What this site is
Eastern Diary publishes English-language reading pages built around anonymous Japanese diary entries from Hatena Anonymous Diary (はてな匿名ダイアリー / "anond").
Each page on this site is made of two pieces:
- A faithful English translation of one anonymous diary entry, shown as a quoted block.
- A short reading note from a recurring editorial persona — "the Tokyo reader" — who reacts to the entry for a non-Japanese audience.
The translation is the source material. The reading note is what we add.
We treat each piece as commentary on a quoted source, not as a republication.
How each piece is made
- We monitor the public RSS feed of Hatena Anonymous Diary.
- An entry is selected by an automated review (length, language, originality, suitability).
- An AI (Google Gemini, under our prompt) drafts the Tokyo reader's reading note in Japanese so the voice can be checked against the source on the same terms.
- The diary entry and the reading note are then translated into English together in a single pass, so that recurring terms — place names, slang, brand names, cultural concepts — line up across both.
- A human editor reviews the result before publication.
- Every published page carries a fixed attribution footer linking back to the original entry.
We log a self-reported translation quality score (0–10) for monitoring. Pages that don't meet our internal threshold are flagged for additional human review.
What we do and don't do
We do:
- Translate the original entry faithfully and present it as a clearly quoted block.
- Add a short, signed reading note in the Tokyo reader's voice.
- Link back to the original entry on anond.hatelabo.jp from every page.
- Respect takedown requests from original authors (see Takedown / DMCA).
We don't:
- We do not republish the original Japanese text. No public page on this site contains the original post in Japanese.
- We do not present the reading note as the original author's words. The Tokyo reader is a separate, named voice — see Editor's Voice — the Tokyo reader.
- We do not moralize on behalf of the original writer. The Tokyo reader observes; they don't speak for the person who wrote the diary.
- We are not a news outlet, not a translation service, and not affiliated with Hatena Co., Ltd.
Attribution
Every article ends with a fixed attribution block in this form:
Translated and annotated from an anonymous Japanese diary entry.
Source: [link to the original entry on anond.hatelabo.jp]
This block is enforced at the publishing layer — editors cannot remove it without removing the article.
Takedown / removal requests
If you are the author of an original entry and you would like the page on this site removed, please follow the procedure on our Takedown / DMCA page. Because the original entries are anonymous, we ask for a verifiable signal from the entry itself before acting on a request. Eastern Diary is a single-operator site, so we do not commit to specific response times.
Why we built this
Anonymous Japanese diary writing has a distinctive voice: candid, unguarded, and rooted in everyday cultural detail that rarely makes it into translation-focused media. We think a non-Japanese reader gets something real from these entries — the textures of daily life, work, family, money, isolation — when the entry is presented faithfully and a separate, contextual voice points at what's happening underneath the language.
That second voice is what the Tokyo reader exists for. The diary is what it is; the reading note is just the margin.
Contact
- General inquiries: contact@easterndiary.com
- Takedown / removal: takedown@easterndiary.com (see also Takedown / DMCA)
- DMCA legal notices: dmca@easterndiary.com