June 18, 2025
I am big in Japan
“Isn’t that a song?” I hear you think. You are right. ‘Big in Japan’ was the debut single of the German synth-pop band Alphaville. It reached a number 1 position in the European charts in 1984. This cover is also worth listening to.
Marian Gold (the original lead singer and author) says about this song: It’s the lie/fantasy of the loser. He says he is not a loser, because in Japan he is really big.
That is funny, because I am ACTUALLY ‘big in Japan’, at least… when I look at my website traffic as reported by Google Search Console. Here is a table of my website traffic in the last 16 months per country:
| Country | Clicks | Traffic |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 5.173 | 50% |
| US | 696 | 7% |
| India | 585 | 6% |
| UK | 382 | 4% |
| Bangladesh | 362 | 3% |
| Nederland | 323 | 3% |
| Duitsland | 205 | 2% |
| Canada | 149 | 1% |
| Zweden | 120 | 1% |
| Italië | 111 | 1% |
The total traffic is 10.398 clicks in these months. There is 16 times (!) more traffic from Japan then from my home country The Netherlands. I may be a nobody here, but I am big in Japan, or at least a little famous. Isn’t that ironic?
The reason for this popularity could be the cute mascot I added to my blog pages, which is typical for Japanese culture. It could also be the Japanese Seigaiha pattern, the Japanese design (symmetrical and minimalistic, with a link to nature) or the Zen Garden websites project. It could be all of that… but it is probably just the Google algorithm, which promotes my website as a result of some inbound links (like the one from Yuma Chiaki).
Whatever the reason… I love Japanese design and I am very flattered by the attention.
() Joost van der Schee