Nico Nico Douga

ニコニコ動画 (niconico douga) is often touted as "Japan's YouTube." I dunno how fair/accurate that description is, but here is what it is; it's an online video site that is very popular in Japan.

The first thing that make ニコニコ動画 stand out is its unique comment system. Rather than putting comments at the bottom of the video, what you write is immediately put over the video anonymously at whatever timestamp you happen to be watching at the moment.

What this leads to is every video being covered up in everyone's comments. Popular videos end up with so many comments, it is sometimes hard to see what is going on in the video! I have to admit that at first, it was really distracting. But once you start getting into it, it's almost like watching a video with friends who are commenting in real time. What you get is an amazing feeling of community.

And that's the other thing that makes ニコニコ動画 so amazing. The community, which is pretty much all anonymous in nature, is much akin to the sort of people you might find on fark or YTMND. Culture is happening en mass. It's brilliant.

The reason I even mention the site is that I watch it pretty maniacally. I've even been called a ニコ厨 (nicochu) at work. If you are going to read this blog, you are going to get a lot of links to ニコ動画. Thus, you need an account!

If you speak Japanese, just hop on over. If not, Tokyotronic walks you through the registration process.

If you are having second thoughts, let me assure you... someday, you will thank me for it. XD