On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Asuka Murase - Julia Touga - Houki You - Kaori Miki - Tadori Midorikawa
- Neora Seishuku - Kimi Nee wrote:

> Good morning everybody!!!
> 
> 08:17 am in Chile and here i am, squeezing my neuron trying to write
> something coherent in english (a language that i don't know very
> well)... -_-' I'm like some kind of Snorlax (from Pokmon), waked up
> just to write some e-mails... x_x

Good evening (by Chilean time).  Your English is fine, but there are
many of us who have a hard time reading messages with more than 72
columns.  So keeping your lines shorter will make them easier to read
to go along with your skillful English.
 
> All right. Too much. My name is Andrea Clunes (my official nickname
> is Asuka Murase, from Weiss Kreuz ^^U) and i'm from Chile, a very
> austral country and very primitive in some aspects... But, anyways,
> a nice place to live if you are not a fan of Japan, it's voice
> actors and it's comics and animations.... (i'm sure if "it's" is the
> right word, but please try to undestand me, because i'm not too good
> in english and i'm doing my best.... :P Please, FORGIVE any mistakes
> you could find in this e-mail...) :P I'm student of Journalism in
> the Universidad de Via del Mar, here in Chile, and I LOVE JAPAN, I
> LOVE MANGA AND ANIME AND I LOVE THE SEIYUUS!!!!!! @_@ *in berseker
> mode*

This is something I've always wondered about.  How does one find out
about anime and seiyuu in a place like Chile?  Sure, everyone in the
world can learn a lot from Hitoshi's site, but there has to be some
initial exposure to drive you to it.  I guess it's the University...
do a lot of people study Japanese there?
 
> *returning to normalafter 3 or 4 hours* ^_^UUU Ejem... Anyway...
> Like you can imagine, in this part of the world (Chile is placed in
> South America, just in case... ^^U) is REALLY, REALLY hard to find
> SOMETHING related to this 3 topics that i realy love... Or, if you
> find it, is very expensive to buy it, so you feel happy if you can
> just look at it on the shop window ("vitrina" in spanish... i don't
> know how to say it ^^U). But i'm very ambicious and, obviously, i
> want to have all those things so i try to buy somethings when my
> carreer or the bills don't try to kill all my mom's salary. :P Even
> that way, is a big goal if you can buy some anime series or some
> manga (most of the times discontinued or something... U) but info
> about seiyuus, magazines or something like that ... Forget it! It's
> almost impossible. :P So, the result is that i don't have NOTHING
> about my favorites seiyuus.... The exception is maked by the
> *glorious* Internet wich is a BIG way to try to learn more about
> those wornderful japanese actors...

If you can read and write a little bit of Japanese, the Amazon Japan
site at http://www.amazon.co.jp is a great way to order books and
magazines.  263 matches on the word "seiyuu" alone, with matches for
just about every one of the favorite seiyuu you list below.

Regardless of your financial situation, if you are truly a BIG fan
of seiyuu and want to learn more, you must study Japanese.
 
> But... God! im a stupid. I don't even said wich are my favorites
> seiyuus!!!!! _ I said it: i'm almost sleeped. Ok, i love a lot of
> seiyuus, but my favorites of all the times are Shin'ichirou Miki,
> Takehito Koyasu, Ebara Masashi (Masashi Ebara?) and Mitsuishi
> Kotono. Specially Shin'ichirou Miki!!! He is the one i love most!!!!
> Unfortunatelly, it seem that he's not very popular, so i don't have
> too much things about him ot know too much about his life... I have
> read that he's very reserved... Is that right?

Hmmm...I think you're on your own there.  Might have to find some
Japanese Weiss fan sites out there...

This is a bulletin board with a lot of fan messages related to him:
http://twinkle.wisnet.ne.jp/mikishinichirou/
 
> Anyway... I joined this ml trying to correct my lack of information
> about that wonderful japanese man *Asuka starts to listen to the
> Miki-sama' song "Time after time"...*-* He's sooooooooooooooooo
> cuuuuuuuuuteeee!!!! I love him....* and to learn more about all that
> amazing world... I don't know if any of you can help me to increase
> my knowledge about Shin'ichirou Miki (specially... ^^U) and the
> other two GREAT seiyuus that i love... Does anybody has pictures,
> scans, interviews, mp3s, cds... something about him (or them... i'm
> interested in both...)??? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, share them with
> me!!!! I don't have too much to return those things, but i can offer
> my frienship and thankful for ever!!!! ^_^U

That's the one problem with Japanese sites...they are almost entirely
text.  But maybe that's why surfing the net via cell phones is more
popular (and useful) here than elsewhere in the world...

> Besides, i have read that a lot of you live in Japan... Is that
> true???? How is the life there?? It must be WONDERFUL!!! I have read
> that you go to events, take the pictures and you can't imagine how
> many time i have dreamed those things....

Oh geez...this is like looking at myself in a timewarp mirror seven
or eight years ago! (^_^;)

I "discovered" anime in 1992 while studying Japanese in college in
America, and seiyuu in 1994.  Made my first pilgrimage to Japan in
1995, saw Hisakawa Aya and many other seiyuu, and was hooked.

(see http://www.win.ne.jp/~doi/events/ip-95tour.html for a description
of the event, and
http://www.win.ne.jp/doi-bin/ml-archive.pl?ML=seiyuu&Y=1995&M=07&D=14&A=8
for the gory details of my mindset at the time)

With luck, I found a job in Tokyo and moved to Japan in summer of 1996.
For about a year and a half I traveled the country, actually getting to
speak with Aya several times (she almost became a fan of me at one
point), later moving on to Toyoshima Machiko.  A series of events in
late February 1998 led to my giving up the seiyuu otaku lifestyle, and
today, wife, child, and job assure that I never have time to return to
that lifestyle again.

All in all it was a blast, and I'm happy and grateful to have had the
opportunity to do all that.  But you have to realize that it is not a
way of life you can maintain for very long.  Anything more than a couple
of years of hard core fandom and you lose your grip on reality, and your
ability to enjoy a "normal" life.  It is a very high stress, high
maintenance lifestyle, and your body and mind can only hold out for so
long like that before something gives way.

> Okis... My last words will go to Hitoshi Doi... Doi-sama, you're are
> the greatest webmaster in the world, I LOVE your web page and i
> admire you A LOT because you are a very generous person. I have read
> a lot of the messages that you, and the other members, post here and
> you always have the time to write your experiences, to buy tickets
> and things like that. Here, in my country, there's no people like
> you because everybody is too worry about his/her own life...
> Everybody prefers to kill you than to help you and that's why my
> country will be ALWAYS a Third World country. But in Japan (and in
> others countrys more ... *looking for the word in the dictionary*
> developed (?)...) the people is much more friendly and more generous
> and is always trying to help the people that, like me, don't have
> the money and the medios to go to Japan or to buy things via
> Internet...

All I'll say about this is to appeal to your sense of journalism,
and don't judge Japan based on what you read about Hitoshi and his web
site, or what you know about anime or seiyuu.  If you stay long in
Japan, you will see that there are good things and bad things about
Japan, just like any other country.  As a Chilean, you might see more
of the bad things than others.  It is a country of talented seiyuu,
warm friendly people, and an interesting culture.  It is also a culture
that prides work over family, abuses old people in nursing homes, and
exploits hundred of naive young girls to work as underpaid "talent".
And no matter how good your Japanese becomes, no matter how much
Japanese culture you absorb, no matter who you meet or who you marry
or what relationships you cultivate, you will always, always, be the
Outsider to the Japanese people.

Japan is a million different things to a million different people,
that changes every day, but is never quite what you want or expect it
to be.  Accept that, and you are well on your way to discovering much
about Japan and yourself.

By all means, come to Japan and experience what it has to offer.  But
don't be surprised if your experience is not what you expect it to be.

And finally, welcome to the ML!  Hopefully your arrival will spring
more discussion, and take the burden off of Hitoshi to provide things
to talk about here.  ^_^

  - Joe