Here I be

Tell the old school world who you are, and let us welcome you into the forum!
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TSOJ
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:44 am
Anime Fan Since: 1990
Location: Kagoshima, Japan
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Here I be

Post by TSOJ »

I'm Curtis Hoffmann, one of those fans that got into anime through Akira back in 1990. At the time, the only way to get access to any kind of TV show or movie was through the tape trading network, and most of those were unsubbed nth generation. So, I started studying Japanese on my own with a handful of dictionaries and a couple copies of Lupin III color TV episode books. In '92 I decided to come to Japan to learn in a more immersive environment, which brought me into contact with Hitoshi Doi. Hitoshi helped me survive my first few months in Tokyo, and gave me access to the net since the gaijin ghetto I was living in didn't even have a phone line. At the time, he was summarizing Dragonball, Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon, and he asked me to take over DBZ for him. The rest is history.

In 1996, I returned to the U.S. and moved to Dallas to work for Hitachi as a tech writer. In 1999 I moved to Austin for a different Japanese company as a customer trainer. I stayed there 10 years before deciding to return to Japan in 2008. I was in Tokyo until the big quake last March, and I've been in Kyushu since as an English teacher. For the last 3.5 years, I've maintained a blog on life in Japan and anime, manga and maid cafes. Along the way I've created a couple more databases on top of the Akira Toriyama Superdatabase (Moyashimon, Geobreeders, and Garo for the years from 1967 to about 1972). One of my side projects is writing commentary on each of the manga magazines currently on the market (I think I've picked up 30 different titles so far).

My handle is an acronym of my blog title: Three Steps Over Japan (long story, don't ask). I haven't really been watching anime recently because I don't have the patience (or the money, or a TV set). I've been reading a lot of manga, and sometimes I'll go to Book-Off and pick up something for 100 yen just to check it out. Otherwise, I've been spending more of my energy writing about the science kits from Gakken's Otona no Kagaku line.
Guwashi!
davemerrill
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Re: Here I be

Post by davemerrill »

Hi Curtis! I remember seeing your name pretty much everywhere on rec.arts.anime back in the day. Glad to hear you're thriving in Japan. Welcome to the forum!
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greg
Posts: 2159
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:00 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1989 (consciously)
Location: Shizuoka-ken, Japan
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Re: Here I be

Post by greg »

TSOJ wrote:Hitoshi Doi
:shock: That is so cool! His early Internet pages on anime are a part of the inspiration for me to make anime-related homepages myself. Him and Ming.

So Kagoshima... that's great! I've only been to Kyushu once, back in '02 for our one year anniversary. We stayed in Nagasaki for a couple nights, visited Huis Ten Bosch and then stayed in Sasebo for one night (ugh), then returned to the mainland. I've wanted to go back there for a while. We only drove through Fukuoka, but I wanted to stop and look around. I had no idea of what to see and do there, so we just continued on our way. I wouldn't mind living down there, but it is rather far from the in-laws. I currently live in Nagano-ken, but next month we are moving to Shizuoka-ken.

Anyhow, welcome to the forum!
My presence on the Net, with plenty of random geekiness:
My homepage
My YouTube channel
My Flickr photostream
My Tumblr page
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Daniel
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Anime Fan Since: 199X年
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Re: Here I be

Post by Daniel »

Curtis,

I'm glad that you decided to join us! Welcome! I remember reading a lot of your old writings, and I'm honored that you would come join us here.

Welcome!
Daniel
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TSOJ
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:44 am
Anime Fan Since: 1990
Location: Kagoshima, Japan
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Re: Here I be

Post by TSOJ »

BikeLover wrote:Welcome.

I see another Member from the shaky Isles. Myself been here for 15yrs now.
3/11 was interesting.
Hi BL. Which part of the Big Nashi are you in?
Guwashi!
User avatar
TSOJ
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:44 am
Anime Fan Since: 1990
Location: Kagoshima, Japan
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Re: Here I be

Post by TSOJ »

davemerrill wrote:Hi Curtis! I remember seeing your name pretty much everywhere on rec.arts.anime back in the day. Glad to hear you're thriving in Japan. Welcome to the forum!
Hi Dave! Thanks. Hisashiburi. Whachubeenupto?
Guwashi!
User avatar
TSOJ
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:44 am
Anime Fan Since: 1990
Location: Kagoshima, Japan
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Re: Here I be

Post by TSOJ »

greg wrote:
TSOJ wrote:Hitoshi Doi
:shock: That is so cool! His early Internet pages on anime are a part of the inspiration for me to make anime-related homepages myself. Him and Ming.

So Kagoshima... that's great! I've only been to Kyushu once, back in '02 for our one year anniversary. We stayed in Nagasaki for a couple nights, visited Huis Ten Bosch and then stayed in Sasebo for one night (ugh), then returned to the mainland. I've wanted to go back there for a while. We only drove through Fukuoka, but I wanted to stop and look around. I had no idea of what to see and do there, so we just continued on our way. I wouldn't mind living down there, but it is rather far from the in-laws. I currently live in Nagano-ken, but next month we are moving to Shizuoka-ken.

Anyhow, welcome to the forum!
Thanks.
Kind of depends on what you like. Lots of onsen around here. Sakura-jima, out in the bay (maybe 3-4 kilo from my apartment) is an active volcano and is belching ash and dust up to 20 times a day now (up from 5 times a year just a few years ago). Aso on the east side of the island has lots of big hills to hike up and another volcano inside a huge caldera. Beppu is one big onsen hidden under a sulfur cloud. If you don't want to soak until you become a raisin, there's a lot of history regarding the Yayoi culture, and much of the events during the Meiji restoration involved people from here (Saigo being the big one, and Ryouma Sakamoto being from north Kyushu.) A few people like to fish from the road along the bay. Lots of ferries out from the port here, including a line down to Tanegashima where JAXA has a launch pad (explains why Kagoshima has some space-related stuff around the city). Actually, some guy from NASA is on tour in Fukuoka next week, and he's giving a presentation in Kagoshima this Monday (I'm signed up for that). Izumi, on the west side, is the resting grounds for red-crested cranes during the Dec. - Feb. period, but I haven't checked that out yet because I don't have the camera for it (the cranes are a huge tourist draw). The only thing I really miss from Tokyo (excluding the easy access to electronics parts shops in Akihabara) is the really nice bike trail that ran by my apartment along the Tamagawa. Kagoshima's not really bike friendly, although since there's no real train system, the main ways of getting around are by car or bike.
Guwashi!
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TSOJ
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:44 am
Anime Fan Since: 1990
Location: Kagoshima, Japan
Contact:

Re: Here I be

Post by TSOJ »

AnimeSennin wrote:Curtis,

I'm glad that you decided to join us! Welcome! I remember reading a lot of your old writings, and I'm honored that you would come join us here.

Welcome!
Daniel
Thanks for the welcome, Daniel.
Yeah, I always seem to have too much free time, and overly easy access to a keyboard. I've sought out therapy for it, and I think it's helping. Last July I celebrated the 3rd anniversary of my blog, and in those three years, I only wrote 1060+ articles, uploaded just a little over 8000 photos to mediafire, and by conservative estimates, wrote not much more than half a million words. I have my therapist to thank that it wasn't a lot more than that. (On the other hand, I just started my fourth blog this winter, so I may need to schedule another session with him soon.)
Guwashi!
davemerrill
Posts: 1235
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:38 pm
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Re: Here I be

Post by davemerrill »

TSOJ wrote:
davemerrill wrote:Hi Curtis! I remember seeing your name pretty much everywhere on rec.arts.anime back in the day. Glad to hear you're thriving in Japan. Welcome to the forum!
Hi Dave! Thanks. Hisashiburi. Whachubeenupto?
I retired from chairing AWA, got married, moved to Canada, more or less in that order.
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Brain Trash
Posts: 17
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Anime Fan Since: 1989
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Re: Here I be

Post by Brain Trash »

I'll be damned. Here's a colossal blast from the past if I ever saw one.

You certainly don't know me Curtis, but I used to lurk on the rec.arts.manga & anime newsgroups back in the very early through mid 90's when I was in middle school. Among other users, I followed both your posts in general and particularly your Dragon Ball manga guides. I know its far beyond stupid to say this what, roughly 20-ish or so years later, but I cannot thank you enough for those. Those were a huge life saver for me, because yours was the very first un-aborted attempt at a DB manga guide (back in those pre-scanlation days when we needed such things) to not only catch up with it, but also keep up with the remainder of its whole run and make it all the way through to the bitter end of the damn thing.

I followed the series (by way of the anime) as best I could through the usual tape trading channels, but I had a few gaps (one major one in particular) and your guides gave me a very good primer on portions of the series that I wouldn't get to see for myself for a good number of years. I used to comb through usenet posts every week for years (through one of the computers at the office where my mother worked, which was my sole means of accessing the net way back in those days) checking in for your latest guide for plot updates on where the manga was at, which was far enough ahead of the anime that it would give me a vague idea of what to expect when my next batch of anime episodes got there (which was sorely necessary, since not all of my episodes would be subbed). Yours is one of those names that's just synonymous with some of my earliest years as an anime fan.

And by the way, it certainly wasn't just your manga guides that burned you into my brain: your average posts in general back then were extremely good, well written, and informative as all hell, well far beyond the topic of just Dragon Ball. I was especially fond of whenever you'd wax on about Japanese customs and social norms and give incredibly welcome and fascinating context to the bits of them that would always inevitably creep into so many different anime.

I was a heavy duty lurker back then, but I've always been very regretful that I never really actively participated in any of the discussions at the time. In fairness I was REALLY little back then, almost everyone online at that time was college age or older, and generally speaking I was severely intimidated from opening my mouth even a hair and embarrassing myself. But regardless, I dearly miss that period of anime fandom, if for no other reason than the massively higher bar that intelligent, well-informed people like yourself set in level of discourse that went on back then. Especially in stark contrast to the ignorant, mental sludge that has overpoweringly characterized so very much of the online anime community throughout the past nearly 14 or 15 some-odd years or thereabouts.

Basically, beyond the simple "hi and welcome!" I wanted to thank you so much for the incredible impact that both you and everyone else that was around during that period of Western anime fandom had had on me at such a young age. A whole lot would change in Western anime fandom at around the turn of the millennium (in the long run, a large majority of it for the worse as far as I'm concerned), and it was thanks to people like yourself back during the prior decade giving me such a rich base of context and information that I would cross into the later eras of Western anime culture armed with an insanely wider scope of knowledge and an infinitely better perspective on the medium than I ever, ever would have had had I been unfortunate enough to not be introduced to it until a decade or so later than I did (the way that so many others would).

Hell, in all honesty if I didn't get into anime when and how I did during that particular time and surrounded by the kinds of anime and people that I had been, I very much doubt I would've honestly cared for the medium a great deal much (if at all) if my first impression of it was through the highly skewed filters that so many other people in the U.S. would get their first taste of it from during the late 90's and early 00's American mainstream explosion of the medium.

You had no way of knowing it, but you were a piece of a really influential period of my childhood that played a very substantial role in helping to shape a great deal of my outlook on art, be it anime or otherwise. Any hint of well informed, well reasoned intelligence that has ever or might ever occasionally drip from my mouth regarding anime and manga is in large part thanks to the various people who taught me shit from shinola on the subject back in the early 90's... which included you. So thank you very, very, very much for that.
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