A little while back I wrote a guest post over at Raising Adelaide about the struggle that my wife (“zoomz”) and I have in raising our child (“Ash-kun”) in a bilingual household of English and Japanese.

Ash-kun

Obviously there is no better way to learn a second language than hearing it from birth but what happens if you notice a language developmental issue? Is simultaneous acquisition of both languages the cause? Should you abandon one language in order to consolidate the other? Which language should get priority?

We noticed early on what we thought was a language developmental issue with Ash-kun and made the regrettable decision to abandon the Japanese language. To this day we have struggled to reintroduce the second language sequentially.

Below is an extract from my guest post. If the topic is of interest to you head on over, check it out and join the dialogue.

Although we had set out with best intentions to pass on two languages, we had found it more complicated than we had originally assumed. Ash-kun’s competence in each language was slow to develop. By the time Ash-kun was 2 years of age his English vocabulary was noticeably limited compared to other Aussie kids in his day care. In Japanese he was only able to understand basic instruction and was unable to communicate in the language.

Concerned that he was confused as a result of being overloaded with both languages, zoomz made the fateful decision to stop communicating with him in Japanese and to switch exclusively to English. This decision went against all of the advice that we had been given that suggested that Ash-kun’s hindered language developmental progress was natural as there was a view that children who acquire more than one language simultaneously generally experience language delay.

Click here to read more: Battle of the Bilingual Household

The WordPress stats helper monkeys put together a personalized report detailing how LLP did in 2011! Here is what they said:

Crunchy numbers

London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 500,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 6 sold-out events for that many people to see it.

In 2011, there were 62 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 273 posts.

The busiest day of the year was March 18th with 4,780 views. The most popular post that day was Japanese Doggy Style Reloaded – Tosa Dog vs Human.

How did they find you?

The top referring sites in 2011 were:

• gakuranman.com
• kotaku.com
• nihongoup.com
• locoinyokohama.com
• cnngo.com

Some visitors came searching, mostly for hachiko, mr miyagi, toyota, cosplay fail, and doggy style.

Where did they come from?

Most visitors came from The United States. Japan & The United Kingdom were not far behind.

Who were they?

Your most commented on post in 2011 was Nikkeijin – The Japanese Peruvians.

These were your 5 most active commenters:

1. scott jeppesen (59 comments)
2. Chris B (40 comments)
3. lina (29 comments)
4. AdelaideBen (19 comment)
5. Japan Australia (19 comment)

Perhaps you could follow their blog or send them a thank you note?

Attractions in 2011

These are the posts that got the most views in 2011. You can see all of the year’s most-viewed posts in your Site Stats.

1. Japanese Doggy Style Reloaded – Tosa Dog vs Human (18 comments) November 2009
2. Japanese Love Dolls – Taboo? (31 comments) March 2009
3. 10 Weird Japanese Foods (93 comments) February 2010
4. Top 10 Love Hotel Room Themes (24 comments) March 2010
5. Puff! The Magic Upskirt iPhone App (10 comments) October 2009

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2011. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

Compared to previous years activity this site plateaued this year. In 2009 it received 169,509 hits. In 2010 it saw 467,234 hits. This year, largely due to the infrequent posting (about half as much as last year) it had only a marginal increase receiving 507,133 PVs. Most of the hits this year were fuelled by search engine traffic on previous years posts. The year wasn’t all that bad though, midway through the year the site surpassed the million PageView mark, an event that slipped through without any fanfare.

Anyway, as in previous years (here is 2009 and 2010), following is a look at 5 of the best and 5 of the worst performing posts that this site has dished up this year. The popularity, or lack thereof, is based purely upon number of pageviews.

The Hits

I Scored Last Night

Strangely, the best performing post for this site in 2011 was I Scored Last Night that featured a before and after shot that parodied Pat Morita of The Karate Kid notoriety. This post benefits from excessively high (and undeserved) Google ranking for the keyword search “Mr Miyagi”.

Tokyo Rockabilly Club

A dying breed of big fifties revivalists, the Tokyo Rockabilly Club have attained cult icon notoriety for their highly distinctive combination of Elvis hair, yakuza tattoos and predisposition to publicly jive to 50s rock ’n’ roll. This post also benefits from a high Google ranking for the keyword search “rockabilly”.

Weird Japanese Ice Cream Flavours

Weird Japanese Ice Cream Flavours is an article that lists ten weird Japanese ice cream flavours. The flavours are based upon local Japanese regional delicacies such as horse sashimi, beef tongue and whale. Facebook was the biggest referrer to this page in 2011.

Another 10 Cool Japanese Foods

Part 2 in a cool Japanese food series is Another 10 Cool Japanese Foods which showcased 10 tasty morsels of Japanese culinary goodness such as edamame, shabu-shabu, soba, tonkatsu, karaage and more. It was StumbleUpon’s biggest referral to this site for 2011.

The Japan Earthquake from Tokyo Tower

The Japan Earthquake from Tokyo Tower is an article containing footage from a tourist who was on the observation deck of the 4,000 tonne steel structure at the time that the massive earthquake struck, probably one of the last places that you would want to be during the 5th largest earthquake in recorded history.

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