I finally have a MIXI. マイミクシーがある。

Mixi is the Japanese version of Facebook. (Except there are a whole lot of differences.) Basically every person in Japan has a mixi and they're always talking about it. (Same as people back home do with Facebook) One major difference is that you have to be invited by someone else to sign up. And you need a Japanese cell phone address to use mixi. Here are a few more differences. They are taken from an article about mixi on tofugu.com which I think is the best site there is about living in Japan.

Will you remember something important? tofugu.com is the absolute best website about living in Japan. Funny, practical, interesting, intelligent, never dull, beautifully designed, really helpful. I love that website. Here's what Koichi says about Mixi.

The funny thing about profile pictures, though, is that most people don’t put up their real faces. Usually there will be some kind of animal, an actor/actress’ photo, or some inanimate object. Like I said above, though, everyone is paranoid. I would say one in every thirty people put their real images up, and that’s it. You will often see non-Japanese using Mixi with their real pictures, but that is rare as well.

(Julie: This is my profile picture, in case you were curious.)

Friends List: You can find your list of friends here. I always get confused because real names are not displayed (just nicknames) and the images above them are of kittens and ferris wheels. Even if it is someone I know really well in real life, most of the time I’ll have no idea who they are on Mixi, even though we are Mixi friends.

Everyone is Paranoid: The most important thing to know about Mixi is that nobody wants to be your friend. That is, the folks who use Mixi listened to their parents, and will often refuse to talk to strangers. I feel like this is quite different from Myspace, and even Facebook.

Friend Introductions of YOU: This section is my favorite. In Mixi, you don’t write on people’s walls like in Facebook or Myspace. That space is for people to write introductions about you. Most introductions explain how the person knows you and then a little bit about your personality. Occasionally you’ll see a non-Japanese person writing on it as if it were a wall, but this is incorrect. A typical translation of an introduction post would be: “I know this person from high school. He was in my Soccer Club, and he is the type of person who gets along well with everyone,” or something like that.

If you're Japanese (or if I know you in real life) tell me your ID number and I'll add you. I really want to learn to read. That's why I joined mixi. Lately, I feel like I've been learning so much. I want to start writing more in Japanese. My computer is a real impediment because it's only got roman letters. It's Canadian. Luckily I have another computer (at work) that I can use for writing emails and things in Japanese.

So far, the main thing I noticed is that on MIXI, people love making things like this:

☆ミ（　＾　o　＾　）／　★ミ