[Looking Back]  Doujinshi and Douseiai
Written by:  Jason Fetters

During the freezing cold winter month of February 2000, I went on a class trip with Professor Hester’s Youth Culture and Consumption class.  Professor Hester was a really boring lecturer at Kansai Gaidai, but he had the best field trips.  There was a huge convention devoted to amateur manga, perhaps better known as doujinshi. From all over Japan, different artists and writers would draw and self-publish their own manga stories.

 [Looking Back]  Cased Closed on the Big Screen
Written by: Jason Fetters

It was springtime in Japan in 2000, cherry blossoms in full bloom, and I was a college kid with a lot of free time and nothing to do.  I walked over to my school’s bookstore to pick up the latest Kansai Walker, a travel and entertainment guide, to see what was playing at the movies.  I scanned past the usual American movies, I could see them much cheaper back home anyways. Looking past that, I saw an ad for the Detective Conan movie called Meitantei Conan: Hitomi no Naka no Ansatsusha (Better known as Cased Closed: Captured in her Eyes in America).

Written by: Jason Fetters

I first started listening to J-pop because I happened to be at the mall in Pinellas Park that had a Shonen Knife CD back in 1994.  In the early 90s the whole grunge thing was going on and I honestly didn’t care for it due to the whiney lyrics and repetitive riffs that got old quick.  I was looking for something different, so I picked up Shonen Knife’s  Rock Animals (1994), which was a pop-laced punk album. I liked Rock Animals back then mainly because it offered something that grunge wasn’t.

My second exposure was as a college student during the 90s. Hiro, my Japanese roommate from college, had a girlfriend who was coming to visit him from Kyoto and he asked me if I wanted any gifts. That made me recall an old catalogue from Video Search of Miami that had an ad for the J-pop singer Chara. Wanting to look cool and in-the-know, I said I wanted a Chara CD. I got lucky with that one since she had a hit single, Yasashii Kimochi, high on the charts. I stumbled into that one.

Written by: Jason Fetters

Causally reading various anime forums and hearing our recent podcast on if one should call themselves a otaku in Japan, I came to think about my own past experiences in the country.

While still in America, I shared an apartment with three Japanese roommates. When they found out I was going to be studying in Japan, they all gave me advice that would suitable for any young nerd going to the motherland.

One of them, my friend Junnichi, told me to never tell Japanese girls that I like anime, manga, or video games and avoid calling myself an otaku.  Another roommate, Midori, a young woman of 19, said the same thing. However, she added that certain manga, such as Detective Conan (Cased Closed in the US), was considered socially acceptable.  I paid close attention to their words of wisdom. I wanted to meet hot Japanese women and I wasn’t going to let some hobby get in the way.