For those of you who blog yourselves or just like to cruise the web to see what other people are writing about Japan, today’s Fun Link Friday is for you: Japan Blog Matsuri. Of course, those of you who know that a matsuri 祭is a festival must be wondering just what the heck a blog festival is. Essentially, the goal of this project is to bring together articles around the web each month that showcase something about Japan based on a selected theme.

The location of the matsuri rotates each month to a different web host, and the author of that site will select the month’s theme. Then bloggers submit articles, new or old, that reflect that theme, link back to the Japan Blog Matsuri website, and voila! At the end of the month there’s a nice collection of themed articles from writers all around the web posted conveniently in one place. If you’re a blogger, submitting an article or hosting could mean record-breaking traffic for you. If you’re just a casual reader, be prepared to find new blogs of Japan you may not have stumbled across on your own.

Here’s a list of some recent previous themes, taken directly from the JBM website:

We submitted our own article for the February 2010 theme on famous Japanese events. If you’d like to broaden your readership as a blogger or just get introduced to a new set of blogs, I highly suggest you check out the submissions to Japan Blog Matsuri and think about participating yourself. The rules are very simple for submitting articles, and you can even put in a bid to host the matsuri based on your own theme! Who knows, maybe even Shinpai Deshou will try to host it someday. 🙂

Happy blogging and have a great weekend!