I have had a lot of difficulty choosing a favorite blog. No one blog seems to jump out at me as being the "quintessential" blog. Rather, I find bits and pieces of different blogs to be very attractive. The blog I noticed the most, as far as physical set up went, was the blog "Monologue" of a Columbia student. The website itself was incredibly creative and well done, and I felt compelled to read it because it looked to very interesting. The actual posts themselves, however, contained little Japanese or almost no pictures :( . "Claire" from Smith College also had a very pretty backdrop for her blog, but once again very few posts and almost no pictures.
"Isshin"'s blog (http://isshinlim.blogspot.com/) from Universiti Sains Malaysia provided LOTS of pictures that were relevant and funny and made reading her blog very enjoyable. "Subtitles" in English also helped in case there was a gap between her level of Japanese and mine. (Kanji were mainly problematic--I should download that program . . .) While there were lots of pictures, I wish there had been a little more Japanese text to go with them.
I think there there should be a nice balance between text and pictures in a blog, as well as an attractive background to set them off.
