These days there are hundreds of English language blogs about Japan, mostly written by ex-pat English teachers and U.S. military personel. They mostly feature the same tired old photos of shrine visits, stories of drunken shenanigans and rants about the various frustrations that one experiences living in this country. That's why I sometimes find it refreshing to read English language blogs written by Japanese people. While I don't really care to read the rantings of angry ex-pats on BigDaikon, it can be kind of fun to read the same rantings by Japanese people in Engrish. Ex-pat bloggers such as myself tend to live within the same hazy cloud, where we simply don't understand what's going on around us much of the time except in the most superficial of ways. Japanese bloggers can sometimes offer interesting insights that no gaijin would likely catch on their own. Here are the ones I've found so far:


Masamania Photographer/Pornographer, Masa regularily seems to find himself in the middle of interesting photo worthy situations. He has made quite a name for himself over the past year as his photos of Cosplay kids are regularily featured on megablogs such as Boing Boing.


Extraoridnary Ordinary Guy in Japan (Thanks Kate & Queen T)
This guy simply describes himself as an ordinary guy, born in Japan in the 1960's. His more critical blog entries on Japan have sparked some Japanophiles to accuse him of being a racist gaijin in disguise. I know too well what it can be like to spark their ire! I particularily like when he methodically compares Japan to other countries by looking at the statistics of Big Mac prices or the frequency keywords appear in Google in English and in Japanese.


Hope Was Never Closed

Of course this is the blog of my good friend Akiko, where she likes to practice writing in English by complaining about her boss and talking about getting drunk indeed!


Chosei Funahara's Livejournal
This bipolar Japan born actor/producer's Livejournal sounds like it was written by a burnt out ALT...

"When I come to Japan, I have little twitches on my right eyelid. It must come from nervousness. I just don't like it and never happened in USA. I think me to go back to US as soon as possible, I just don't like it. I just don't like it. Japan is not my country, neither China and Korea, I just don't like it. PLEASE HELP!"


Here are a few more I haven't really looked at much yet...


http://fujikosuda.typepad.com/


http://isao.typepad.com/blog/


http://joi.ito.com/


If you know of any other good ones, please let me know.