How the NihonHacks idea was born - an exclusive interview

On November 26, 2007 in Interviews

So far we’ve heard about the NihonHacks concept and how we can contribute, but I bet you may be wondering how Thomas came up with such a great idea.

Wonder no longer:

Daily J: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what motivated you to start Nihon Hacks?

Thomas: Sure. I graduated from the University of Texas with a BA in Religious Studies. I had studied abroad in Japan at Kansai Gaidai in Osaka and thought it would be fun to come back, so I applied for the JET program during my last year of college and got accepted. During the Tokyo and prefectural orientations I attended some seminars on living in Japan and picked up a lot of cool tips. I remember thinking “I wish I had known all this back when I was an exchange student.” I had no intention of starting a blog back then, but it might have planted the seed for the idea.

Later, one of my friends back home and I came up with an idea for a project - some web 2.0 thing that’s still hush hush - and we started coding it in our free time. When it looked like we might end up finishing it someday, I decided I’d better read up on internet marketing, traffic building, online communities, stuff like that. I wanted a fun way to get some hands-on experience and that’s where the idea of starting a blog came up. I wrote down a bunch of blog ideas and the “tips for living in Japan” idea was one of them. I was subscribed to some blogs like lifehacker.com and parenthacks.com and thought it would be cool to make a similar blog focused on Japan. Not long after, nihonhacks.com was launched. You can read a little bit more about the story on my first post, located here: http://nihonhacks.com/japan-hacks/domain-name-check-webhost-check-nihonhackscom-launched/

Daily J: So do you run any other sites?

Thomas: One of my friends and I run a little language learning blog called Babel Hut ( http://babelhut.com). It’s not focused on Japan, but I do write about Japanese there. Recently I’ve started a series of posts that follows a little project I’m doing to boost my listening skills. I’m watching Fight Club in Japanese, one DVD chapter at a time, transcribing every line. I listen to each chapter over and over again until I can follow it without my script. I write about interesting differences between the Japanese and English scripts, interesting words, my experience doing it, etc. Although I haven’t done it yet, I plan on putting the Japanese script up on the site in case other people want to learn Japanese by watching Fight Club. Check it out:

• http://babelhut.com/languages/japanese/project-mayhem/project-mayhem-learning-a-foreign-language-through-movies/
• http://babelhut.com/languages/japanese/project-mayhem/chapter-2-how-to-say-testicular-cancer-in-japanese/
• http://babelhut.com/languages/japanese/project-mayhem/chapter-3-japanese-men-mumble/

The first rule of fight club is…

Daily J: What is your favourite NihonHacks post so far? And why?

Thomas: My favorite post is the one about 300 yen steaks ( http://nihonhacks.com/japanese-food/how-to-find-300-yen-steaks-in-japan/). I had actually planned to post it weeks earlier than I did, but I had trouble getting pictures. Every time I tried to hit up the store for steaks, I couldn’t find any discounted ones. It’s a good thing too, because it forced me to figure out why and I ended up writing a better article for it. Before I used to go to the store randomly at night and just hope the cheap steaks would be there. Now I know to pay close attention to the sell-by dates. My hit/miss ratio for cheap steaks is way higher now. Steak is my favorite food, so that may be one reason I like this article the best. Other people seem to like it the best too - it has the most hits out of all the articles on nihonhacks.com

Daily J: What part of running NihonHacks is the most fun for you?

Thomas: Interaction with the readers. It’s fun to get comments and tips from people who stop by. I like to check the stats at the end of the day and see how many people came and where they came from. It feels good to know that some people find the site useful. It’s only 2 months old, so the fun is only just beginning really.

“The fun is only just beginning!” A BIG thank you to Thomas from NihonHacks for giving us the interview! And thank you all for reading.

Have a great day,

Daily J

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