She is doing everything right. Absolutely.<p>If you want to be closer to Chinese people it's essential that you use their "stuff". First thing I did when I lived there was signup for QQ.<p>For a Japanese person to be making any effort to learn anything Chinese is really huge. She might not realize it, but she is giving her country great PR. The Japanese government should sponsor her and make her into an ambassador of sorts (if not her, then put together a band of publicly acceptable "youths".)<p>However, it's not that hard to get 1M followers in China, specially for an entertainer. If China has anything in abundance, it's easily excitable and bored young men (it really boggles the mind when one takes the bus after school and sees millions upon millions of uniformed teens just within 30 minutes)
Trivia:<p>She got trolled hard on Sina Weibo, too. In the picture of the OP's article, she presents of Chinese/Kanji text calligraphy requested by her fans on Sina Weibo. But,<p>1. The thrid item on the second column (from right to left) means "Japanese people", but also implies "fuck yourself"<p>2. The last item on the second column (RTL) 达菲鸡[1] is Internet homonym for masturbation.<p>3. The 3rd item on the 4th column (RTL) is Internet metaphor for "long enough fucking creats feelings", the original meaning is "Staying together long enough creats feelings"<p>4. And the last item on the last column (RTL) is popular satire for Mao Zedong's grandson's famous terrible handwriting[2].<p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_10_Mythical_Creatures#Da_Fei_Ji" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_10_Mythical_Creatures#Da_...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en_US&query=%E4%B8%80%E5%B8%88%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%AA%E5%A5%BD%E5%AD%A6%E6%A0%A1" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en_US&query=%E4%B8%80%E5...</a>
actually this sort of "advertising" isn't rare in Japanese entertainment industry. a lot of fresh actors, idols, and singers are required by their agency to update their personal blog daily and interact with their fans.<p>what's interesting is seeing how effective it is when applied to a market that is not expecting such attention from those in the spotlight. for the western world, twitter is a providing similar service, but perhaps we can do better..