This info came from a Seattle Times article, Sunday, Dec 30/07. I found it rather interesting.
"Apparently the Japanese write web logs at per-capita rates that are off the global charts. By some estimates, as much as 40 percent of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by commuters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world's most extensive network of subways and commuter trains.
Japan's conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly nonconfrontational medium for getting along. While Americans blog to stand out, the Japanese do it to fit in, blogging about small stuff: cats and flowers, bicylces and breakfast, gadgets and TV stars.
'Behaviour is more important than technology,' said Joichi Ito, a board member at Technorati and an expert on how people around the world use the Internet. 'In Japan, it is not socially acceptable to pursue fame.'
Junko Kenetsuna has been writing five times a week for the past three years about her midday meal. With understated precision, she calls her blog "I Had My Lunch". In all the blog entries she has composed at home and in cybercafes over the years, Kenetsuna
has never written a discouraging word - not a single critical reference to bad food, lousy service or rip-off prices. Such harshness, in her view, would be improper and offensive."
