TPR’s First Anniversary (太平洋横断放送 一周年): One year of politics, news, business, opinion, OTR, and more from Tokyo, Japan in podcasts
A year ago yesterday - August 26, 2006 - we posted the Seijigiri Inaugural Release, thus officially bringing Trans-Pacific Radio, Japan’s first and only podcast on Japanese politics (as far as we know) and Japan’s first attempt at a podcast “station” to the masses (which would be you.)
Over the past year, Seijigiri has been joined by Shasetsu, TPR News, BizCast Japan, and TPR Spotlight in our line-up of regular, original audio releases. We’ve also put out non-audio releases under “Japan in the News“ and “Rekishi - History.” This has all been rounded out by Ken Worlsey’s readings of Wallace Stevens, my twisting of people’s arms into reading stories for TPR’s Festival of Christmas Tales, and a healthy dose of Old Time Radio. As we turn a year old, we’ve begun trying our hands at sports, in the form of starting another series - this one on Japanese Professional Baseball - and brought on Sam Porter, who’ll tell us what it’s like in a Japanese high school classroom for a Bostonian.
Over the past year we’ve averaged a podcast every few days, with Ken and I each posting an average of every third day, not including Seijigiri. The majority of TPR’s posts are accompanied by or centered around podcasts and streaming audio.
The day before last Halloween, I was at work, eagerly checking our stats to see when we’d pass 200 unique visitors in the day - it happened in the late afternoon and I don’t think I’ve been as excited about the numbers since. It’s been a good year, though - it won’t be long before a couple hundred an hour causes neither Ken nor I to bat an eye.
And now we get to the meat of this anniversary post. Blogging and podcasting are both collective affairs, even for those who go it alone. No, that’s not a paradox. We depend on one another for links, to build traffic, and to pick out all the interesting tidbits no blogger could keep up with alone.
So, in no particular order, we owe some substantial thanks to a host of sites for helping us out over the past year. All of the following have said nice things about us, driven traffic to us, and provided us with great posts to read and/or podcasts to listen to:
Rich Pav at Herro Flom Japan might have been the first person to give us what we considered a ringing endorsement, when he said we were the only other gaijin podcasters to whom he listened.
Dr. Robert C. Angel, creator and maintainer of the Japan Considered Project and its podcast, who might be the only other person or entity podcasting on Japanese politics, gave us important early encouragement.
The Mutant Frog Travelogue, in particular Adam Richards, was among the first bloggers to take note of TPR. Adamu also wrote a great article for us.
Ken Y-N at What Japan Thinks has not only let us republish one of his pieces and provided no end of entertainment, but has also led a lot of people to us and been generous with the kind words.
James over at Japan Probe has driven a good deal of traffic to us and often been among the first bloggers to publish on breaking topics.
After we’d been around for a few months, we finally got oursleves noticed by Japan’s political blogosphere. Among whom, we particularly owe armloads of gratitude to Shisaku, Observing Japan, Liberal Japan, and, even though he’s in Korea, Robert Koehler of The Marmot’s Hole.
Last, but far from least, we’d like to heartily thank Debito Arudou. Not only has he recorded three interviews, a Seijigiri, and an edition of TPR News with us, he’s also offered us encouragement and said nice stuff about us on his blog. (Here, too.)
We’ll be back with original stuff soon. Thanks for bearing with us - it’s been a busier summer than we could have anticipated and we haven’t been a prolific as usual. Things will be better than back to normal soon, though.
We hope you’ll all be with 太平洋横断放送 for another year (and then another one after that.)
So, on behalf of Albrecht Stahmer, Christopher Pellegrini, and Ken Worsley, I give everyone reading this our sincerest thanks.
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