Once again, I failed to write one of these posts last month. Apologies to all those who eagerly wait for our monthly news and updates.

First, we’ll look at August. August 26 was the one year anniversary of Trans-Pacific Radio, and since that time we’ve expanded from having a single podcast on Japanese politics to having five regular releases. Thanks to all of our listeners, we continue to reach more and more people. In August, we set a new all time high by moving an average of 2.7 gigabytes of audio every day. In September, that figure hit a whopping 4.9 gigs per day.

Top listens (original releases only) for each month were:

August

1. Spotlight #2 - August 7: Arudou Debito on the foreign labor market
2. BizCast #7 - August 16: Retail, Uniqlo, Condo Prices, Nova, Mobile Price Wars and the State of the Japanese Workplace
3. TPR News for August 13
4. Seijigiri #30 - August 12
5. Shasetsu #22 - August 2: The “Comfort Women” Resolution (HR 121) Passed: Why That’s Not Bad

September

1. BizCast #7 - August 16
2. Spotlight #3 - September 12 - Arudou Debito on Academia vs. Activism and the Valentine Police Abuse Case, part 2 of 2
3. TPR News for September 8
4. TPR News for September 15
5. Seijigiri #31: LDP Presidential Election and the Past and Future of Japanese Politics (with Tobias Harris)

First, I want to say a huge thank you to Tobias Harris and Adam Richards, who have each guested on Seijigiri during my long absence from the show. We have another Seijigiri with Adam Richards in post-production, and another show on Nippon Pro Baseball also in post-production. This week we also plan to have another edition of TPR News out, as well as the return of BizCast.

I would also like to thank all of the Nova employees who have gotten in touch with us to tell their stories or to be interviewed. The first collection of interviews was released on October1, and we have had a huge number of listens to this release so far. Our goal, as always, is to spread information and allow people to tell their stories. The Nova situation affects thousands of English-speaking foreigners living in Japan, and we intend to continue to follow events as they play out.

We also owe a huge thanks to Arudou Debito, who joined us for two editions of TPR Spotlight this summer. We’re hoping to have him back for more in the near future.

Statistics in October have again been higher than ever, and we would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to listen. When we started a year ago, Garrett and I expected to release a podcast once every couple of weeks or so and to rope our friends into listening. We now have days with over 500 listeners, and it’s humbling. Thank you to everyone for listening, and especially for engaging us in the comments section.