Always Enjoying…

The most common comment I receive on this blog is “I always enjoy reading your posts.” No matter what the comment is, I’m always grateful to receive it, but what makes me happiest is when someone says “enjoyable.” That’s because,

what I value most in running this blog is “making it a fun blog to read.”

The power of “fun” is incredible—when a space is enjoyable, more and more people gather there. As more people come, more information flows in, and new developments emerge. Just imagining the various futures that “the power of fun” can create always excites me. (Though sometimes I get carried away with wishful thinking, haha.)

That said, I’m naturally serious to the core—so much so that my school reports always said I was a “serious child.” I tend to slip into serious mode quickly and end up writing dry, uninteresting text. That’s why I’m always quite conscious about “whether I’m enjoying writing and whether readers find it enjoyable.”

Also, in face-to-face conversations (including YouTube, I guess), you can convey a lot through facial expressions and tone of voice, but since a blog is only text, I try every day to “express the scenes and our married life vividly through words alone.”

How This Differs from Car Media

There are many car media outlets run by motor magazines or companies online, filled with useful information and educational articles. They have name recognition, trust, connections with manufacturers, and financial resources, so they can carry out various projects that individuals simply can’t.

For example, test drives of the latest models, circuit timing, interviews with manufacturer reps, motor show coverage, and so on…

There are many things I envy, but as an individual blogger, there’s no way I can compete by aiming for the same things. So when I asked myself, “What can only I write about?” the answer was:

“A blog that’s fun to read.” (Of course, it must also be useful to readers.)

Looking back at my past posts (especially early ones), I realize I wrote quite silly stuff and the dialogue is almost dripping with Kansai dialect. This kind of style is something corporate-run media can’t do.

Since I have the freedom, I want to cherish that. That doesn’t mean I force myself to make boring things fun—I just write about things that are genuinely fun in a fun way.

How Porsche Saved Our Marriage

I think we’re a couple who talks a lot now, but after our second daughter was born, there was a period when my husband and I barely spoke at all. (Life with two kids was way harder than I imagined.)

I was working a lot more then, often too tired to stay awake after putting the kids to bed, and I wasn’t as interested in Porsche as I am now. So our daily conversations (no exaggeration) were basically just:

“Good morning,” “Have a good day,” “Welcome home,” “Good night.”

Neither of us is the type to say, “I really want to talk! Listen to me!” so if there was something to say, we’d usually just send a quick message during the day and that was it. Also, because of my work, I often think about “how to communicate clearly, simply, and concisely in a short time,” and before I knew it, that became how we talked at home too.

My husband often said, “Mina, your way of talking and thinking is totally like a guy.”

At one point, we realized “it was seriously bad that we hardly talked at all,” so we tried to discuss it, but time passed without any real solution…

Then gradually, I started liking Porsche more, launched this blog in June 2017, and from around April last year, I decided to take blogging seriously. Since then, our conversations have slowly increased.

We started going for drives together more often, after putting the kids to bed I’d get car lessons from my husband to write blog posts, and we’d brainstorm ideas like, “What about an article like this?”

When the blog had few visitors, we analyzed everything on Analytics, tried every idea we could think of, celebrated when traffic grew, and talked about what might be wrong when a post didn’t perform as expected.

Well, about 80% of our conversations are about cars (haha), so if you say, “It’s more like a work partnership than a marriage conversation,” that’s true. But even so, increasing communication has made our home brighter and more enjoyable.

Company, society, community—but above all, the closest and most important community is the marriage. Through these experiences, I’ve learned that the foundation of daily happiness lies in the relationship between spouses.

So, I’m truly grateful to “Porsche,” which made this possible, and to this blog. For me, Porsche is not just a car or a sports car that teaches me the joy of driving—it has become “something precious that supports my life from the ground up.”

That’s why I hope to continue expressing in this blog, in a fun and unforced way, that “Porsche can improve a marriage and enrich life.”

Full-On Kansai Dialect

There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about lately.

What do people think about “articles dripping with Kansai dialect”?

According to Google Analytics, the largest group of readers live in the Kansai region, but the Tokyo metropolitan area has a much larger population and more Porsche owners, so I wonder if the heavy Kansai dialect makes it harder for readers in Tokyo to follow…

Then again, since I often write about the Royu Driveway and touring spots in Kansai, it makes sense that more readers are from Kansai. I happened to ask on Twitter recently, and got replies like:

“Definitely better as it is now. The conversations feel real and come across more directly.”
“I never really thought about it… I don’t think you need to worry about it :)”
“The lively conversations set it apart from other blogs and are really great!”

Everyone’s so kind…

Come to think of it, when I visited Porsche Japan before, a German product manager (who lived in Kansai during his student days) told me fluently in Japanese, “This blog’s Kansai dialect is great! Please keep it just like this!” So I think I’ll keep enjoying writing in Kansai dialect from now on.