Saturday, April 2, 2011

The Day I Went Viral (in the Chinese news)

Now it seems like things are slowly reverting back to normal when it comes to blog visitors as well. Before the quake I usually had a very modest number of around ~200 unique visitors, but this figure tripled and quadrupled immediately after the quake and stayed at that level up until the last few days when things seem to get back to normal. In any case, I usually consider my regular modest number of visitors to be of high quality; men and women with refined tastes and sharp intellects, so I am very comfortable with that.

One amusing thing that happened in the days after the quake was that my blog, for some odd reason, got picked up by a pretty huge Japanese news site focusing on China related news (?) called Searchina, as they did a review on what some foreign bloggers in Japan had written about the aftermath. This caused a pretty significant influx of (what I assume to be) Japanese readers and a lot of googletranslate attempts to decode the English. You could say that I went a little viral, nothing lethal and a mild cold at best, but still.

Now, this is not so entertaining for my non-Japanese reading visitors, but comparing my original post and the summary that Searchina listed is quite interesting in itself. First, take a look here at their article and then compare it to my original post here. Nevermind that they wrongly label me as american, but their summary has removed all the attempts at wit from the original post and for some reason completely omitted the Mad Max watching from their listing up of my "things to do".

I'm completely ok with their summary (apart from the insult of calling me American...) as they just have removed all traces of humour, but haven't distorted anything that I wrote, but I just have the feeling that there would be tons of other blogs that would have been more suitable to quote...? Well, in any case, thanks to the Searchina people and would always be fun to get more English capable Japanese readers!

9 comments:

F. said...

Yo Yankee!

Chris said...

You got this Euro trash aura but I always knew deep down inside you were American through and through!

I have an extra VERY huge American Flag that I can send you. Wrap yourself in it. Emrace your Imperialistic,Criminal Money is God thoughts.....

"Luke!!...I am your Father!!!!"

Joe said...

When I lived in Japan, I always found it interesting how people just assumed I was American (which was fine, because I am). But, I figured Europeans must find that really damn annoying.

Martin said...

Well, now it´s time to start blogging (*blogga) in Swedisch then?

F. said...

oh yeah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzWHE32IxUc

Mr. Salaryman said...

BiJ - That's just mean and hurtful!

Chris - Haha, well, I'm cool with americans and can't deny that the design of the american flag is a lot better than most out there. But yeah... I'll take a raincheck on the flag for now ;)

Joe - Yeah, exactly, I think that if someone speaks English without a huge accent (or in this case, writes a blog in English), the Japanese just assume that you're American, too hard to keep track of all those other countries

Martin - Yes, I should put in more Swedish words at least just to confuse people

BiJ - Well, that didn't help any ;) Not a big Lenny fan!

F. said...

oooops - my apologies ;-)

aimlesswanderer said...

Well, given that many non Asians think that all Asians "look the same", why can't Japanese think that all gaijin are American?

Many Americans don't know anything about Asia, and many Japanese have some strange idea about foreigners. It's just ignorance, both ways.

Hanta said...

I got in my hometown newspaper myself!

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