Gaki N Me If you love to talk about the world, love Asian idols, this is the place.

Thank you to ladyusagi, usami chan and ct_cat5 for leaving your messages over here. Appreciate them. These few days I'm already enjoying myself, relaxing away from intensive surfing. I thought I would sleep for 20 hours straight this last Saturday after these 4 1/2 years of fatigue but surprisingly I did wake up at the normal time.I don't think I would start a brand new forum ever again. Not only translating takes a long time, surfing to find the news is even longer and the worst heartache is when members attack each other. *faint*  Criticism of stars' choices of work is fine but personal attacks are mean spirited and my forum seem to attract a fair share of that. Thank goodness there are only 2 more days. For starter, for the next few weeks, I am just going to listen to American music and write essays in Spanish.  Here's Brian Mcknight Back at One to detox from the forum.

Posted May 29, 2007:

After four and a half years of starting this forum, I have finally decided to close it as of June 6, 2007.  This would give those who come visit only once a week the chance to know what's happening. Some of you who have been with me for a long time will know that I have once tried to close it 3 years ago, but member Mrs Hwang convinced me not to and since I was still very curious about many artists, I kept it going and in fact expanded and carved myself a niche in Takeshi Kaneshiro news and then SMAP. As though that was not enough, I expanded the Japan section and put in Johnny Entertainment groups and then finally not so long ago added Kinki Kids. 

But I think I have finally said all that I need to say and learnt all that I need to know of artists that interest me. I am now at a level where I could enjoy artists and their works without getting monumentally excited nor the need to talk about them. With the acceptance by my family of my indulgence in Asian entertainment and they themselves enjoying the same thing as I do, I no longer have the desperate need to express myself to the outside world.

So to all those who have helped build this forum, either by commenting, sending in links, translating, posting photos and etc., thank you very much for joining me in this journey. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I did.  But when I am dragging my feet every morning for the last 3 months to log on, and blanking out on articles and interviews, I knew the time has come to close the forum. Many a time, I wanted to spend time other than surfing and translating for the forum but knowing that almost 500 to 700 of you visit this site, I have to put something out or it would be disappointing. But the wear and tear is becoming more obvious by the day. I want to sit beside my husband drawing, reading, sewing, knitting as he reads but instead, I'm in front of the computer and he's in another room. My middle one tells me I don't do anything other than downloading and when his class has a field trip, he tells me I don't need to go be chaperon but stay home and download some more. Ha... My youngest asked if that is the only thing I do.... 

At the forum, after translating long articles, and difficult ones especially the convoluted stuff of Japanese artists, the replies are fewer and fewer each time. In fact, the Kimura ones that I translated depressed me the most because those are the most difficult to translate because of his writing style. Audio programs I translated are rarely responded to and so perhaps someone else is doing it out there. So why bother? At the Takeshi side, after I take in 5-8 articles to translate for each event, responses have dwindled to one or two at most these few months. It's not as though I'm skimping on the contents. In fact, I made sure I translated stuff that were not mentioned in ready-made articles from the English news site from official news channels. So there must be someone out there doing a faster and better job than I do.

I am sure some of you might suggest that I hand the forum to some others who are interested in keeping it up. I can't. There is too much of me in between threads. The trend is that copyright protection will be more closely enforced by the day. Japan is tight, China is working on it, and the US has always been strict.  I don't want to leave trace of photos that I have uploaded before, or what other items that are considered illegal related to me.  

Most movies with Asian involvement are sufficiently covered by the English media now and there are many Asian entertainment sites, live journals, forums who could do a better job than I do. You won't miss anything, I'm sure. 

I will repost some of the best articles I have translated of other Asian artists in my blog for my own reference. Major articles of Takeshi Kaneshiro, Kimura Takuya and Goro Inagaki are already reposted.

As to whether I will translate in the future for my blog, I am not sure yet. When it fits the mood, I enjoy translating lyrics. In general, I need to take a break.  But I will still surf for some entertainment news so as to keep myself up to date with what movies are coming soon.  I am more a movie person than a drama person, more for stories with a political background and purpose than a plain love story. Frequently, because of my need for a strong plot, strong and handsome presentation, I step on many artists at my forum for their choices. I'm sure many must be aggravated and think that I trample on their idol. I'll keep these all to my blog from now onwards and no one has to suffer anymore... 

I have also rekindled my love for photography and drawing, two interests I had since I was six. I want to do these involving my family.  When I wake up, I want to be able to think how fun it would be for the next pose, the next outing, the next lesson I can give to my kids be it drawing, photography, Chinese, French, Spanish, piano, dumping on China, US poli-economics, scientific explanation or plain silliness. And of course, in addition to the above, I would post here reviews of movies or dramas that I have seen, and write about projects that I am excited about in the Asian world.

Thank you for understanding.

Sandra