May 2010 Japan Blog Matsuri

Every month, a new Japan-related theme is announced by one of the many J-bloggers active on JapanSoc, and during the following weeks, dozens of fellow bloggers publish articles inspired by that theme. This event, aiming at supporting the J-blogging community, is called Japan Blog Matsuri and I have the honor of hosting it this month.

Last month, the carnival was hosted by Gakuranman, with the theme Secret Japan. Many interesting entries were submitted, but it was a fairly tricky subject, especially for someone not living in Japan. NihongoUp is all about learning new things and the theme of this month’s matsuri is How-tos, which should hopefully give you a wider choice of subjects to write about.

Theme

You can write a how-to or a 101 tutorial on anything related to Japan. Do you know a secret origami technique? Best way of using miso? Or would you like to give us a peek into the complicated world of Japanese etiquette? Read the rules below and start writing!

Rules

1. You blog does not have to be dedicated exclusively to Japan, but your entry most follow the given theme.
2. You are free to submit older posts, but it is strongly encouraged that you write something new.
3. You post can be both a text entry and video. It must however, in both cases, include at least one picture.
4. You don’t have to, but I would love if you could use the link http://japanese.lingualift.com/japanese-how-tos/ with anchor text “Japanese how-tos” to point to this site like this: Japanese how-tos. This will help both you and me and it’ll also promote the matsuri.

Submission

To submit your entry, e-mail me the link to your post, use the Blog Carnival Widget, or leave a link in a comment under this post.

If you need any more information, check out the JapanSoc Matsuri FAQ.

Deadline

The deadline for this blog matsuri is May 22nd May 28th.

Contest

As a bonus, I’m giving away a copy of The Book of Five Rings—the ultimate Japanese how-to on war, life and business by Miyamoto Musashi—to the author of the best entry.Please help me raise awareness of this event by telling your friends on Twitter & Facebook. I’m looking forward to your submissions!

By the way, please let me know what you think of the new Japan Blog Matsuri banner I designed… And if you don’t want to miss the results, subscribe to the RSS, follow NihongoUp on Twitter and become a fan of Facebook.

UPDATE: Deadline extended to May 28th.