How to register for Japanese video site Nico Nico Douga
Written on 15th January 2008
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Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
When writing a recent article about the biggest internet stories in Japan for 2007, I wrote about probably the biggest story of the year, hot-shot video site Nico Nico Douga. This site is uniquely Japanese and has some truly strange and bizarre content. By using time referenced text chat on top of the video feeds, the site manages to create a unique social landscape that western sites have yet to match.
This is the 7th most popular site in Japan after just 1 year of existence. Many of the funny jokes and comments are in Japanese, but I have still had a lot of people asking me to show them how to access the site.
When navigating a foreign language site you always have a few challenges but you can usually get by with a few guesses and some lucky clicking. For Nico Nico Douga, this is a bit more difficult than usual because you need to register first before you can see anything.
So, in order to help more people understand what this phenomenon is, I have put together this handy guide to registering and getting to the fun stuff so you can all benefit from my 6 years of clicking through Japanese websites.
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