fields of maiZe and berryZ

I have 1.5 hours until Cake Day ends in my timezone, and I’ve been debating on whether or not I should do a follow up HAPPY CAKE DAY post. But hey, how often do you get to celebrate the first birthday of International Wota? … That’s right! Only ONCE! So the follow-up post wins!

After reading some people’s International Wota stories, I thought this would probably be the best time to share mine.

I stumbled upon my first H!P blog sometime in October when I started getting back into H!P (mainly Berryz Koubou/Miyabi at this point). The first blog I found was either MorningBerryz or Hello!Blog.

Soon after that, I found International Wota, and boom! The world as I knew it was no more… Here at my fingertips was all the J-pop information that I could handle and more! As I read through the H!P news articles, and peoples’ reactions, it made me want to post my own thoughts, for I really had no where else to share my opinions except with my brother. Like many international H!P fans, my friends are generally not into the J-pop scene. They humour me (for my 19th birthday, we went karaoking, and they allowed me one J-pop song: ‘Yeah! Meccha Holiday!’), but with the exception of one friend, none of them can really stand the music.

So, on Nov. 8 2007, I revived my blogger and turned it from what was supposed to be a move of my personal blog from livejournal into an H!P blog (with the random spattering of other interests that I have).

It wasn’t until one month later that I submitted my blog to International Wota, and I waited on pins and needles to see if I’d get mentioned. I must say that I got a very warm and tingly feeling when Ray finally did a write up on my blog. I felt so warm and tingly that I had to star the entry in my google reader. XD Yes… I am a geek.

International Wota is what keeps me going with my blogging. I have a personal livejournal, but it’s updated very sporadocally. I’ve gone almost an entire year without posting on it before. Here, however, I constantly strive to write quality posts partially because I still get warm fuzzies when my posts are written up by Ray or one of Intl Wota’s contributers/editors, but also because there’s always something to write about simply because our blogging community is so active.

I love the atmosphere at Intl Wota. It’s very easy to get involved, and from my first comment posted, I instantly felt welcomed into the community. As I read through other blogs, I am constantly stimulated with new opinions and views, and even though I don’t always agree, I can get a new perspective that can shed light on things I didn’t know before, or had be uncertain of.

I felt so welcomed into this community, and particularly by Ray (who so kindly offered me a home on intlwota.com when I informed him of my move to wordpress) that I felt compelled to contribute more than just writing the random blog post. Therefore, I signed up to be a contributer, and here we are today (wow, that was a week ago…). I’m looking forward to year 2 of International Wota and will continue to do be best to contribute to our lovely community! Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

So, I will end this day the way I started it off, with a big OMEDETTO GOZAIMASU! and HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNATIONAL WOTA AND MANY HAPPY RETURNS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE FOR YEARS AND YEARS TO COME!! (Note: I really did try to write that on the cake ’cause it’s such a fun message, but I quickly realized that my dream would be unfounded… And now there’s 15 minutes left until Cake Day ends in my timezone.)

That’s my cake day slice… Went a little bit gel crazy with the leftovers. ^_^

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Birthdays, Hello! Project, On Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.