The title says it all, welcome to tofugu.com, a proud replacement for English Koichiben, which soon will be fully integrated into this site (resistance is futile). Why change, you ask? Well, I’ve been reading this book about branding (great book, if you’re interested let me know and I’ll tell you what it is). In that book, it says you shouldn’t try to create extensions of brands, which in this case would be original Koichiben. This is why Lexus isn’t called Toyota. This is why Amazon is a better online bookseller than Barnes and Noble. The list goes on and on. So, from now on, english.koichiben.com is tofugu.com. Easier to remember name, too, if you ask me.
But don’t worry! Nothing much has changed, and if it has, it is for the better. Here are some of the new features we’re rolling out for the new website:
- Higher Quality Content: Before, I was just kind of writing things: no rough drafts, no revisions. It was written in “blog style,” where things would come to my mind and I would write about them. Now we are editing and revising, and even have an editor that checks articles out from time to time.
- Better and More Understandable Videos: Before, most of the koichiben videos were in Japanese. Now we have our own separate channel that broadcasts mostly in English, or at the very least, with English subtitles. The purpose of these videos is to teach people about Japanese culture and language, not to speak Japanese. If you want that, you should be checking out Koichiben instead. You can also expect to see higher quality videos with more planning; you non-Japanese are a tougher audience.
- More Content: Although more doesn’t necessarily mean better, we plan on putting out content more frequently, while at the same time sticking with our whole quality promise thing. How is this possible, you ask?
- More People: Meet the newest (and so far only) additions to the Tofugu team: Viet and Erin. You can read more about them on the About Us page. Keep checking back, we may be adding some more people in the near future, but we’ll tell you, don’t tell us please.
- Newsletters! This one is my favorite. Please subscribe to it so we can keep you informed!
That about wraps things up. Sorry about the sudden website change, but if you stick with us, it should only be a positive change. Thank you for your patience, and hope to hear from all of you through comments and emails.
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