Month: April 2008

Categories
Kirainet

English version evolution

It’s been more than one year since I started writing my blog in english. I’ve improved a lot my english writing skills and met many new people who also writes about Japan in english. During the first months of this English version I had around 100~300 pageviews a day, right now it’s always between 4.000 and 6.000 pageviews a day. Not bad, but still far away from the Spanish version with more than 30.000 pageviews a day. By the way, I very happy with my Spanish, next week my book, writen from my Spanish articles will be launched in Spain and South America.

The people who made more comments in this english version are:

Thanks so much!

And the sites who drove me more traffic are:

Thanks so much! I was thinking to do also a Japanese version, but I think I’ll spend more time translating into English some of the Spanish long posts which I’m always procrastinating.

Categories
JapaneseCulture Photography

Sakura snow

The beautiful Sakura blossom just finished. One of the most beautiful phenomenon about sakura blossom is to see how the petals drop. It’s one of the romantic scenes you will see over and over in many Japanese films, dramas and manga.

Here are some of my sakura petal “snow” pictures:

Sakura

Sakura

Sakura

Sakura
Here you can see the petals falling. But this picture is MUCH better

Sakura

Sakura

Sakura

Sakura
On of the last pictures before the end.

Categories
Traditional

The oldest company in the world

Kongogumi was founded in 578 and it’s considered as the oldest company that has been always active since the beginning. I’m sure the people who founded this company did not write a business plan, or maybe they did and they wrote that they needed website. Right now they have a cool website, but they continue doing exactly what they started doing more than 1.000 years ago, they build temples, shrines and castles. For example, they built the Osaka castle.

The company was founded buy the Kongo family, and until the year 2006 it was still controlled by the Kongo family descendants. In 2006 they had some difficulties and they were adquired by Takamatsu corporation. Nowadays, it survives as a company inside the corporation.

The first temple built by Kongogumi is the Shitennō-ji, and you can visit it here (Walking distance Tennoji station in Osaka).

Takao
There are many temples built by Kongogumi in Takao.

I wonder which companies that we are used to nowadays will be still alife in 1.000 or 2.000 years. Construction? Energy? Telecommunications? Porn? Health? Spam?