According to a latest survey by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, there are about 16.9 million internet blogs in Japan as of January 2008. Now thats a lot of blogs for a single country. According to these numbers that would mean that about 20 percent of the Japanese internet community are involved in blogging (20 percent of about 88 million internet users).

The number of blogs worldwide totals at about 70 million (give or take a million). Taking firce place at a whopping 37 percent of these blogs are taken up by these Japanese bloggers. Coming in close second are English blogs which account for 36 percent. Coming in as third most popular language used in blogs would be Chinese which only totals at about 8 percent. With all these numbers it is easy to see that Japanese blogs are the most abundant worldwide. I am so surprised to hear that this literally makes the Japanese blogging community the highest blogging community in the world, numbers just don’t lie.

Here is the survey done by the the Japanese Ministry:

It was found that blogs used for self-expression, in which people listed daily events like a diary to relieve stress, were the most common type in Japan, accounting for 30.9 percent of all blogs. About 40 percent of the people who started these blogs were aged in their teens and 20s.

Another 25.7 percent of blogs were community types in which people sought acquaintances under themes in which they held an interest. Archive-type blogs in which users organized and released information relating to their interests stood in third place, at 25.0 percent. These blogs were used not by young people but also by users in a wide range of age groups, including those in their 30s and 40s.

It was found that slightly under 20 percent of all blogs in Japan (about 3 million blogs) were updated at least once a month. About 400,000 to 500,000 new blogs appeared each month. Viewers posted an average of roughly 1.5 comments per article, showing that information was being actively exchanged.

About 12 percent of the 3 million blogs that were updated at least once a month were “spam blogs.” Of these, 38.3 percent encouraged people to buy goods, 17.1 percent were designed to collect advertising revenue, and 7.0 percent directed people to adult or matchmaking sites.

There must be a lot of otaku sites out there by the Japanese, ah….competition always makes me feel sad….