You can check out the new site, along with an updated name at my new domain, fieldsofmaize.com!

Come visit fields of maiZe in the morning. Hope to see you there!

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I went out and got some cake for Cake Day! ^_^ And seeing as I’ve been getting loads of Aichan and Risa merchandise recently, Leader and Sub-leader came to join in on the celebration!

As I mentioned a few months ago with my 100th post for fields, my blogging updates have slowed down recently. Work has been ridiculously hectic for me recently, in addition to Japanese classes, choir practices and the usual social events that I must partake in to stop myself from becoming a hermit. XD It makes for either not having much time to blog, or being so burnt out that even when I could be blogging, I don’t really want to be thinking… Blogging while not thinking would not be a good idea.

However, a lot has happened during this second year of the fields being in existence, the biggest thing having been seeing Morning Musume live at Anime Expo.

Up next was the graduation of Elder Club from Hello! Project, but luckily the graduated girls did not disappear. Ishikawa Rika and Yoshizawa Hitomi continue to go strong with HANGRY & ANGRY, having gone 2.5 anime conventions since their graduation. Abe Natsumi and Matsuura Aya have done concert tours and Melon Kinenbi have been releasing some singles. Now, I’m only mentioning those who have continued to release music, as that’s what I follow. I know Yaguchi Mari is on tv, but I don’t follow that, and lots of the other girls have blogs (which I can’t read).

On the blogging side of things, I’ve been bad with my worship blogs. I have been very negligent to Aya and Miyabi, and what’s worse is that while those two blogs have been pretty dead recently, I’ve been wanting to start a third worship blog dedicated to Leader and Sub-leader. XD However, I’m going to try and get back to updating those two blogs. We’ll see how successful I am in the coming weeks.

Specifically for fields, I’m going to do my best to get some reviews out soon, on Morning Musume’s latest (maybe 2 latest) and the Hello! Project 2009 Summer Concert. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that these don’t take too long to write up.

Thanks to everyone who has read fields of maiZe and berryZ over the past two years! It’s been loads of fun writing and I’m looking forward to see what year three has in store. One major thing coming up in the first month of year three is Kusumi Koharu’s graduation… I’m quite interested to read up on fan reports from the graduation concert. It’s already proving to be an interesting ride.

The edges are a bit cut off, though you can see all the girls autographs clearly, except the diamond in the corner of Risa’s photo (which I have noticed most other Gaki autographs don’t have… o_O I have a special Risa autograph!! <3). Just to refresh your memory (and to show the entire diamond (I have become fixated on this thing... XD), this is what they looked like pre-frame:

And now it’s up on my wall with my Berryz Koubou calendar… I can’t wait for 2010 when I’m going to get a Morning Musume calendar to match the frame. ^_^

So, to commemorate post #100 on fields, I recorded fomab podcast #4. The total running time is 1h 4min and I talk about Anime Expo, video games, anime, ebay and other randomness. It’s just a fun little thing of me rambling. I do have one serious point within the podcast which mentions a member of the JPHiP forum passed away a little while after AX, and I just felt that I had to give a salute out to him (Jabronisaur) even though I didn’t really know him (I met him very briefly at the Hello! Party sign-in/welcome table), and to his friends and family who continue to grieve his loss.

So, the tracklist for this podcast is Morning Musume filled (surprise surprise):

1. Shouganai Yume Oibito (39th single)
2. Honki de Atsui Theme Song (4th Ikimasshoi!)
3. Koe (Ai no Dai 6kan)
4. Jounetsu no Kiss wo Hitotsu (Platinum 9 Disc)

The podcast can be found here. Hope you enjoy! ^_^

The weekend has just ended for me, but I wanted to wish all the mothers out there a very happy mother’s day! I had a lovely day spent with family as we celebrated our mothers, aunts and grandmothers.

Now, the real reason for this post is to announce the new blog layout, which I’m sure is quite obvious to those of you who visit the blog rather than read my posts through a feed reader. If you do read my blog from a feed, please come and check out the new layout at least once. XD It’s quite pretty, if I do say so myself, and very orange (which makes me very happy!).

The posts linked in the photo slider are posts that I find are slightly noteworthy to be read, and that slider will be updated more often than the next part of the new layout, which is the featured blog posts. The featured blog posts are those that I spent a little bit more time on. The featured blog post slider will likely be updated less frequently, for as you can see from the inital 5, the oldest one goes back to December… Seeing that is actually telling me that I should update more regularly. Once all the crazyness dies down, I’m hoping to get back into a good blogging rhythm.

The main reason for the new theme was that the old one was… well, old. XD I loved it, but I needed a change. Also, I wanted the article column width to be a bit wider, but I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of changing the widths on the old theme.

So, I hope you guys enjoy the new layout! Here’s some Miyabi eyecandy to celebrate the new layout! ^_^

The H!P girls are back to celebrate IW’s Cake Day! ^_^

For this special occassion, my brother, johpan (of boylikesmusic), and I baked a special cake for IW.

Please take note of the ridiculously long message on our cake. Last year, on Ray’s cake day announcement post, he called bloggers to celebrate the day by taking a picture of some backed good and putting a message on it for IW. The particular example he gave for the message was “Happy Birthday International Wota and Many Happy Returns In The Blogosphere For Years And Years To Come”. Last year, johpan and I also made a cake, and my goal from the moment I read Ray’s message was to get that message on my Cake Day cake…. Except, as you can see from last year’s cake, I failed in my mission – though I partially blame that on johpan for using the wrong pan to bake the cake in.

Anyway, this year, while not exactly the same message Ray suggested (I had to cut out a few of the words to get it to fit on the cake), I got the main gist of his message – and highlighted the ridiculous length (it took me 45 minutes to write out that message… It hurt my back leaning over the cake for so long, and my hand ’cause that evil icing tube didn’t want to share the icing).

Last year on this day, I was a fledgling IW contributor, having been on the IW staff for a mere 7 days (I did my first write up on March 11). At that time, the IW staff was still fairly small, consisting of about 10 people, of whom only 3 were consistently writing up posts. I joined the group with a load of enthusiasm and quickly became a regular contributor.

Now, a year later, IW has more than doubled its staff (we currently stand at about 22 staff members – you figure out the “about”…) with around 10 regular contributors writing up posts. And I somehow got myself promoted up to an admin position, which I currently share with my partner in crime, pengie of unchained. In addition to the staff growth, the number of blogs covered by IW continues to… well, if not grow, at least turn over at a regular rate. The current IW opml has approximately 250 blogs, and that’s after a fairly recent clean up, so the majority of those are currently active blogs that the staff all try and keep up to date with.

It’s great to see the community continue to grow and it’s an aboslute pleasure to work with all of the staff of IW. Please feel free to drop by IW’s offical chatroom (see the #wotachat link in the Aya sidebar) and celebrate cake day with us (or drop by anytime, really XD… There are lots of bloggers and Jpop fans to chat with). Almost all of IW’s editors and many contributors are usually in wotachat at some point during the day, and I’m sure they’ll be around at various times today in celebration of cake day!

To end off this celebratory cake day post, I just wanted to share photos of the “Making Of” maiZe and johpan’s IW Cake Day cake… It makes me feel like I’m in H!P. XD Please note that in one photo, one of the blender’s beaters is covered in cake batter… That was johpan’s fault for ejecting the beaters, but only catching one of them. The other one decided to take a swim in the batter. XD

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNATIONAL WOTA!!! <3 Here’s to another great year as we move forward towards IW Cake Day Episode 3.

It’s that time of the year again… The time to honour the awesome J-music blogs of 2008 by voting in the International Wota Awards! I figure most people who read this blog are already International Wota readers, so you probably know about it already, but it never hurts to plug IW every now and then right? It’s my perogative as one of the admins. XD

This year, like last, the list of nominees was determined by IW contributors voting for their favourite blogs/entries in various categories. The votes were diligently counted and compiled by my fellow admin pengie and IW editors Amy and Henkka.

fields has been nominated for 2 awards: Best H!P Blog and Best Blog Series for Memorable Snippets. I’m highly honoured to be in a category which has the two first H!P blogs that I ever read (MorningBerryz’s blog and Hello!Blog).

Last Forever has been nominated for the category of Best Eyecandy or “Worship” Blog… I’m afraid that for this category, I’m gonna have to say: VOTE FOR LAST FOREVER!! DO IT!!! XD … Because Miyabi’s the bomb and should totally win!!… o_O

Anyway, voting is open until midnight PST on January 28th and the winners will be announced on January 31st! So, get voting everyone! ^_^

When I initially changed my blog theme to this one, I had a few comments on the loss of orange on the site. Well, originally I was too lazy to mess around with the CSS, so I left it with the default colours. However, with the urge to change my header (I wanted a more updated Miya photo ’cause she looks awesome in ‘Gachinko de Ikou’ – review to come soon, I promise!), I figured why not changed the colour scheme too?

So, here we go! Now that I’ve gotten this out of the way, I can finally get to writing out some blog posts that have been sitting in my head while doing the Miya birthday countdown. Hope you guys enjoy the new layout!

So, I’d like to draw your attention to the new layout for the fields (as though you could possibly miss it, unless you’re reading this through a feed). There’s now a drop down menu at the top, and I’m loving this theme because it has cleared out a lot of clutter in my sidebars. Now, the content in the sidebars is minimal, for any posts that don’t have too much content (like that ever happens), there won’t be too far to scroll to get to the bottom of the page. Excess white space caused by sidebar content has always bothered me.

Another major change I have here is that I’ve started using tags, to clear out my categories list some. The categories are much more generalized now, but you can get to more specific tags on the tag cloud page, which is under the ‘menu’ drop down list.

Anyway, I hope you guys like the new theme! And now, onto the next snippet!

Goals:

Why do you blog?
For my Hello! Project related blogs, I blog because I need a place to release all of my H!P thoughts. My brother will listen when I get worked up over a particular event or release, but he’s more of a J-music focused person rather than strictly H!P. I have a personal blog that I’ve been keeping since March of 2003. Over the years, I put up random H!P related thoughts into it, but my friends couldn’t care less. So I created fields of maiZe and berryZ to remove the H!P clutter from my personal blog, so that my friends would stop skipping over my posts.

That leaves my personal blog. I generally use that to keep in touch with friends who I don’t get to see often. Rather than e-mailing each other, we update our blogs with the goings on in our lives.

What long-term goals do you hope to accomplish, if any at all?
I haven’t really thought of any long term goals. When I started my H!P blog, all I thought about was that this was a place for me to talk about my fandom with no reservations. I didn’t have to worry that people would be annoyed reading it (and heck, if people are, they can just leave XD). On my personal blog, I usually felt pretty guilty posting about H!P (or my other fandoms) because I knew my friends weren’t interested.

Though now, I guess my long term goal is to provide information to any new fans of H!P, to try and look at H!P going ons from another angle and to write things that are interesting that even older, veteran H!P fans could be interested in.

Where does your blog fail to meet your goals?
Recently, I feel as though I haven’t been posting enough quality posts. My Miya blog has been doing fairly well, but it’s only a little over a week old (and already 5 posts… I’m quite proud of that). The fields on the other hand has only had posts regarding my new Memorable Snippets series. I have a number of concerts I want to write reviews on, but I simply haven’t gotten around to actually focusing on watching a concert to review it.

But then again, with the posts I have done recently, people have seem to have had a fairly good response to them, so it’s not all bad. Personally though, I feel I need more than just a weekly video clip on my blog.

If you do have goals, what will accomplishing them do for yourself?
I feel a great sense of satisfaction when someone lets me know that one of my posts has opened up another aspect of their H!P fandom. I know that when I read someone else’s blog and I find something that I didn’t know about before, it makes me happy and excited. Because of that, I find it rewarding to think that I could possibly provide the same feeling to a fellow H!P fan.

What do you want to gain out of blogging? A creative outlet? Praise from others? Personal satisfaction? Money?
I wouldn’t quite say a creative outlet… Personal satisfaction is definitely something I gain from blogging (as outlined above). I’m not necessarily looking for praise… I actually don’t take praise very well. But I definitely like knowing that others are enjoying what I’m writing about. Money doesn’t come into consideration for me when I blog. My blogs are basically me rambling. Who the heck would pay for that? XD

Do you feel that your blog should meet a requirement for amount of entries? Do you feel any particular entry should be a certain length?
I don’t set a low-end limit for the number of entries or length of an entry. However, I tend to babble. I have never been known for being concise, and if you have browsed through this blog, I think that’s pretty evident. As much as I’d like to, I don’t really do short blog entries. I mean, if you’ve gone to my Miya worship blog, you’ll see that even there I have a few paragraphs before I get into the eyecandy or video clip. I don’t know if I have it in me to NOT babble on about things.

For any particular entry, what motivates you to start and finish blog posts?
A good idea motivates me. I don’t get good ideas for blog posts very often (which is why I mainly do reviews of random H!P related things), but when I do get a good idea my motivation to write heightens considerably. For example, I really enjoyed writing up my H!P Kids Deathmatch post and my hypothetical dance off battle for the Berryz vs. C-ute battle concert.

However, for the reviews and whatnot that I post on my blog, the fact that I really enjoy what I’m writing about motivates me to start and, more importantly, FINISH a post. I have had some reviews that I’ve started, but simply could not finish ’cause I didn’t enjoy whatever I was watching that much, and thus could not think of anything to say (ex. Momusu’s Bon Kyu Bomb 2007 Aki concert). I don’t think you’ll ever see a review of that concert in its entirety on this blog.

Do you actively consider long term goals for each individual post?
Long-term goals…? Well, if you mean that I plan to do a concert review in February and still haven’t gotten around to it in May, but plan to do it at some point as a long term goal.. Then yes, I consider finishing (aka starting) the post as a long term goal. Other than that, not really, I post whatever comes to mind as soon as possible so as to not lose my train of thought.

Subject Material:

What do you blog about?
On fields of maiZe and berryZ, I mainly blog on anything relating to Hello! Project that I feel the need to comment on. I mainly do reviews, whether it’s about the latest/upcoming single/PV or old school concerts. I do the random posts when I get new shipments of H!P stuff, but a review of some sort is usually attached to it. I very rarely do a simple eyecandy post.

Also, on the rare occasion, I stick a completely non Hello! Project related post into my blog. So far, those posts have related to Hanson and the Toronto Raptors. These are the other two major fandoms in my life, and I really have nowhere else to post about them.

On Last Forever, anything that catches my interest in regards to Miya. I’ve been torn on doing simple eyecandy posts on this blog. I know worship blogs are the perfect excuse for them, but so far, I haven’t been able to bring myself to ONLY post Miyabi eyecandy.

In my livejournal, I blog about my personal life. I mainly keep that one limited to friends only.

Would you be keep a blog even if it wasn’t about the subjects you tend to cover?
I would only blog about things that interest me. I’m not a writer by trade, and without the same amount of interest I have in something like H!P, I simply would not have the drive to continue to write.

Do you write about the material to promote it to others?
For all H!P things I blog about, it is partially to promote it to others. For example, my Memorable Snippets series is partially for newer H!P who haven’t watched Hello! Morning, old concerts, tv appearances, etc.

The other main posts on my main blog are reviews on singles, albums, concerts, PVs, musicals, etc. I hope that I can bring something to someone’s attention that they may have overlooked, had not known about, or even had forgotten about for whatever reason.

Readership:

How much do you care about readership?
I love knowing that people are reading (and hopefully enjoying) what I write about. As I said, my goal is to spread the H!P loves into the far reaches of the galaxy… Or something to that end… XD A growing readership base is always a plus, but even just having a few readers and knowing that the blog is appreciated would be enough for me.

Does it satisfy you to know people are reading, even if they don’t comment?
Getting a comment would be nice, but I’ve been doing my best to respond to most comments I receive on my blogs, so I guess it’s also okay that people don’t comment… XD Yes, I am a lazy bum. A comment lets me know whether people are enjoying my blog or not, and feedback is always a great thing to get. But comments or no comments, I’m just hoping people are enjoying the blog.

What effect does receiving a comment have on you?
Comments make me feel warm and fuzzy inside (this is not an exaggeration or me being cute/funny). I am a warm/fuzzy (not literally in the fuzzy sense… but I am warm-blooded, so warm in a literal as well as figurative sense) person, and when people comment (even if it’s just a correction), I feel satisfied because it means that someone read my post and felt it was worthy enough to comment on. ^_^

Do you write with a particular audience in mind or an unspecified general audience? Why?
Seeing as most of my posts are H!P related, my target audience is H!P fans or anyone interested to learn more about H!P. On my Miya blog, my target audience is Miya fans, and people who may be curious about her. Hopefully I can convert some people into loving Miya too!

As for my random topic posts… My audience is myself, mainly. XD I often go back an read my own posts, for my blog is like my journal, and I like to check back and see what I was thinking a week, a month or a year ago (though this blog hasn’t reached a year yet).

If you write for a particular audience, is it International Wota? If yes, why?
I see that most of my traffic flow comes from International Wota, and since many H!P fans use IW, I guess IW is indirectly one of my audiences. But as I said, my main audience is any H!P fans. If they find my blog through google, or another blogger’s blog roll, it doesn’t matter to me.

Community: (The International Wota section)

If International Wota didn’t exist, would you blog?
At this point in time, I believe that I would continue to blog if IW suddenly disappeared tomorrow. At this point in time, I don’t have a huge amount of readers, but I know I at least have a few regular readers, so I’d keep it going so long as I have something interesting to say.

If IW didn’t exist before I started blogging, would I have blogged..? Well, I’m trying to think back, and I can’t remember if I had seen IW before I started my blog… I’m assuming I had. But then again, I didn’t submit my blog to Ray for consideration on IW until I had been blogging for about a month. So I can’t say for certain that I started blogging because IW existed. However it definitely helped get me instant readers. Before Ray did his first write up on me, I’m not sure if anyone was reading my blog. >_<

When IW covers an entry of yours, are you encouraged to blog more or less?
When IW does not cover an entry, are you encouraged to blog more or less?
I feel like I may get attacked for this, seeing as there have been numerous discussions regarding coverage on IW and how no one should assume that their post will be covered. However, I don’t expect my posts to be covered, and I’m always pleasantly surprised when it is. Coverage is always appreciated and encouraging, but I blog as inspiration hits me (or when I get unlazy and actually get around to typing up a post).

How often do you read other blogs?
I read other blogs daily. As an IW editor, I post almost daily, so I read (or at least skim) through between 40 to 50 blog posts a day… It could be more or less depending on what else I have to do that day.

How often do you comment on other blogs?
Again, as an IW editor, I do write-ups almost daily. I would say my write-ups are comments on those blogs. Unfortunately, I usually take that as my “comment” on their blog, and don’t actually post a comment in the blog’s comment section. However, there are certain posts where I feel the need to reiterate what I’ve said in a write up, so I sometimes get redundant. And then of course, there are posts which other IW contributers write-up and if they interest me enough, I’ll post comments accordingly.

If another blog covers a topic that you wanted or wished to cover, do you still blog about that specific topic? Why or why not?
If I want to blog about something, I blog about it. Heck, most of my blog posts are reviews… And when a new PV or single is released, a whole lot of bloggers blog about the same thing. However, usually each person has a slightly different spin to the release, and I find it interesting to see the differences. And, in the case of anything Miya related, you can definitely assume that there will be extra amounts of Miya analysis in my posts.

Commitment:

How serious is your attitude towards blogging? Do you consider it just as something to do for fun?
It’s definitely something I do for fun, and I think my style of writing shows that. However, I do take it seriously such a way that I do my best to make sure all my posts have quality content. As I said above, I don’t really have long term goals for individual posts, but I do try and make sure that I have a specific, though out topic that I can expand upon and develop as I write the post.

How often do you blog? How often would you like to blog?
I blog when I have the time. If you could my IW write-ups, I blog almost daily. For my person H!P blogs, I usually have a new post up every 1-2 weeks (though with Memorable Snippets started, it should be at least 1 a week). I’m hoping to have at least one a week on Last Forever as well.

What priorities do you or have you put aside in order to blog? Why?
Sleep. XD If I’m really into a blog post, I will definitely stay up until I finish it. I sometimes also stay up to clear out my IW todo list. I know that Ray would never get upset with me for pushing a few over to the next day if I was tired, but there are times when I just really feel like I should get the write-ups done before I sleep. Also, I often feel bad when I have things on my todo list for too long, ’cause I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the bloggers who I haven’t written up yet… -_-;

Do you see yourself blogging in 6 months? Why or why not?
I’m almost at my 7 month anniversary from when I started my H!P blog. I’d like to think I’d still be blogging in 6 months. There’s always something going on in H!P, and as long as I don’t get completely pissed off by something that happens, I think my fandom will continue to go strong. Also, I really enjoy the H!P blogging community. I’ve picked up some blogs that I really enjoy, so even if I stopped blogging (which I doubt I will), I’d still be somewhat active within the community by reading others blogs and commenting on their posts.

For my personal blog, I definitely will still be blogging in 6 months… My friends from university would kill me if I didn’t.

Personal:

Would you say you blog for yourself?
I definitely blog for myself. As I said, I like to look back on what I was thinking at so and so time. I’ve looked back at my original Berryz Koubou rankings, and it’s completely different from how it began (excluding Miya being #1, of course). It has even changed since I did an update on my ranking when Paul from Hello! Blog put up his H!P poll. Also, I find that my writing amuses me to no end… Not in a big-headed “I’m a great writer” sort of way… It’s just that I feel the enthusiasm that I felt when I originally wrote the post when I go back and re-read it later.

What is your feeling after posting an entry? Is it relative to the time and effort you put in an entry?
I feel anxious after posting an entry. The longer the entry is, the more anxious I feel. Generally, it’s because I know that I probably have a billion typos in my entry, and typos make me antsy. I’ve gone back a few months later and re-read a post, only to find 4 or 5 mistakes… And being as anal-retentive as I am, I go and fix them, even though it really doesn’t matter 2 or 3 months later.

What needs does blogging fulfill?
Blogging fulfills my need to talk about H!P things. I am a frequent visitor (practically a resident) of wotachat, a chat room that many IW contributers and bloggers visit, and I definitely get to talk a lot of H!P in there. However, I find that my blogs allow me to articulate my ideas more. The chat is fun, but topics switch quite frequently. In my blog posts I can talk for as much or as little as I want regarding whatever H!P topic strikes my fancy.

Do you consider yourself a writer?
Do you consider yourself good at writing? Good at blogging?
I consider myself a writer in the sense that I write… >_< I think I'm an okay writer, but writing is not my forte. English was always my worst subject in school. I am a math/science geek. I have my bachelors degree in biochemistry. The majority of writing I did in university had to do with lab results. That requires a completely different thought process than creative writing.

What defines a good blogger? I think I'm doing okay, since people seem to be enjoying my blogs. However, I read amazing posts that are well thought out and in depth, such as broomhead's Suspicious Minds post, pengie’s I-do-ru post, and a whole load of Ray’s posts, and while I wish I could write posts like that, I don’t have the drive to plan it out. So, in that sense I don’t consider myself a real writer. I’d call myself a babbler who writes up her babbles…

How much of your personal life do you share on your blog? If none, why do you leave this out?
I don’t share much of my personal life on my H!P blogs. I make a random comment here or there, but generally, I’m here to post about H!P related things. And anything that my friends wouldn’t be interested in reading about on my personal blog.

So, part of the reason I don’t post personal things here is because I post them somewhere else.

Okay… So that was long. XD Thanks to anyone who stuck it out with me!

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. ^_^