has been getting linked to quite a bit now. It’s cool to see references not only from the news sections of sites like Japan Probe and animeOnline, but also some really good blogs like Ryuganji and The Golden Rock. I wish I had the time and depth of knowledge to offer interesting commentary on the news I post, but alas, I don’t. So like me, all of you should be checking out those sites (and several others like Twitch) if you want more interesting reading. Which reminds me, I need to update my blogroll - guess I’ll do that when I get more free time later this week.

Sixth: on a related note to #5, I thought I’d offer up some new site statistics for the curious (and also because I’m just way too obsessed with tracking the site stats so I can be happy that people really care about the kind of news here). The last time I talked about this was at the end of March, and at that point, we had for the month: 12,000 visits; 5,000 sites; 92,000 hits; 50-60 RSS subscribers (via FeedBurner). By comparison, at the end of May, we had: 28,000 visits; 13,500 sites; 215,000 hits; 110-120 subscribers. So growth is looking fairly good, and there’s definitely still more of an audience out there. Gotta keep spreading the news!

One interesting source of traffic came up recently. The daily averages pretty much doubled yesterday, and it looks like the vast majority of the increase came from a single source. On Friday, I posted the news story about Marina Watanabe’s good news, and yesterday I discovered that the post had reached Watanabe herself, through one of her friends! She mentioned us on her blog, and that link has been sending hundreds of readers this way!

(Oh, and if you read this, Watanabe-san, I just want to say: おめでとう！)

Hmmm… I think there were some other things I wanted to talk about, but I’ve really spent more time on this than I should’ve, so any other topics will have to wait until later. I know I’m behind on The Trend and Audio Japan, so I’m going to try to prioritize those a bit more, but more importantly, I need to finish up the Summer Drama Preview in about a week or two, so that’s going to have to come first.

All right, back to work! (and sleep!)

I mentioned before that someone created a LiveJournal syndicated account for us, but I noticed it’s not been working since around the end of May. I’ve tried some things on the server end, but I still have no idea why it’s not working. The feed is still working fine elsewhere, and it’s had no problems running through a validator.

Anyone have any ideas?

Just a notice: I’m starting a new job, which is going to affect my current schedule pretty significantly, especially while I’m still adjusting to it initially. What this means is that for the near future, I likely won’t have time for updating the database and the release lists (which are already behind at the moment), and I won’t be able to implement anything new. But I’ll still be updating the news daily at least, and that’s the most important section for all of you anyway.

Sorry about the lack of other interesting things, but I hope to settle into my new schedule quickly.

A new month begins! For the curious, here are some stats on how the site is doing:

• Last month (February), we reached 8800 visits from about 3900 unique sites. This month (March), we jumped to over 12000 visits from more than 5000 unique sites.
• The RSS subscriber base is currently in the 50s with a peak of 62. At the end of February, we had almost 30.
• The most-accessed page by far is still the news announcement about “Proposal Daisakusen.” Yeah, we know you all love Yamapi that much.

So we’re growing, but not as much as I’d hoped. Still, I guess that’s pretty good after no advertising efforts. Hopefully this month I’ll have more time to work on spreading the word.

I’m also going to be working on better integrating Daily Japan and The Trend (the new irregularly-scheduled column) into the main site, for the sake of convenience. If you have ideas for how you’d like to see it done, let us know.

April should be a good month for all of us J-fans, since all the new shows are starting, and there’s plenty to be happy about. So enjoy the new season, and don’t forget to keep tuning back in for all your J-news!

(Oh, and happy birthday to Yuko Takeuchi!)

First, a correction: due to a slight error, some of the dates on the ranking charts were off by a day (e.g. listing March 13-19 instead of March 12-18), but they’ve been fixed now. Sorry for the mistake.

Second, more apologies. Due to some other commitments, I’ve been a bit behind schedule on some things, particularly adding more content to the database, writing a new article, and keeping on top of the release lists (though it seems no one really cares about that last one). But on top of that, I’ve also been lagging a bit on the news, and I’ve built up a bit of a backlog that I’m going to try to sift through in the coming days so that I can be back on track in getting out the fresh news.

Last, an announcement: Tokyograph has ended up on Myspace (gasp!) Yeah, I wouldn’t be on there otherwise, but it’s part of my top-secret “master plan” (yeah, right) for this site. I’ll admit, though, I’m a Myspace noob, so I’m still getting used to everything there (and having to deal with incredible amounts of spam). I haven’t had much time to really work on it, but so far, I’ve at least made friends with Asakusa Jinta and ORESKABAND. Go check them out while I try to branch out to some other artists.