A million and a half

Today my blog has reached one-and-a-half million (1,500,000) visitors.

It gets an average of 1,400 visitors a day. (On my blog’s busiest day, it got over 10,000 hits!)

I appreciate everyone who visits my blog…especially if you leave a comment! The interaction is what makes blogging enjoyable…so, by all means, leave a comment often!

Just how big of a number is 1.5 million?

Well…1.5 million days, for example, is about 4,109 years!

Here’s an idea of what a crowd of 1.5 million people looks like:

There are an estimated 1.5 million people in this crowd of protestors (according to “Google Image” search).

Please answer my survey and let me know how often you visit my blog:

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Currency converter

I haven’t used American money for many years…so I don’t pay attention to the ¥en ←→ US$ exchange rate.

US dollars and Japanese Yen.

But I know that many foreign visitors in Japan like to know what the prices of things here equals in their home currency.
So, I just added a “Currency Converter” to my Smart-phone app.

Do you use my “Tokyo Five Smart-phone app“?

If you install it on your phone, you can enter a Japanese Yen amount in the Currency Converter and it will tell the equivalent amount in U.S. dollars.

There are many other useful features on the app too.

Click here to learn how to install the app.

If you install it…leave a comment here and let me know how you like it.

The Tokyo Five smart-phone app

I just made a smart-phone application for my blog.

It has content that isn’t on this blog…so why don’t you install it on your phone?

Click here to read my page with instructions about how to install the app and how to use it.

And let me know in the comments section what you think of the app.
 

My blog’s in the “Top 4″!

According to “Blog Rank”, my blog here is the fourth biggest “Tokyo blog” ranked by Google!

It’s also the 13th biggest”Tokyo blog” as ranked by the number of incoming links, and the 39th biggest “Tokyo blog” overall.

I was pleasantly surprised to find my blog listed (three times) on their list.

New page

I just made a new page on my blog.
It’s titled “What’s that?“, and I made it to answer some of the questions that visitors ask me about “mysterious” things they’ve seen in Japan.

Check it out and if you have any questions about Japan (things you’ve seen, where places are, recommendations for places to visit, etc.), feel free to contact me. And, of course, comments in any of my blogs pages and posts are always appreciated!

One million hits

My blog reached one million hits yesterday! Thank you very much for visiting my blog…and I hope you’ll leave a comment often! The best part of having a blog is the feedback from visitors…so feel free to comment on any of my posts (recent ones, as well as old ones).

My blog averages about 1,500 hits a day. But the day with most traffic was just after the 2011 March 11 earthquake / tsunami in Sendai. My blog had 10,007 hits on that single day.

Just how big of a number is one million?
One million hours is over 114 years,
one million miles is more than four times the distance from the earth to the moon,
and
one million people is the approximate population of Sendai, Japan.

One million dots (each block in the picture has 10,000 dots!) ...(picture is from "schools.etacuisenaire.com")

Half a million hits

My blog reached the half-million hits mark today.
Thanks to everyone for visiting my site…and for leaving comments. That’s what makes writing a blog worthwhile.

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Anyways, would you like to see some pictures of our pet turtle?
I think she’s cute.

What kind of pet do you have?

Who is my boss?

On the train today, I noticed a new ad for DoCoMo, one of the main cell-phone service providers in Japan (and probably the biggest).

This poster had a picture of Darth Vader of “Star Wars” pointing and asking “Who is my boss?“.

The ad doesn’t say much more than that, so I was wondering what it was about. Will DoCoMo be releasing a new “Darth Vader” themed phone? And what does it mean by “who is my boss?”?

So I checked the website and it doesn’t tell much either.
But the site has an interesting application…you can enter your name on the site (but it must be entered in Japanese カタカナ (katakana)) and then it will show a movie of Darth Vader walking around Tokyo saying how he’s searching for his “boss” and then he encounters billboards and flyers with a picture of himself and the name you entered on it (but the name is shown written in alphabet letters even though it requires you enter your name is Japanese characters).
And then Darth Vader will say your name and then tell you that you’re not his boss.
When I did it, it said that I wasn’t his boss and that his boss is more 「美しい」 (“beautiful”) than me!

At the end it has a countdown til 2010 May 11 (Japan time) which is the day that Darth Vader’s “boss” will be revealed.

Darth Vader searching for his "boss" in Tokyo

Darth Vader saw a billboard that said that I ("Tokyo Five") am his boss!

On 2010 May 11, DoCoMo will reveal who Darth Vader's boss is.

Read my other “Darth Vader in Japan”-related posts:
The “Star Wars Convention Japan”,
Star Wars chopsticks,
the Star Wars Pachinko machine, and
my Star Wars postal stamps.

Coldest spring in 41 years

Yesterday was cold and rainy in Tokyo again. In the evening the temperature went down to 2°C (about 36°F).

It’s sunny and warmer today…but still cool. The high temperature today is 11°C (about 52°F).

If you’re visiting Japan for the first time right now you’re probably surprised how cold it is for late April.
But this isn’t normal. It’s unusually cold for this time of year.

It actually snowed a bit in Tokyo last night.

On TV I heard that this was the first time that it snowed this late in the year in Tokyo since 1969!

But the weather forecast for Tokyo says that everyday next week will have a high temperature of around 18°C (about 64°F) and a low of around 11°C (52°F).
So hopefully the cold spell is over.

(But it’s forecast to rain next Wednesday to Friday in Tokyo. )

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My blog averages over 1,500 hits per day.
But yesterday my blog received the most visits in a single day so far…1,986 hits.

Before yesterday, my blog’s busiest day was 2010 February 14. It received about 1,850 hits that day.

Yesterday was my site’s busiest day…but I didn’t get a single comment yesterday.

I appreciate all the visits to my blog. But I especially enjoy reading visitors’ comments…I guess most bloggers feel that way.

So, by all means, leave comments often.

Thanks.

200,000 hits

I started this blog 21 months ago (on 2008 March 26).
In the beginning, this blog only received about twenty hits per day, but since then, the number of visitors has steadily climbed, I’m happy to say.
Now my blog gets an average of 840 hits per day.

My blog's monthly stats for 2008 March - 2009 December

Last summer, this blog reached 100,000 hits.
In the four months since then, my blog has gotten another 100,000 hits.

This blog has had 200,084 visits at the time I wrote this post.

Thank you to all of the people who visit this blog…especially the ones who visit and comment regularly!

My most popular posts are currently about:
A Japanese manga called “Death Note“,
another one called “Detroit Metal City“,
McDonalds in Japan,
the Hollywood remake of the Japanese movie titled “Hachiko“,
King Kong vs Godzilla, and
Sea Shepherd.

Which the first post you read on my site? Which types of posts do you like?