Kawaiination and me...

A few years ago I joined a web community called kawaiiNation. It's where we lounge around looking for softcore pictures of japanese girls, and create lots of discussion around the topic of that one thing that is our common interest - Japanese Girls.

I can't say that I am a pervert, but basically we say you're a pervert when you look at nudie pictures of girls, consistently and religiously. So yeah, I guess I .... was. ^_^ What? Stop rolling your eyes, I still love girls, but the level has toned down a lot, ya know. On topic, it was really fun being there. That was the first webcommunity I have every joined.

Why was this web forum deemed enough to start a blog post about? Basically, it's all nostalgia, and lots of history - good times and bad times. It's the one place that has a place in my heart forever.

The thing that attracted me to this forum in the first place was the pictures. I am a big Japan-holic guy since young, so I was the only one in my neighbourhood looking for pictures of Japanese idols, while my friends are oogling Jennifer, Britney, Christina and the gang. What's more addicting are the members. Each one have truly fantastic persona and character. It was a great experience to interact with them with on a regular basis on our common interest.

Over the years, we managed to collect an archive of links to websites with galleries of Japanese girls of all genre - schoolgirls, models, amateurs, pros, idols, gravure, softcore, b-grades... you name it. It was really impressive. Remember this was back in the day where torrents wasn't around and Kazaa really sucks. But one thing for sure - "No Hardcore". So you never see any pornography nor genitalia at all. It's one thing we're really proud of, and that we know how to set ourselves aside from the rest of the world. Eventually, with the arrival of newer members, our horizon was broadened to outside of Japan. I remember we debated on whether we should keep our forum solely for Japanese or at least to East Asia only. But we opened up the market anyway to cater other interests.

After some time, I was recruited to be one of the moderators to oversee the maintainance of the site. Maintaining the site was a difficult job. You see, what makes this place unique is that we encourage on having more 'quality' postings, so one liners are considered spam. We wanted the forum to be different from the others, where the members are required to be more active, intelligent and creative when they submit posts. Flamings are also a taboo. At the end of the day, we have ourselves a site where everyone are courteous, user participation paramount, and great pictures for all. Obviously, this have led to some members branding us as being snobbish and holier-than-thou. Some who claimed to be veterans at other forums blasted us for our policies. But they are just minor, they went away later seeing that they could not do anything to change us. In my opinion, they are just jealous to see us growing so fast and so consistent, and still able to maintain ourselves a great reputation as an informative forum with great members. They just failed to notice the key thing to our unity. We are not only friends, we can be as close as family members. In fact two members found their soul-mate in this very place and got married.

Among some of the key things that we gained there was our net-crawling prowess. We have developed some tricks and techniques of crawling the net with the help of only search engines and stuff. We come to a point that we can also identify the girls just by looking at the boobs. We even know their interests and personal information like blood type and favourite book. Are our obsession too crazy? Well, don't be surprised, it's just the same as being able to recite the entire active roster of your favourite football team and their hobbies. My role there, until I left, was to moderate the forum, provide Japanese translations, help identify forums and such.

So why did I leave? After some time, there are many times I find that the site just became passive. Most of the postings consisted of the regular members which is only handful. The old members have left, we are struggling, desperate for more active members. We have more lurkers than participants. And with our filtering policies running, we couldn't even get spams sometimes. Generic members are feeling too intimidated to post. SO, I figured that it was probably my time to go, to have more room for "new blood" to come in.

Plus, I have once dedicated most of my time to kawaiiNation, that it came to a point where kawaiiNation was the only 'life' I had. I have a job, and I have friends and family too. I can't neglect my real-life for too long, lest I become a real Denpa Otoko. My responsibilities have grown too much for me to handle and the effort to juggle my time with kawaiiNation has grown taxing.

There are other reasons, which I won't reveal here out of respect of the existing members and moderators. But long story short, there was further clash of interests and principles. I would hate to be the grumpy old dude character there. I always emotional in whatever I say, so I may said things out of my line in order to prove a point. So I decided to retire from it all before it grows worse.

Time went by, and I have never forgotten the times I had there. So I decided to take a stroll down memory lane there today, and my oh my, it seemed like they did really great. A strong nostalgic feeling came to my heart, and warmth of liquid to my eyes. It's like seeing an old friend.

So I popped in a PM to the admin, Rin, to see if he still remembers me. And yes he did. I decided to join back the forum. I'll most probably hang out in the non-girls forum, let the newer fellas have their fun. I had mine already a long time ago.

If any of you guys are still reading up to this point, thank you. To some of my friends and family reading this, this may be a shock to you, but this is who I was and who I am. But I am still the same person.


So if any of you are interested, give them a visit.