When my blog reached one year old a guy asked why not making posts in Portuguese (my natural tongue) as well, well I wouldn’t mind making posts in Portuguese but then I would lose most of my views and most people would stop commenting on my blog and I don’t want to loose what I managed to get with pushing my English knowledge to the limit ^_^ .
The reason why I decided to create this blog in English was to meet new people around the globe that had similar interests to mine and learn from them as well and it really paid out 
. If I could I would do a similar thing that Danny Choo has, part of the blog in English and the other on Japanese of course my other part would be in Portguese.
But there are advantages in having a blog written in English and you may get some surprises as well. The major advantage to me was meeting various people across the globe but the surprises started around the date when my blog made one year.
If you scroll back to January you’ll see I made a post about the new Appleseed movie and it’s trailer contest (by the way I already have the movie ^_^ but still haven’t watched it, curse me), the reason to make that post was because I was contacted by Fred Reckling from M80 which is connected to Warner Brothers, asking if I was interested in covering the release of the movie in DVD and High Definition and if I made the post they would send me a hardcover art book with info on the movie, character design, creators, musicians, etc… a CD of Hasymo and a key chain featuring Deunam in Prada clothes. Well of course I accepted after talking to him and the stuff he promised arrived a couple weeks later .
Tonight day 12 I was contacted by Aaron Colter from Dark Horse Comics mentioning that Dark Horse will have (already has) a “section” called Dark Horse Manga and asked if I was interested in covering release material from them with the possibility of getting a hard copy and making a review of it. I found the offer very tempting which would generate loads of traffic to my blog but unfortunately I refused the offer.
One of the reasons was because I don’t read manga and I never talked about it here but I wouldn’t mind covering their new releases. But the main reason was because he requested my address and my phone number, the address I understand because of the need to send the material to me, but why my phone number? If he wants to contact me he can use my email but there’s no way I’m giving my phone number to someone I don’t know.
As you can see my humble blog sometimes surprises me ^_^ .
PS: Kids that read this, I hope you learned something here, don’t give your phone number to anyone neither your address, unless you did a background check on them which means searching for them on the web and look at their email.
I was thinking of creating bilingual blog as well (japanese/english), and checked several bilingual / multingual wordpress plugins, but none works like I expected ^^;
if I find a good bilingual / multingual wordpress plugin, I’ll let you know
FYI he also had contacted me – but I told him upfront I want to know who he is, what they’re doing etc before I give him any info. He said he understands and it was totally fine. I told him that I want to keep primary contact via email and if its an absolute emergency I can give address & phone number. Otherwise no.
I don’t mind helping out Dark Horse and promoting English releases (since I get so many people on my blog asking me “where do I get this in English!!!” crap) but after that Nice Boat scandal at the New York Anime Fest I’m wary of who I give my info out to.
@Hinano: Nice boat scandal? Never heard of it, the only nice boat thing I know was the end of School Days XD
Yea these guys set up a table at the NYAF telling people to enter to win a cruise. They then call everyone who entered their name/address claiming “they won” and demaded credit card information over the phone without giving any kind of written terms/conditions!! They have since been reported/banned from NYAF.
Hum thats a pretty big scandal indeed. But you must always be careful when people like this ask for your credit card on the spot, never trust such a thing.
Lawl, I got the same mail, although like Hinano, I just asked for further info too before actually agreeing to it.
The exact same reason why i write on my blog in english as well :3 To able more people to read it and not just the ones that share our language. In yours it worked amazingly, which is great =o Keep it up ^^
Since English is pretty much the international language, it made sense for me to blog mine in English. And I suck rock when writing in my native language ^^.
Btw, the dress Deunan wore in the party scene was designed by Prada o_O? Wow…
@Shin: Yeah it figures as much. It’s pretty weird and selfish to think you’re the only that got it. We are the ends to mean which is increasing their sales.
@Angel: Yeah it appears I was lucky but I tried to publicize my blog the best I could ^_^, fortunately there are loads of people that like these things.
@lanie: It was not just the party dress, it was another one which is shown in my picture. If you watch the movie in the intro where they mention the creators and such you’ll the words: “two costume designs made by Prada”, well I already knew this before watching the intro
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That would be me
Better to be safe than sorry =D
You did the right thing not giving your phone number to a stranger haha.
It’s safe. I don’t give out my number unless I know the person very well. As for address, unless I check who this person is and what this person sending me. It was pretty cool when people ask you to write something about their products. I wish I can do that. Anyhow, you should read manga. Some anime and manga differs. Maybe I should start writing reviews about stuff…
@Rin: I normally don’t read manga, the only manga I’m currently reading is Claymore but besides that I don’t read it, not that I don’t like it, it’s just there isn’t enough time to watch anime and read manga
You may want to try LingoTip for creating a multilingual blog. You create a widget (code) to place in your blog and your readers can then click on the Language buttons to switch languages. If you provide the translation, then the service is free. We’d love to get any input about this service. Thanks.