Bigger. Faster. Redolent of spices.
Welcome to the new and improved Issendai.com!
It’s been a while since I overhauled the site—and what a long, strange trip it’s been. I started this site 18 years ago, a bright twentysomething newly unleashed on the big city, blazing with passion for life, letters, and above all else, anime. My first page was You Know You Watch Too Much Anime When…, followed by a Shishiwakamaru shrine and If I Become an Anime Character…, then If I Become a Dragonball Character, then a page for my translations of obscure manga and a mini-site about Japanese particles, then a site about Japanese cooking.
What I’m saying is, I had a Theme.
Since then, I’ve done grad school (in forensic anthropology—field trips involved corpse recovery), spent years working my way up the ladder of educational publishing, moved on to advertising and then to tech writing. I discovered the Society for Creative Anachronism and the allure of Chinese architecture. I took up jewelrymaking until I was good enough to start selling, then got bored and moved on to calligraphy, to metalworking, to spinning. Obscure onomastics beckons me from time to time: geishas’ names, Haitian names, any names that are beautiful and little-studied. Psychology, especially the psychology of narcissists. Broken social systems. 13th-century French clothing.
What I’m saying is, there’s no Theme any more.
So it’s been unsettling, rereading all these writings from my past self. The world has moved on, making the anime and games I wrote about outdated; and I’ve moved on, getting comfortably outdated, but about new and fresh middle-aged-geeky things. My old pages didn’t feel like me any more. For a while I considered dumping them. In the end I sorted them into new categories—mostly Silliness—and left them for those who enjoy visiting my obsessed anime-fan twentysomething self.
For the rest of you, my academic-geek fortysomething self welcomes you. I hope you enjoy wandering through the maze of my interests.
Issendai
January 2014
9.18.09 – Added a page on coupons to Young and Broke.
9.11.09 – Started Writing Jobs, a site for turning your writing skills into income.
4.14.09 – Updated the Dance of the Goblins page: Dance of the Goblins | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Interlude
9.27.08 – Began Winter Adventures, a resource for cool and exciting jobs and vacations that fit into your winter break.
6.12.08 – Broke the page on Japanese girls’ names into six more manageable parts.
5.25.08 – Added pages to Young and Broke, including Become an eBay trader, Drop-shipping on eBay, and Become an egg donor.
3.10.08 – Put up an image gallery of Aburatsubo Ayanojou and dusted off the Kuja directory. Despite having to delete about a third of the links and relocate another third, the directory is longer. Whoo. I also added Summer Adventure pages on UK resort jobs and Canadian resort jobs.
2.04.08 – Worked on Summer Adventures, including adding a section on Israel and plumping up the Japan pages.
1.30.08 – Started a minisite on the Asus Eee PC, complete with a page of wallpapers (because I know what’s important).
1.29.08 – Added a page on compulsive hoarding, the second page of the Randompedia.
11.20.07 – Added a page on Dance of the Goblins, a self-published novel with an edutaining promotional scheme. It’s the first page in what will eventually be the Randompedia.
9.04.07 – Opened Little Gorgeous Things, a bento site.
9.13.06 – Added more of Peacefulchaos’s art to the Kadaj fan art page.
3.29.06 – Opened a section of summer camps and added pages on summer jobs and opportunities in Japan to the Summer Adventures page. Eventually the summer camp pages will be their own sitelet, but for now they’re borrowing the Summer Adventures layout.
2.26.06 – Added more names to the page of geisha names.
2.12.06 – Added The Many Faces of Sesshomaru. Also rearranged the menu bar and started overhauling the non-ssi pages, starting a couple of days ago.
1.02.06 – Added a page on internships. Yi, has it been that long since I touched the site? I’ve been preoccupied with… well, with work, but I’ll pretend that I’ve been working on a fabulously glamorous Inuyasha and Fullmetal Alchemist net of sitelets. With Flash. And nudity. Yes.
11.20.05 – Added a page on student credit cards.
10.30.05 – Finished the M’s and N’s, started on the O’s.
10.10.05 – Finished the shrine to Kadaj. Now all I need is Advent Children, and I’ll have all the libidinous snark anyone could need.
10.09.05 – Started a shrine to Kadaj of Advent Children.
10.06.05 – Even more M’s.
10.04.05 – More M’s.
10.03.05 – Added the rest of the L’s and some of the M’s, starting a page on French Arthurian Men’s Names M-O.
10.02.05 – Added the K’s and some of the L’s to French Arthurian Names. Added comments about Japanese names’ expiration dates to the pages on Japanese names, added a name to each page, and brushed up the links sections.
9.28.05 – Another general brushup of the fox site. I pulled the “where to read more about foxes” information out and made a fox study guide page.
9.24.05 – Unearthed a folder of old files, and put several of them up as quotes about Chinese fox spirits, a fox spirit FAQ, and one of the few existing stories about gay foxes, Male or Female? Also put up three stories from an old book of Japanese stories and an entire chapter on kitsune from Lafcadio Hearn’s Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.
9.20.05 – Did a major brushup to Kitsune, Kumiho, Huli Jing, Fox, including adding a page on the highly confusing “fox” Pao-Ssu and separating kitsune stories and Chinese fox stories out from the general resource pages. Has it really been a year and a half since I touched the site?
I also added a page on volunteer jobs to Young and Broke, since people are still keenly interested in that topic in Summer Adventures.
Man, am I tired.
9.17.05 – Finished the H’s, I’s, and J’s, starting a new page for French Arthurian Men’s Names J-L. Also added The Useless Guide to FFIX , reviews of FFX, FFX2, FF7, Kingdom Hearts, Vagrant Story, and Xenosaga, and a rant called Hyper Is the New Feminine.
9.15.05 – Hah! Finished the effing G’s.
9.11.05 – Added even more G’s. AUGH THE G’S WILL NEVER END.
9.10.05 – Added a page on names in Prester John’s kingdom, plus some more G’s to the French Arthurian pages.
9.8.05 – Added the F’s to French Arthurian Names and started the G’s, opening a new page for French Arthurian Men’s Names G-I.
9.5.05 – Added the E’s to French Arthurian Names. Ph34r mai 1337 geekiness. Also added a page of Japanese boys’ names.
9.03.05 – Added the D’s to French Arthurian Names and opened a new page for French Arthurian Men’s Names D-F.
8.31.05 – Young and Broke is here! It’s skeletal at the moment, but it’ll be filling out at the rate of a page or two a week.
8.07.05 – Camping Tips for LARPers and SCAdians is up, courtesy of Selkie. Also a few names added to the lists of French Arthurian names.
7.24.05 – And the section on French Arthurian names is here!
5.07.05 – Not an update, but a Coming Soon: French Arthurian names; a gallery of plot devices in regrettable taste; and the care and feeding of the fannish dictator. I’m also thinking of starting a section on things your school’s not allowed to tell you about birth control, so if you’re interested, email me and let me know.
4.25.05 – Revamped the Riku Omnigatherum and started a sitewide overhaul. I’ve also been fiddling with Summer Adventures off and on.
4.10.05 – Summer Adventures is unfinished, but open.
3.20.05 – Added a kitsune-zushi recipe to Miso Soup for the Otaku Soul.
3.03.05 – Added a miso soup recipe to Miso Soup for the Otaku Soul. Wow. A miso soup recipe on my Miso Soup site! Groundbreaking! And it took only three years to get to it! Plus another big update to the Japanese girls’ names, with a running start on the reformatting the list so desperately needs.
3.01.05 – A big ol’ update for the Japanese girls’ names page and a little tweak for the geishas’ names page. The sections with obscure letters (Y, W, I) are doing better than the sections with popular letters (S, T, C) because I look at the loooong long lists of names to type in and quail.
2.23.05 – A site revamp for Miso Soup for the Otaku Soul. Finally! I also added Selkiechick’s recipe for Butt-Kicking Dipping Sauce.
2.13.05 – Updated the links on the Jedi force training page. Finally, finally updated the Japanese blood typing page. I also found proof that according to Western blood-typing theories, Sailor Moon is a relic of the caveman period. There’s a cosplay costume waiting to happen.
2.12.05 – Major updates to the page on geisha names and additions that damn near doubled the length of the Japanese girls’ names page.
2.10.05 – A new page about geishas’ names, and a small update to the page on Japanese girls’ names.
2.09.05 – The Utena Gallery is back up! I do a happy dance. The person who hotlinked half the pictures on my site onto “her” Utena gallery kindly closed the gallery, and lo, is my bandwidth (relatively) safe again.
2.08.05 – New names for the page on Japanese girls’ names. This makes it the longest and most comprehensive English-language list of Japanese female names on the web, mainly because the other hundred sites are all cribbing from a) the same three baby name books, which are cribbing from each other; and b) from each other, thus making the whole system doubly incestuous. Sad, really. Especially when you consider the miserable state of Japanese baby name books. They don’t have simple names like Emi or Rie or Nanami, which is the equivalent of an American baby-name list that doesn’t mention Heather, Jessica, or Brittney. What sort of crack-addled illiterate put them together?
/Rant off. Their loss is my gain.
2.06.05 – A new page on Japanese girls’ names, plus a quick update of the Kuja link list.The fandom’s not completely dead. It’s merely mostly dead. Damn, we need a hot new CGI movie for FF9. Why bother with that tart Sephiroth? He doesn’t need any help.
2.05.05 – Adding pages left, right, and center–angel pages and a blood typing page in particular. I also unlinked from several pages to clean up the site a bit. I’m gearing up for a major site revamp: The place needs freshening up from top to bottom, there are dozens of pages on my hard drive that I wrote years ago and never got around to linking, and the navigation is ridiculous.
I cleaned out the Kuja link list. Yeech, all the listings are gone! My fandom! My poor, poor fandom!
2.26.04 – Added pages on Victorian names and spam names to the RPG page.
9.3.03 – Added four old LJ rants to my Rants page: An Open Letter to Men, An Etiquette Lesson for Gamers, No! No no no!, and …Because Vikings Just Luuurved to Travel.
8.7.03 – Boy, it’s been a while. Over the past eight months, I’ve relinked to the explicit doujinshi, added pages on foxes and writing, and started an advice column.
12.09.02 – Added a page of 18th-century English women’s names to my RPG page because I was sick of looking up character names in history books.
12.08.02 – Updated my bio page. Lied very little. Also updated my links page. Lied a lot.
10.09.02 – The good news is, direct-linkers to any of my bishonen shrines now receive a cheerful flashing message announcing to the world that they masturbate. The bad news is, Lunarpages is no longer allowing adult material, so I have had to unlink from the more explicit doujinshi pages in the translation section. There was only one worrisome page in Chaotic Heaven—very interesting. For an explicit dj, it’s very… tasteful.
10.07.02 – Added a plea for money to my Riku site, since I still don’t have a PS2. I also put up my woefully-inadequate-but-better-than-what’s-out-there Kuja link list.
10.06.02 – Added Secrets of the Old Masters to the Rants page. Think it’ll help? Nah.
9.22.02 – Wrote an open letter to Disney about their clamping down on Kingdom Hearts sites.
9.15.02 – Added a page for the inspiration and reformation of those who would direct-link to me.
9.10.02 – Added an RPG page to link to my brand-new site for the brand-new forum RPG Take My Wings.
9.1.02 – Completed pages 1-3, 12, and 18 of Chaotic Heaven, added to pages 4 and 24, and corrected page 50. Overhauled the Riku Omnigatherum’s links pages twice within the last week, too. No sooner do I put a link up than it changes.
8.22.02 – The Riku Omnigatherum has been overhauled and completed. All hail the power of new art!
8.11.02 – The Utena Gallery is launched.
7.30.02 – Chaotic Heaven has a brand-new layout.
7.26.02 – Jedi Training is now off Geocities and popup-free! As I have time and inspiration, I’ll be reworking it into “So You Want to Be a Jedi.”
…but first, a slightly more serious rant about freedom.
7.25.02 – Pokes and prods here and there. Fixed the Anime Character and Dragonball Character links, got the index page linked up correctly, revamped the “If I Ever Became A Link Page…”, and put in a sitewide link page. Updated the list of books for sale. Very exciting.
7.21.02 – A semi-complete design revamp! Do the happy new-design dance!
7.10.02 – A new site! Do the happy new-site dance!
New: The Tough Guide to Animeland, The Riku Omnigatherum, and two Slayers doujinshi.
Updated: A Challenge to All Otaku and Everything I Need to Know I Learned from The Mummy.