Man, I'm such a blockhead sometimes. I changed the template on this page and forgot to include the GeoURL code in the header so it looked like I was alone drifting in the sea of east Asian bloggery. I finally set it up right again and found the closest blogger to me is Robert Brady, whose name I know from back when I used to read Kyoto Journal. He must be across the lake up on Mt. Hiei.


I used to read Kyoto Journal religiously. I'd push through the crowds at the Umeda Kinokuniya bookstore to get the latest issue in all its artsy alternative splendor. I think grad school is what finally killed off all my aspirations of being a groovy alternative Japan-smart intellectual. I was really into what I was doing (reading and writing about late 13th century Japanese court poetry and diaries ) until I realized there were maybe a dozen other people in the world who could give a shit about the topic and that probably none of them even actually lived in Japan. Maybe that was what got to me, all the Japan experts I met in the States had only spent a couple of years living here, which is probably all you need if you're just going to studying parts of the culture that died a thousand years ago anyway.
But I can see how the whole blogging concept has connections back to the rampant diary and memoir writing you see in early Japanese lit.
"Haru wa akebono" "In the spring it is the dawn..."
Good old Sei Shonagon. It would've been cool to hook her up with a new iBook and a Cybershot and see how she would've blogged Heian Japan.