Japonica’s Most Read Articles Vol 1

Your favorite articles from January to March 2022

Kawazu Cherry Blossom Festival in Izu. Photo by Author.

Hello, Japonica readers and writers!

Thank you for your support. We mean it. Really.
いつも応援してくださる皆さま、ありがとうございます！ほんまに！

Since we started Japonica in January, we’ve built a close-knit community of writers and readers. We’re grateful for all your likes, claps, comments, tweets, and retweets. And that smile on your face when you read one of our articles.

Welcoming Alvin T. to the editorial team, we’re committed to creating a better place to provide intriguing articles about Japan, helping connect writers and readers with an interest in Japanese life and culture, and yes, helping writers get paid by Medium for the effort they put into crafting great articles.

With that in mind, we’ll regularly compile Japonica’s most-read articles. We have a little catching up to do, so this time we’ll cover the first 3 months of our journey.

January 2022

Initially, Japonica struggled to gather contributors. The editors ended up writing a lot of our own articles to provide daily content. Today, wonderful articles are coming in regularly from many fantastic writers, and we truly appreciate that.

These are the most-read articles from January.

Finding My Voice as a Japanese Woman — Why Hello Kitty Needs a Mouth Yuko Tamura

Finding My Voice as a Japanese Woman — Why Hello Kitty Needs a Mouth

The 7 Kansai-Ben Words Every Japanese Learner Needs to Know DC Palter

The 7 Kansai-Ben Words Every Japanese Learner Needs to Know

Forget Jiro — For Japanese Dining Head to this Izakaya Jason Adamson

Forget Jiro — For Japanese Dining Head to this Izakaya

Five Things about Japan I Didn’t Fully Appreciate until I Lived There Alvin T.

Five Things about Japan I Didn’t Fully Appreciate until I Lived There

February 2022

DC Palter’s Mugicha article marked a significant record in readership our second month. With the encouragement of our Twitter friends, we may produce “Japonica Beer Tea” in the near future.

Why I Switched from Diet Coke to Mugicha DC Palter

Why I Switched from Diet Coke to Mugicha

Japonica writers and readers talked a lot about language this month! DC’s article about the reasons why Japanese is easy became the most popular piece in this first quarter.

5 Reasons Why Japanese Is One of the Easiest Languages to Learn DC Palter

5 Reasons Why Japanese Is One of the Easiest Languages to Learn

The 8 Reasons Why Japanese Is One of the Most Difficult Languages to Learn DC Palter

The 8 Reasons Why Japanese Is One of the Most Difficult Languages to Learn

Why Japan Fails at English Alvin T.

Why Japan Fails at English

3 Reasons I Avoid Speaking Japanese Living in Japan Yuko Tamura

3 Reasons I Avoid Speaking Japanese Living in Japan

5 Reasons Japanese Need to Speak English Now Yuko Tamura

5 Reasons Japanese Need to Speak English Now

Relieve Your Stress With a Moss Walk in Aomori Kyoko Nagano

Relieve Your Stress With a Moss Walk in Aomori

Eating Up Japan: Curry bakagaijin

Eating Up Japan: Curry

March 2022

This month, Yuko’s Anti-Konmari article got a lot of views. We were surprised to see how many people were sick of organizing. Thanks to readers’ support, Yuko no longer needs an excuse to skip folding.

Forget About ‘Spark Joy’ and Enjoy Lazy Minimalism Yuko Tamura

Forget About ‘Spark Joy’ and Enjoy Lazy Minimalism

American Kids Deal With Japan’s Rigid English Education Diane Neill Tincher

American Kids Deal With Japan’s Rigid English Education

Sakura — The Fleeting Beauty of Japan’s Cherry Blossoms Diane Neill Tincher

Sakura — The Fleeting Beauty of Japan’s Cherry Blossoms

2 Big Reasons Why English in Japan is so Wacky Diane Neill Tincher

2 Big Reasons Why English in Japan is so Wacky

The Secret to Managing Your Japanese Boss Timothy Sullivan

The Secret to Managing Your Japanese Boss

5 Japanese Items that Mean Something Different Outside Japan DC Palter

5 Japanese Items that Mean Something Different Outside Japan

Five English Words With Surprisingly Different Meanings in Japan Alvin T.

Five English Words With Surprisingly Different Meanings in Japan

Remembering The Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

We’re proud to have been able to publish 6 articles commemorating the Tohoku Earthquake and the Nuclear Disaster of Fukushima in March. Later, Ren Oyama joined the Japonica family, and we learned his family’s experience as evacuees.

Remembering the Horrific Nuclear Disaster of Fukushima, Eleven Years Later Alvin T.

Remembering the Horrific Nuclear Disaster of Fukushima, Eleven Years Later

Fukushima Revisited: the Question of Nuclear Power DC Palter

Fukushima Revisited: the Question of Nuclear Power

Remembering the Unsung Heroes of the 2011.3 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami Diane Neill Tincher

Remembering the Unsung Heroes of the 2011.3 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

3.11-The Day The Great East Japan Earthquake Revealed Our Fragility Yuko Tamura

3.11—The Day The Great East Japan Earthquake Revealed Our Fragility

The Heroes of Mizuhama Timothy Sullivan

The Heroes of Mizuhama

Memoir of a Visit to Fukushima — The Resilience of Women Kyoko Nagano

Memoir of a Visit to Fukushima – The Resilience of Women

My Experience of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident in 2011 Ren Oyama

My Experience of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident in 2011

Editors’ Favorites

Last but not least, here are the personal favorite articles of the Japonica editors. Each story brought us smiles and inspiration, and we almost got into a fight over our selections!

DC Palter’s pick: On Drinking Beer Under the Yamanote Line with a World Famous Translator Rebecca Copeland

On Drinking Beer Under the Yamanote Line with a World Famous Translator

Alvin T.’s pick: Where Do Michelin Star Chefs Go in Japan — Tono, Iwate Prefecture! Kyoko Nagano

Where Do Michelin Star Chefs Go in Japan — Tono, Iwate Prefecture!

Yuko Tamura’s pick: How a Bearded Barbarian Won Over His Japanese Mother-in-Law Timothy Sullivan

How a Bearded Barbarian Won Over His Japanese Mother-in-Law

To all our writers, we’re looking forward to reading your next story about Japan. Thank you again for supporting Japonica!

Onegai to Readers!

We have a simple request of all our readers. It won’t cost you anything.

Medium pays writers based on subscribers’ reader time. But only for writers with 100 or more followers. So please help these new writers meet the 100 followers threshold.

All you have to do is hover your mouse over the following names and hit the follow button. よろしければフォローでJaponicaのライターをご支援いただけますと幸いです。
Timothy Sullivan, rebecca copeland, Kyoko Nagano, Suzanne Kamata, Kristine Ohkubo, Scott Votour, Cindy Bryn, Ren Oyama, Kiwi Yamabushi, Shannon Shea Greene, Wachwurd, Karen Farrah Oswald

See wasn’t that easy? Now you can follow all our regular writers, too: Diane Neill Tincher, bakagaijin, Jamie Ryder, Jason Adamson.

Invitation to New Japonica Writers

If you’re interested in writing for Japonica, please leave a comment on this article or the one below to be added as a writer.

How to Add Your Story to Japonica

Before submitting your first article, be aware of our image policy. Also, the following must-read guide will help you format engaging articles.

Must-Read for Japonica Writers

We encourage Japonica writers to share the articles on social media, especially on Twitter and LinkedIn. Editors share the published articles as much as possible, so retweet, reshare, and comment to develop your readership.

Meet Japonica editors

Since Medium doesn’t pay editors, we would be grateful if you used one of the referral links below when you subscribe to Medium. This supports us with a portion of your $5/month subscription without costing you any extra.

Alvin T. https://medium.com/@alvintanwx/membership
DC Palter https://medium.com/@dcpalter/membership
Yuko Tamura https://medium.com/@yutranslates/membership

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