I’ve been blogging about Japan since 1998 — actually a bit before then, but I officially trace my start as a blogger to the release of the American Godzilla film in Japan, which is when I realized that writing about the stuff I saw here was actually more important than selling bento boxes and Totoro plush toys through J-List, though those things are fun, too. I moved to Blogger around 2003, and have enjoyed the platform overall: an easy place to archive the J-List posts that I write so they can be a reference to me and to others. Although the “age of blogs” is clearly past (Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter/Pinterist are far more important to us), I’ve enjoyed having Blgoger there as a “no-brainer” way to publish.This good opinion changed last week when then the company unceremoneously deleted this blog for spam via an automated script. The Blogger help board was filled with people who had had their sites deleted, and they had to go through the same obstacle course I had to go through to get the site restored. I had backups, but they were mostly text based, which would have been very hard to rebuild manually. Happily the staff restored the site and apologized (again, via an automated script).But the damage is done, and I can’t trust a platform that’s so hostile to some of their users, so I am bidding the Blogger platfrom adieu. This blog will be back soon, upgraded and renovated, on a self-hosted WordPress site. Until then we recommend you follow our Tumblr instead. Thanks for reading and supporting J-List, and see you soon!
A Blogger graduation! Omedetou!
