Five years? Where has the time gone...? It seems like only yesterday that this was a bright-red, eye-bleedingly difficult to read site with no content. Now it's under re-construction, as happens every so often. And if there's anything I've learned in 5 years of doing this site, it's that although I'm a servicable HTML-coder, I'm not a graphic designer. The only thing I've managed is to slowly lower the number of complaints by progressively re-arranging and reworking the layout. What's next for cent-j? Only time will tell.

Five Years ago this month, I was living in a dorm with a former co-worker, who never stopped talking, while going to classes in an effort to graduate one semester early. I had just spent an entire semester listening to Mr. Children's Bolero, My Little Lover's New Adventure, L'arc's assorted singles, Glay's Pure Soul, and other sparse bits, but my focus was Globe (which is evident by the profusion of my early Globe album review contributions). Brian, Aaron, and Gary had all finally returned from a second semester of Kansai Gaidai, and they had it in mind to put some translations and Japanese music reviews on the internet. How I got involved I don't remember; I just remember talking with Brian on the phone and explaining how I knew HTML. The rest was history.

Ok, so that's bullshit. The site languished, with almost no readers except us and people we personally directed there for nearly a year. In that time, I heard many new Japanese acts. Brian and Aaron had both tried to push Dir en Grey's Gauze on me, and I really wasn't 'feeling' it. Brian sent me an MD of singles, including three Shiina Ringo singles- 'Gibusu', 'Honnou' and 'Tsumi to Batsu' if I remember correctly. I hated her voice and skipped those tracks almost all the time. Brian also sent me a copy of Cocco's 'Kumuitaa' on MD, that I listened to maybe three times before retiring it. I couldn't figure out who she was trying to be- there was rock and folk and a cappella, she was all over the place. What a turn off.

Eventually, we moved off of my school's server and onto a server Gary was running on a Linux machine in his house, using a cable modem as the link to the outside world. Thus, a new era of unprecedented downtime was ushered in. About this time, I was off to Japan for the JET programme. The months leading up to my flight into ex-patriotism saw the first decent push of Japanese media onto the internet. I managed to score a few videos here and there, and Morning Musume's sudden explosion of popularity meant that 'Love Machine' and 'Koi no Dance Site' were easily available. Tsunku had me from that point on. I just kept listening to the great hooks, and watching the videos- they made me crack up back then. I distinctly remember none of my friends 'getting' it. That's when I knew that I'd gone somewhere most people didn't ever make it.

Although I had continued to follow most of the artists that I'd gotten into while studying at Kansai Gaidai, I simply wasn't prepared for the explosion of exposure I would get when I stepped off the plane. During my study abroad, Japanese music was something I had held at arms length, only taking what I wanted. By the time I returned, I was out of the kiddy pool and jumping directly into the deep end. The first moment of free time I had in Tokyo, I left the Keio Plaza in Shinjuku and followed the evening crowd towards whereever they were going. As I expected, a CD shop was not hard to find. I went in and just looked around and felt like I was going to explode.

A couple of months later saw me recording every week's Music Station, Hey Hey Hey, and a shit-ton of music videos. This would continue for three years, more or less. In that first year, it didn't take me long to realize that Shiina Ringo was pretty cool, and that Globe were starting to stink it up. Glay was more or less still Glay, and L'arc was releasing exciting new material (that became Real). I started to gather huge amounts of knowledge about the industry in general and the popular artists of the time.

There were some specific, epiphanous moments that first year. I remember when Brian lent me Gekokujyou Extasy, Shiina Ringo's live DVD. After a night with it, I realized that I had found a voice that my life would never be complete without again.

One day I decided to give Dir en Grey's Macabre another shot on the strength of Brian and Aaron's reviews (they both gave it album of the year). I distinctly remember listening to it using earbuds while headed home from a day out once. 'Berry' came on, and the girls voice was sweet... and brokenly terrifying. When she rasps 'I'm going to blow your head off like raspberry jaaaaaammm', a shiver shot through me. I looked around and realized that no one else was on the street with me. I immediately skipped to the next song and started walking faster.

Sometime during that year, Tsunku tried to start a new idol's career with a promising 14 year old named Matsuura Aya. Her songs were total fluff pop- the same guilty pleasure that Tsunku had always managed to inflict on me. It didn't take long before her adorable videos and giant shoes won me over. I still follow her career today. I guess I've always wanted an Idol to follow; the last major idol was Matsuda Seiko, and I had missed that boat by about... a decade.

As that year wore on, I learned of Utaban and began to watch it regularly. Gackt hit me sometime in that year as well. Some of our readers may remember that we did a handful of subtitled clips (four, total) of his appearances on Utaban. We released them via our ill-fated Yahoo group. I started to contribute a lot more to the page that year.

The page itself, however, was plagued by tons of problems. Downtime became the rule rather than the exception. The page moved from address to address, spawning a bounce.to web redirection and a Geocities mirror. As is often the case with these sorts of things, the high maintenance made me start to burn out a bit on the page, and as a result, Japanese music. I backed off the TV a little and tried a new tactic: Concerts.

Aaron and Teresa introduced me to Laid that year and accompanied me to L'arc's Real arena tour. I took in a number of other acts, sometimes at random. It was quite the adventure; learning how and where to get tickets, finding the venues, being frustrated that my ticket always sucked. In three years I went to about fifty concerts; peaking at three in four day's time at one point. All the time, I was watching Space Shower TV and Viewsic when the burn-out tide was not high; picking up acts that rarely or never made it to the mainstream music shows. I began to spend more and more time listening to people that even Brian and Aaron hadn't heard much from, and rode a sine wave of involvement with the page. That year certainly had it's own share of magical moments.

I remember Brian posting to the page one day that Cocco was quitting and how horrible that was. I recall not caring overly much but being struck by how much the annoucement seemed to have affected Brian, who's musical taste I'd often found to be very good. Brian asked me to make sure I got the video for Hane ~lay down my arms~, which I did. I was immediately struck by her intensity. It took nearly a year after that point before I realized that Cocco was, and is, one of the most amazing artists of my generation. I'll still never forget the moment I found out that she played a live club show in Osaka the first November I was on JET, and I missed it. I was furious.

Early in 2001, Brian came over to my house with a CD, as he often would in those days. He described how he had learned of this raw group and had purchased the album. We put it in the stereo and I listened to it while flipping through the very impressive special packaging. Although I listened to the album several times after that, it was a very difficult piece to wrap my head around. I had always championed excellent album production, and here was an album that seemed to have none at all. There was, however, something that would not be denied in the slow force behind those riffs and screams. I left the album playing while working on the page; while cooking; while eating and sleeping. It had a melancholy attactive quality, yes- but somehow, there just never seemed to be a time when I actually wanted to listen to it. It made great background music, though.

Flash forward a few weeks, and Aaron and Brian are both going to the concert; the band is out to promote their album release and they're going to be playing Shinsaibashi Muse hall. Never one to miss a concert, I get a ticket and meet with the guys before to make sure we all know where the venue is. We're there like four hours before the doors open, and although there are no other fans, you can hear the band doing their sound test/warm up inside and their management is hanging around outside. Brian serendipitously approaches them and explains in Japanese that we'd like to meet the band. Although it didn't happen, it's forever etched in my mind as a moment that defines who Brian is.

Hours later we walk out of the concert, and I'm utterly shellshocked. I remember that night in some weird third-person. Like I was watching myself through a stranger's eyes. I remember not talking much. I somehow felt that talking would lessen the experience, like overanalyzing a particularly beautiful bit of poetry. I went home on the train and immediately went to Lawson's to buy a ticket to their second concert the following Thursday at the same venue. The next day, I went to three different CD stores to buy all their singles and their album's special packaging for my very own. There's never been a moment since then when I've regretted even an instant of the time or a single yen of the money I've spent on fra-foa. I've seen them live over a dozen times now.

In sharp contrast was when attended Matsuura Aya's first concert tour in 2002. I had never been to a Hello Project concert ever before, and I never have since. Although the performance was adorable and worth the cost in spades, the crowd- sweet Jesus, the crowd. I think the best description I ever managed to formulate was that of Ayaya as Helen of Troy and the audience members as Paris. If she had stopped halfway through the concert and shouted 'Malasia no syusyou korose!!', there would have been over 3000 Japanese males making their way to South-East Asia within the hour.

My final year of JET is when things started to really change. While most of my friends were being turned off by the increasing amount of hip-hop and R&B in the charts, I was warming up to some of the new directions nicely. Amuro's new style won me over quickly, and I've said numerous times that I firmly believe everything Verbal touches turns to gold. I remember that year listening to so much music that Aaron actively disliked and Brian could give or take.

We had a few short-lived contributors adding content to the page that year that were not part of the original staff, but alas, things really started to wind down. Da Crank stopped writing, I stopped doing reviews, and Brian's band involvement had slowed the translations to a trickle. I focused on getting everything in place for my removal back to America and obtaining gainful employment. The page didn't quite die, though. Near the end of the time I was on JET, the page did manage to score an honest-to-goodness hosting service and the downtime was almost completely eliminated. With this service, we managed a solid forum for the first time and began to establish the small community that persists to this day.

The past year has been relatively calm but productive, largely due to Brian's unemployment. He managed dozens of translations per week and coaxed the page back into regular updates. My contribution has been minimal, but I have no intention of leaving yet. This year, we've continued to build a small but loyal fanbase, and a huge repository of translations. We also managed to score our own centigrade-j.com domain name.

So that the end of my show. And I do like to end the show with kind of a 'oh' feeling. And I think I've done that quite well. Thank you very much for being here. Hope you enjoyed it.