No plans to return to Tokyo in the short term, but it hangs in my mind as a nice place to return to - I have friends and restaurants and neighborhoods I'd like to visit and revisit. And I'm still paying monthly for three things - my Japanese mobile phone, my Japanese wireless internet connection and my membership at the Foreign Correspondent's club. a $150/month subscription to Japan going largely unusued! I'm keeping it in case I do go back - these were a lot of work to set up.

I'm curious to see how comments distract or provoke, how they affect me as a web writer. Probably in many ways over time. Anyhow, to answer your point Wayne, I'm using Movable Type's "Spam Protect" feature for email addresses. I'll add some information about it to the templates here - to make it clear.

Hey there! DAMN, but I wish I had known about that Serious Games conference, by the way.

Anyhoo, I'm agnostic about MT-style comments too. I've remade my pages as a blog (just a simple two-table HTML thing). I'm not sure I *want* to go to MT and have comments all that. There's a good side and a bad side. It's good for something like game girl advance, at any rate.

Justin,

MT is worth it. So are comments. Sure you'll have to delete one every once in a while, but the conversation broadens, and that's good.

Plus trackbacks! MT gives you trackbacks, which is definitely good for the meme propagation thing ;)

you can always turn the comments off for certain entries. some folks use the comments feature rather sparingly.

i think it builds a sense of community. but you don't necessary want to have a discussion all the time - sometimes it's okay to have a one-sided post.

Yeah, sometimes you may not want to have a discussion. At the start of this, I'm not sure what's better said one-sided and what's not. I guess my understanding might emerge over time. If people come to expect to make comments on a post, they might be unhappy to see that can't.

I've had that sense on Jason Kottke's site before - he uses selective comments. Often I find that I've read something he's posted and I have an observation or question to add and it's something that he's decided is not for me to comment on. It wouldn't be such a big deal if comments weren't allowed on any of the posts. But when he's chosen to keep comments off on something I'm interested in? I feel slightly silenced.

I bring him up because he's about the only example I can think of where someone turs their comments on and off, depending on the post. Most other people seem to leave them on - flattered and excited to have visitors who want to talk about the subjects they raise. I imagine that I'll feel mostly like that!

I'm considering moving my site over to moveable type as well. If I do, I think I'd like to have comments turned on.

Even if I don't go to MT and wrote my own system (my current system is slightly more automatic than you pre-MT system), I think I'd add a comments feature.

Often, I look at my webstats page and wonder who these 100 visitors a day are and what they think of what I've written.

I look forward to seeing what your readers think.

I look forward to seeing what my readers think, and what they know!

Here's an example of great user comments, today, in response to my page about Willie McTell:

Good Willie site. One comment, if I may.

"My mama, she told me, when I was a boy playing (rumble peck ?) Don't you drink no black cow's milk, Don't you eat no black hen's egg"

The word/phrase is "mumble peg". More info here:

http://www.inquiry.net/outdoor/games/beard/mumbly_peg.htm

Great game. Don't play when liquored up, though:)

Great site. Thanks-

jamie

http://www.travelfone.jp/english/

Justin, this link could be useful for your keetai denwa troubles.

Very interesting, I think I recollect something like that in the past, I'll have to look after that.