TokyoMango Two-Year Anniversary!
I just realized it's been two years since I started TokyoMango. To celebrate, I am taking a few minutes this morning to revisit the early days, and talk about why I started it and what I used to write about.
The Creation Story
I created this blog on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I guess I had a lot of things to say but nobody to say it to. Figured I could blabber about them online. I was also I was going to call it Tokyorgasmic, but didn't want to attract porn-seekers. I didn't give the name TokyoMango that much thought. I am from Tokyo, and I like mangoes.The site was hosted on Blogspot until March 2007, when I bought my own domain.The awesome design did not take effect until a few months after that, when I held a design contest and amazingly talented and generous James won and created the beautiful template that you see today.
The First Post
My first blog post ever was an image-less perspective piece about the baby prince and the divorce rate. I said: "If Divorce In Japan was a publicly traded stock, I would be buying so many shares on e*trade right now." I was all talk. Didn't even have an e*trade account until a couple months ago.
My First Big Trackback
It was from Gizmodo, on a post about a strange digitized log with speakers that's supposed to soothe you with nature noises. Naughty now-editor Jason Chen photoshopped little pictures of my face all over the log, and I was super embarrassed. Remember, this was before I started writing for Gawker blogs myself, pre-Boing Boing guest blog, maybe even earlier than the now-defunct Wired blog Table of Malcontents. I had not yet built up my now-stealthy super armor against mean commenters and libelous content online.
The September 2006 Archives
In a way, my early posts were more fun and fresh and well thought-out than my new ones. That was when I was a totaly virgin blogger, and I'm pretty sure nobody was reading. You write differently when you know you have an audience. I had a lot of personal stories about my friends, train fights with school girls, my favorite ramen shop, my friend Alyssa's YouTube Japanese lessons, made-up dialogue by potential prime ministers, and why American staplers suck.
Thanks so much for reading, you guys!


