Compared to the English-speaking world, the Japanese have gone blog wild. They write Web logs at per capita rates that are off the global charts.
和英語世界相比，日本人才是真的瘋部落格。日本上網寫網誌的人均比率在全球曲線圖上已經破表。
Although English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by more than 5-1, slightly more blog postings are written in Japanese than in English, according to Technorati, the Internet search engine that monitors the blogosphere.
雖然英語人口比日語人口多，比率約為五比一，但據監測部落格社群的網路搜尋引擎Technorati指出，以日文寫的部落格比英文的略多。
By some estimates, as much as 40 per-cent of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by commuters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world's most ex-tensive network of subways and com-muter trains.
據某些資料估計，多達40%日本人在手機上寫部落格。這些部落客多半是搭全世界規模最大的地鐵和通勤火車網的通勤族，他們往往擠著鬥雞眼緊盯小小銀幕數小時樂此不疲。
Blogging in Japan, though, is a far tamer beast than in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world. Japan's conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refash-ioned it as a soothingly nonconfronta-tional medium for getting along.
實則日本的部落格文化遠比美國等英語系國家要溫馴得多。日本墨守成規、遵守社會習俗的文化，把美國人多半用來自我推銷吹噓、令人不快的科技，重塑為撫慰人心、不搞對立、和諧共處的媒介。
Bloggers in Japan shy away from poli-tics and barbed language. They rarely trumpet their expertise. While Ameri-cans blog to stand out, the Japanese do it to fit in, blogging about small stuff: cats and flowers, bicycles and breakfast, gad-gets and TV stars. Compared with Americans, they write at less length, they write anonymously, and they write a whole lot more often.
日本的部落客不碰政治議題，也不用尖刻帶刺的話。他們對自己的專長很少自吹自擂。如果美國人寫部落格是為了凸顯自己，引人注目；日本人則是為了和社會相容，他們的部落格記載生活中一些雞毛蒜皮的瑣事，像貓咪和花草，單車和早餐，精巧的發明和電視明星。和美國人相比，他們的文章較短，多半匿名，但他們上網勤快得多。
"Behavior is more important than technology," said Joichi Ito, a board member at Technorati and an expert on how people around the world use the Internet. "In Japan, it is not socially ac-ceptable to pursue fame."
Technorati董事也是研究世人如何使用網路的專家伊籐穰一說：「行為比科技重要，日本社會不容個人強出頭。」
Technorati found that of all recorded blog postings in the fourth quarter of last year, 37 percent were written in Japanese, 36 percent in English and 8 percent in Chinese.
Technorati發現，去年第四季所有po上網的部落格中，日文占37%，英文占36%，中文占8%。
This was not an aberration. In the past three years, Japanese has been running ahead of or about even with English as the dominant language of blogging, ac-cording to Technorati. About 130 mil-lion people understand Japanese, while about 1.1 billion understand English.
這並不是什麼偏離正軌的脫序現象。據Technorati指出，部落格的主要語言中，日文已經超前或至少和英文相當，約1億3000萬人通日文，11億人看懂英文。
Those numbers startle no one more than the Japanese. For even as they use personal computers, Web-enabled mo-bile telephones and a ubiquitous high-speed Internet network to blog anytime and anywhere, they keep aw-fully quiet about it.
那些數字連日本人都嚇一跳，因為即使他們使用個人電腦、可以上網的手機和無所不在的高速網際網路無時無刻任何地方都在寫部落格，他們卻極端低調。
Consider, for example, the remarkably harmonious blog that Junko Kenetsuna has been writing five times a week for the past three years about her midday meal. With understated precision, she calls her blog "I had my lunch." In a re-cent dispatch from a Vietnamese restau-rant in Tokyo, Kenetsuna wrote: "The soup has a distinctive chicken flavor and the bitterness of pear, which gives you much sensation in your mouth."
以順子所寫十分親和的部落格為例，過去三年來，她每周寫五次她所吃的中餐。她低調精準的為她的部落格取名「我的午餐」。最近她從東京一家越南館子發了一則訊息說：「湯顯然帶有雞的味道和洋梨的苦味，這可以增加口感。」
In all the blog entries she has com-posed over the years, Junko, 43, has never written a discouraging word -- not a single critical reference to bad food, lousy service or rip-off prices, she said. Such harshness, in her view, would be improper and offensive. "There is a part of me that feels sorry for the restaurant, if it were to lose business because of what I write," she said. "I don't want to influence the diners."
但在43歲的順子多年來所寫的部落格中，她從未寫出任何令人洩氣的話，對難吃的食物、差勁的服務或削爆的帳單，她說，她從未有隻字片言提出批判。「如果因為我寫了什麼而使他們生意清淡，我內心多少覺得對這家餐廳過意不去，我不想影響用餐的人。」
None of this surprises Robert Pickard, North Asia president of the Edelman public relations firm, which has collabo-rated with Technorati to survey Japanese blogging behavior and compare it with that of English speakers. "There is no question that in this culture the nail that sticks out gets hammered in," Pickard said.
愛德曼公關公司北亞地區總裁皮卡德對此一點也不驚訝。愛德曼公司和Technorati合作調查日本的部落格行為並和英語系國家作個比較。皮卡德說：「在這種文化中，強出頭的人一定會遭到打壓。」
His company's surveys have found that speakers of English and Japanese have markedly different motivations for blog-ging. About 40 percent of English-lan-guage bloggers said their primary goal was "to raise visibility as an authority in my field." Only 5 percent of Japanese bloggers said that was their primary mo-tivation. Instead, they said they blog to create a record of their thoughts and of information they have collected.
據他公司的調查發現，英語系和日語系的人口寫部落格的動機截然不同。約40%英語系部落客說，他們主要目的是「提高我這個領域的知名度和權威」；但只有5%日本部落客說這是他們的主要動機。相反的，他們表示，他們創部落格是要記錄他們的想法和他們所收集到的資訊。
The Japanese are about five times as likely as Americans, the British or the French to read a blog every week, but far less likely to act on what they read, according to Edelman's surveys.
據愛德曼調查，日本人每周瀏覽部落格的次數是美、英、法國人的五倍，但對他們所見作出回應的可能性低得多。
Before computers, there was a strong tradition -- enforced by summer homework assignments during elemen-tary school -- of keeping pen-and-paper diaries. The diary habit runs so deep in Japan that it transformed the craft of blogging from an Ameri-can-style lecture to a Japanese-style personal narrative, according to Ito. In the process, he said, blogging exploded as a mega-fad for Japan's huge middle class, a kind of karaoke for shy people.
在發明電腦前，日本有一項牢不可破的傳統，就是小學暑假家庭作業硬性規定要用紙筆寫日記。伊籐穰一說，這種寫日記的習慣根深柢固，甚至把美式有如發表演說的部落格轉型為日式抒發個人感想的敘述風格，而部落格也蔚為日本廣大中產階級超時尚的事，有如內向害羞的人的某種卡拉ＯＫ。
Cyberspace and real space are merg-ing in Japan, Ito said. Young people blogging on cellphones are often "co-present" with five to 10 of their peers. Ito predicts that in the United States, as mobile phones and wireless networks improve, blogging will, in ef-fect, become more Japanese.
伊籐穰一說，虛擬網路空間和真實世界已經合流，年輕人用手機上部落格時，往往五到十個同伴一起來。伊籐穰一預言，當美國手機和無線上網改善後，部落格應該也會變得比較帶有日本風。（取材自華盛頓郵報）