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NATTO was started in late 2006 as the behest of a large community of
Ibaraki ALTs too lazy to plan their own lessons, and one ALT who had so
much time on his hands he thought solving that problem was a good idea.
At that point, most teaching techniques were passed along to new
teachers via "books" and "talking face-to-face," two archaic methods of
the ancient world.
During
early meetings to blueprint out the site's design, the founders decided
that tying it specifically to Ibaraki, in name or membership, would be
detrimental to the site's success. So, in an effort to include the
dirty heathens living outside of Ibaraki, the site was christened with
a wacky, yet neutral name. That is, unless you know where natto was
invented. In which case, you probably live in Ibaraki, and thus are
awesome.
Using Joomla! as a
base, Jason Porath, an Ibaraki JET stationed in Ryugasaki-shi,
single-handedly set about radically modifying the code and adding all
manner of features specific to the community's needs. Many months
later, he crawled out of a dark pit clutching version 1.0 of NATTO in
his arm. At the end of his first year on JET, Jason fled back to
America, leaving it unclear where he found said dark pit, how he
climbed out while carrying the website, or why exactly he was in a dark
pit to begin with. Internet fan speculation has suggested that he is an
inveterate liar.
Thanks go to:
Design: Daryle Santos
Naming: Rick Ambrosio, Nam Chuong
Technical Support: Nam Chuong, Menh Voong, Fil Ha, Kevin Leung
Translation: Carly Bode, Daryle Santos, Satoshi Okabe
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