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Thursday, September 21, 2006

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.

13 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:31 PM

    Mick - Just ran across your thoughtful comments on KawaiiNation, more than a year after you posted them.

    The reason I was searching on the site name was that it seems to have gone belly up. Apparently irreparable site errors block most registered users, including me, from signing on and posting (irreparable, that is, if the money for maintaining the site has run out, which I suspect is the case).

    The result: the flow of fresh info has dried up, and the community has withered away. Example: As I write this, on 10/26/07, the once-busy "Japanese Girls" forum has fewer than 20 posts for all of October, all by one user. Same story elsewhere on the site.

    Under "News and Announcements," there's only a post from "biev" (admin) that acknowledges "some script errors lately. Access to the site is on and off, registration isn't working at all, and the search function has been down for some time. We have been looking into ways of fixing this, hopefully it will be resolved soon." That's the latest word, and that was posted on 9/27.

    Do you have any knowledge about what has happened? I fear the worst.

    ReplyDelete
  2. you caught me in a perfect time, i was checkin' for blog comment alerts. ^_^ Do we know each other before? your nick do sound familiar...

    anyways, the site is still up, it won't expire until July next year. Most probably the hosting server has problems with its services. other than that, i have no idea. If you're still checking back this blog post for my response, please send me an email.

    Peace ^_^
    jin

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3:30 PM

    Hi,

    I've been redirected to your article by google, while I was searching why the KawaiiNation has been completely down last weeks. We cannot access the site anymore and that's a shame.

    I've been following the site and participating to it from the time you were speaking in your article, and yes it was just great.

    The problem with KawaiiNation lately, was also that old pictures links are mostly all broken. And that's a shame. I imagine that using free solutions was the best but, having a dedicate server would be a better idea if the site ever comes online again... There are people like me who are ready to support and give donations to KawaiiNation... I live in Japan now and I wanted to cover idols events for KawaiiNation. That is just too bad that the community is offline now.

    Do you have any idea on what's going on lately with the site ? I'm very worried about it... There's no mail coming up from the admin so...

    Feel free to contact me on my email adress. Bye and take care.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5:19 PM

    It seems the site is offline for at least the last week or two.

    The site was the best, the imageshack problems made things difficult, but they bounced back, and it was a resource that was unequalled, the daily favorite thread was worthy even on its own.

    I was hoping one day to log on and see the Yuko Ogura poses nude thread, but still hasn't happened and now no Kawaiination :(

    will keep checking back to this blog for future announcements on KawaiiNation.com and hopefully they get back online soon, or if there is a new name for kawaiination.com please let us know in this thread :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous8:12 PM

    Hiya Jin, it's NymVette.

    I just stumbled across your blog and thought I would say hi. Also although it is an old blog it appears people are commenting here about Kawaiination disappearing lately. We as a former moderator of the site and after discussions with other former moderators and the admin, it looks like Kawaiination is totally dead. First we had the login problem which effected us all. Also the owner of the site went some time ago but didn't hand over the ownership although there were admin and mods willing to take it over. It now looks like he just stopped paying for the hosting so the site has gone. We can't blame him for stop paying for the site, but I think he could have given us the option of taking it over before he did this.

    So looks like Kawaiination is now dead and people will have to find alternatives.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hiya Nymvette, what a pleasant surprise.... it's like a ghost from my past dropping a line. ^_^ Here wishing that everything is fine with you.

    so guys...here's what I can say -->

    For those who are still reading this post, or somehow came across it... I have reason to believe that Kawaiination is NOT expired. the domain is still active till July next year. The problem is technical and requires some programming to solve it.

    Now, I can solve this problem for ya'all but I need the site owner to contact me. I will be of assistance if I can. Though I left Kawaiination a long time ago, I hate to see it die. Just anyone, anyone at all, know where Rin is, ask him to contact me (cos' I don't see him online anymore).

    Peace ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7:23 AM

    Hi guys.

    Rin is still very active on the vbulletin.org website forum, as he is actually posting everyday...

    Now we HAVE to contact him !!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous2:34 AM

    The owner of Kawaiination is apparently thinking of selling off the domain name. This is really sad for me personally as I visit the site from time to time and contribute quite a bit.

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=651925

    ReplyDelete
  9. Believe me, Rin has been thinking of selling the domain for a long, long time already. Just that nobody took notice. It's amazing that it stayed around as long as it did. I guess he did have some affection to the site after a while.

    Given his current situation, and busy life, i guess he wanted to move on. the best way to keep KN alive is to have somebody take over the domain and administer the site.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous6:12 PM

    What about a replacement instead if using the same domain name? Kawaiination.org instead?

    Is there anything some of us can do?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous6:12 PM

    What about a replacement instead if using the same domain name? Kawaiination.org instead?

    Is there anything some of us can do?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous6:12 PM

    opps!!! Sorry for the multiple post!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous5:12 PM

    I just did a google search for "kawaiination" and there seems to be some activity on the domain, in a subfolder called /uplo there is a forum up, but it seems to be in construction

    if you just go to the normal domain with no subdomain it is still blank though

    ReplyDelete

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