Hello dear readers! How are things? I’m coming back at you with another short and sweet blog post that is just a bit of fun, rather than being about any specific trip, but this piqued my interest a little bit.
We all blog for different reasons but personally this is very much a casual hobby for me. You’re not suddenly going to find me dangling off a clifftop and plunging to my death in aim of getting that Instagram-worthy photo that sends me into “influencer” stardom – no thank you!
This is purely enjoyment for me. I’ve been catching up on blog-reading in recent weeks and fellow blogger, Marion, has been sharing details from a trip to Australia which has left me reminiscing of my own trip to Sydney back in 2013.
I wrote about it here and I don’t even know why I’m linking you to the post because it’s so painfully dull to read. I really need to go back and do that trip justice on the blog at some point.
In all fairness it was one of my earliest blog posts but I’d fallen in to that trap of “this is how you’re supposed to travel blog” rather than just finding what worked for me.
I look back at that post and the few before it and not even I care to read those posts! I barely recognise those posts, they could have been written by anyone. One more travel blog amidst a million others.
Suddenly it hit me: an epiphany!
Forget the number of readers, the statistics and everything else; if I was doing this blogging thing, it had to be something that felt genuine. If it doesn’t feel like my own writing or I’m not even enjoying writing about it, why even bother? Right?
That’s not a criticism of anybody else. Different things work for different bloggers and I think it’s important any blogger finds what works for them but I think I realised quite early that my passion for blogging would only survive if I was story-telling in some form. Even if 99% of the time it’s just rambling nonsense.
“So like this post Jason?”
“Exactly!”
As usual, I’m kind of getting sidetracked from the point of the post but blogging is a form of enjoyment for me. It’s not big business, it’s not something I’m putting a bunch of effort into. If I can squeeze out one ramble a week, I’m doing pretty darn good!
I’ve blogged for many years now but my “numbers” are still pretty modest. That’s the result of it being a casual thing and I don’t give those numbers too much attention but every now and then I’ll take a look at the stats and whilst most of the time it’s fairly mundane, occasionally something unusual stands out.
Long term readers may well remember that by chance I’d spotted a while ago that my viewership was stuck on 99 (WordPress) countries so I celebrated with a special blog post dedicated to Libya having helped me reach one hundred countries!
Long term readers may also remember another post revealing my short-lived fame in China where I was randomly inundated with Chinese readers, largely arriving from the search engine Baidu which I’d never heard of.
Well today I dedicate this post to another corner of the world that has surprisingly and inexplicably found my blog. I happened to take a look at my stats the other day and over the last seven days my Japanese viewership has doubled.
I’ve had more views from Japan in the last seven days than I have had in the eight or so years prior to this past week!
More specifically, it seems this influx of Japanese readers were predominantly reading my blog on March 17th – St Patrick’s Day of course!
So fellow readers, have some fun with me! Let’s pretend that it’s not some big coincidence! What have I done to gather such popularity in Japan? I joked in my “fame in China” post that it wouldn’t be long until I owned the most read blog in all of Asia and it has only taken me another five years to make my breakthrough in Japan!
Or perhaps it’s controversy? Does the St Patrick’s Day reading actually mean something!? Maybe my recent blog posts about Ireland, which I noted was rather underwhelming, have caused offence in Japan! Am I about to be overwhelmed by Japanese hate-mail? Should I have infact been more complimentary about Ireland?
Amuse me with any theories you might have! What have I done!? Which area of the globe will I next find such fame? Let me know!
Anyway for now I’ll end with a ありがとう and さようなら.
Thank you and goodbye! (I hope – blame Google for the translation, not me!)
Jason
Jason likes to travel 