With the new year coming up in a couple of days, we’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a little about ourselves. In other words, we’d like to tell you about our history, our favorite posts of the year, and what we’re planning to do in 2008. I know it’s not a particularly fascinating post, but if you can bear with us, we’d love to hear your feedback at the end (especially about the whole “future” thing).

Tofugu Lore:
Koichiben (the Bizarro Tofugu), was originally responsible for the very first post of what can now be considered a Tofugu article. Back when I was writing only about American culture (in Japanese), I got the occasional request to write about Japanese culture in English. Whenever I caved into these requests, they were surprisingly (though mildly) popular. After a while, it occurred to me that I should create a separate website, and english.koichiben.com was born. This name is a terrible branding choice, and it only took me a month or two to realize this…thus, a little site called Tofugu was the concluding love child.

It’s been a long journey between then and now (I guess it was only six months, since Tofugu.com was founded in June of 2007), but it’s been a ridiculously fun one. We’ve met so many new people, and learned so much. Really, everything is all thanks to you.

Our Favorite Tofugu Posts of 2007:
We’d like to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve done so far. We’ve written some very popular posts, and we’ve written some posts we thought for sure would be popular, but weren’t. Here is a list of our favorites, and we hope you check them out if you haven’t already! Let’s start from farther away and get closer as we go down.

• An easy way to write kanji in proper stroke order: This article outlines a way for you to write your kanji in proper stroke order even if you don’t know what the stroke order is. There are simple rules and guidelines that will keep your stroke orders correct a good 90% of the time.
• Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day (not): So many people think they can sit in front of a television (or computer, more likely) and learn Japanese by watching anime. They have no idea how wrong they really are.
• Make-up hair contacts: It sometimes sucks when you are Asian and you can’t grow a think fur (or even a beard). That’s why someone invented hair contacts, which are basically little tufts of hair that you can put anywhere on your body. Here I come, fu man choo!
• Are you a J-dorama holic? If you’ve ever watched j-drama, you’ll know how addicting it is. This is just a short list of dramas I like, as well as a video about getting support if you ever get too addicted.
• Beginning Japanese, where do self teachers start? This is the first of several “how to learn Japanese” posts. They don’t teach you specific things in Japanese language, but they do tell you about how you should go about learning things properly. If you like this one, you should check out the other ones: Pronunciation is King and Taking Steps.
• Segata Sanshiro > Chuck Norris: If you thought Chuck Norris was strong, then you are wrong (ha! Rhymes!). Segata Sanshiro puts Chuck Norris to shame.
• Ho Pants: If you like looking like a ho, then you should wear these pants.
• In Japan, be humble: Gosh, I really don’t like it when people brag for no reason. In Japan, it’s really looked down upon, so you’d better get used to not doing it.
• Ninja Akasaka: Check out this restaurant where ninjas serve you food. Viet was particularly disappointed that we made it out of there alive. Coming out alive proves it’s not authentic ninja food.
• Learning Japanese with a Nintendo DS: If you are learning Japanese, a Nintendo DS might be an integral part of your Japanese education. Depending on how you use it, you could save yourself time (and money!) just by purchasing a DS with the right software.
• Charity never felt so good: Warning! This article is not safe for work. Basically, a bunch of porn stars decided that they wanted to do something with their lives, and held a sexy AIDS fundraiser. Crazy article, and once again, don’t open it around people you care about.
• How to win at UFO catchers: These buggers are addicting. They’re the machines with the claws and the stuffed animals, only in Japan they’re a hundred times better. If you want to win, you have to check out this article and movie.
• The secret to learning Japanese. Amazing! If you want to know the secret to learning Japanese, I’d click on that link.
• We wish you a merii kurisumasu: Christmas in Japan is much different from anywhere else. KFC? Santa’s Birthday? What?

Woo, that was long. I think I just linked every article we’ve ever written by accident. I really do like everything we write, though. That’s a good sign, right?

What We’re Concocting:
We’ve got a lot planned for the coming year (thought it always seems like we’ve got stuff planned). We’d love so much to hear from you. We actually do take your suggestions to heart. So many things we’ve done was because of your suggestions, encouragements, and insane trolling.

• More on learning Japanese: We’d love to dish out more information on learning Japanese. The only issue we have is time, since we’re all busy college students. I think that you all enjoy these sections, and find them useful, so I’m hoping to expand these areas and make them more of a staple of the website.
• Week in Review: We are a small and busy team, so it’s hard to cover all the different Japan-related news items that come out. Still, we don’t want to sacrifice quality for quantity, so it took us a while to figure out a medium to accomplish this. Starting next week will be our first “Japan, Week in Review,” where we will produce a video with the week’s top news on Japan. It will be concise (and hopefully a little bit witty/sarcastic, depending on how we’re feeling that day), but we think you’ll really enjoy it. If you have any suggestions, please let us know!
• Japanese Learning Tools: This, I think, is our most ambitious goal. I want to start putting out worksheets, lessons, and other things that will go along with articles. These learning tools will make up a new section of the website, though I’m not exactly sure where yet. Either way, just know that we’re going to move a little more into the Japanese education section of things, but we’re taking it slow, since we don’t want to botch things up.
• The Store: If you look up above, you’ll see a menu-item that says “store.” It doesn’t go anywhere right now. That is because we don’t have anything to put there yet. Most likely, we will have different sections in it. The first section we will put up is the “free” section (that’s nice of us, right?). After that, we’ll figure things out, but it won’t be for a while.
• Anything Else? Please let us know if you have any other suggestions. What do you want to see us do? What do you want us to continue to do? What do you want us to stop doing? How would you like us to change? All those things are important questions, and you would do us a great help by letting us know!

We’d like to thank all of you so much for all of your support this year. We are looking forward to another great year, and we hope you join us for the ride. Please tell us your suggestions, your memories, your moments of hate towards us, and anything else in the comments section. We’d love to know how to improve, and you are our main motivator! You Rule!

Sincerely,
The Tofugu Team