Uiggu

Uiggu, a self-described “blonde Japanese-speaking girl living in Tokyo with [her] Japanese man;” who also sometimes does things dressed as a maid for money (“NOT THOSE THINGS” she points out), runs a blog focused on food, cute unnecessary items and daily life. Mostly she blogs about her life, in which food and cute things are sometimes involved, looking at Tokyo from an Western perspective.

First looking at Et tu Tabelog, the reader is introduced to the post with the following: 

Oops, it’s been over a month since I last updated. It’s also been about that long since I went to the gym. I shall blame my quite insane schedule and my くそ 4 hour commute every day.

Uiggu’s casual speaking style and smooth incorporation of katakana give a sense of familiarity as well as authenticity on her part as a new Tokyo native. Telling us about her past month, since she didn't’ have a chance to blog about it as it was happening, in list form she gives us a rundown of what happened, assumedly in order of importance.

Right at the top of her list is “The Worst Izakaya EVER That Actually Ruined a Perfectly Good Saturday Night By Its Crapness,” which she goes on to say is not it’s actual name. Then she gives us the actual name. Giving the bar its own title, full of her own flavorful language, is humorous, and she is also revealing her personality to be witty, along with showing she’s not afraid to speak up if she’s unhappy with something. She then proceeds with a description of how to get to the bar:

All you need to remember is the…fact that it’s on the 8^th floor of that narrow building with a weird brightly-lit comics/anime shop on the ground floor and a tiny elevator which is past that expensive bar with the blue colour scheme, under the bridge and to your left if you come out of the Hachiko exit of Shibuya station and turn right.

The descriptive language lets us know that uiggu is observant, and also shows off her familiarity with Shibuya—while serving to authenticate uiggu as our tour guide of the area, we are getting her feel for the area—it’s a unflatteringly-lit difficult-to-get-to place that basically sucks. Continuing down her list, number two continues in the same vein. It details her attempt to write a “Scathing Review” (her term for it that she uses multiple times) and explains why it is such a big deal that she bothered to write it in the first place.
 We can get a good sense of her emotional state when she describes herself as “INCENSED.” Yes that is a combination of bold type, caps lock, and quotation marks. You can definitely feel her emphasis there. Uiggu also uses hyperbole pretty often:

THAT’S HOW SHITTY THIS PLACE WAS. I am not even exaggerating (and some might say I do that a lot too).

With the help of parentheses, uiggu is poking fun at herself while also once again emphasizing how angry she is.

As for linking strategies, uiggu employs the basic hyperlinking to the bar’s site and review site Tabelog. She actually links to Tabelog each time she mentions it, which, knowing that she has vowed never to use it again, may seem counterintuitive but I think she is proving a point by linking to Tabelog so many times.

Uiggu’s voice is consistent across posts, though it’s pretty easy to discern how she’s feeling at the time. In Et tu Tabelog, she displayed anger, but in other posts she’s excited or content, such as in Hand-made Valentines –OR ELSE. This post is about the Japanese approach to Valentine’s day, and how she too has been into the chocolate-making, PSP-receiving craziness.

In terms of content, uiggu blogs about pretty much whatever she comes across. This includes topics she’s stumbled upon on Reddit, her everyday bento making, and strangers she runs into at train stations. These topic choices give us a sense of her personality through what she’s chosen to write about, and what dominates even her non-topic-oriented posts. We learn about what she’s interested in and passionate about, as well as her pet peeves and what makes her angry.

Overall, uiggu’s voice definitely complements the subject matter of the blog. Basically, the blog is about her life so it follows that her voice is going to shine through it. Her voice is definitely what makes the blog fun and popular, and I think any type of blog involving a cross-cultural element should have a lot of voice and personality. Readers want to find out what’s weird and crazy about a place far away, maybe that they’ve never been to, and they want to find that out through a cool and funny person. I’m super glad I found this blog.