We’ve changed! A lot!

Despite all the earthquakes, thunderstorms and tornadoes the time has come for the long-awaited birth of a brand new Daily Onigiri. We decided to do a complete makeover and added many new features and services.

Here are the most notable new additions:

1. Free membership. Go ahead and sign up right now for a free account that lets you take advantage of all our current and future services. You can start posting in our forums or use Tomodachi, our friends & penpals classified ads service.

2. Forums. For chit-chat and serious talk about all things Japan, head over to our Japan discussion forums. We’ve opened several categories. You’ll see that our forums look pretty simple — that was our intent as we don’t want to burden you with any unnecessary complicated features. We hope you’ll find these forums useful for sharing information, help and advice.

3. Tomodachi. Tomodachi — meaning “friends” in Japanese — is a brand new addition. Here you can post a free classified ad to look for new friends, penpals and language exchange partners from Japan or other countries. This is the place to meet people who share your interests about anything related to Japan.

4. New photo gallery section now provides much easier and smoother viewing of our photos. Plus, each album is linked to a corresponding article if one is available, so that you can read the story behind the photos.

5. Better search is now available for articles as well as a separate search for the discussion forums.

6. EarthquakeWatch. In Japan, earthquakes happen on a daily basis. Our little EarthquakeWatch box — which you can see on the front page — is a live data feed showing the last five quakes in the country. The data is fed in real-time from Japan Meteorological Agency. Hint: when the numbers go red, this means the quake is a stronger one than usual. By clicking on a location, you’ll be linked to a page with a map of the event and more detailed information.

7. Social networks. We’ve got to stay connected in this time and age. We started our own Facebook fan page, so please Like us quickly! We also set up a Twitter feed so you can stay up to date with us, wherever you go. Or wherever we go.

This wraps up all the main new features. We’ve spent a great deal of time making the new site and all the programming code has been written from scratch. We’ve had several beta testers and we don’t expect any major problems with the site, but if you do stumble upon an unexplained bug, a lost page or some other irrational error, please do let us know.

The best way to inform us about problems with our site (or to say how great we are) is to add a post in our forums under the category titled “About Daily Onigiri”.

We’re always looking for ways to improve our website and this new re-do is just one step of many. It is our aim to make this site as interesting and as informative for you as possible.

Enjoy your new Daily Onigiri!

(And don’t forget to tell your friends about it!)