Dear valued customer,

This site has been gathering dust for too long. A lot of the information here is old news while the site design has become a jumble of haphazardly placed elements. I'm capable of a lot better than this.

I've got some big plans in store for this J-pop guide that will blow everyone away. If you've seen sister site, Tomobiki-cho you'll notice how it's bigger and better (not to mention sexier) than ever before. I'm planning to do something similar with this site. For details on what to expect, read the text below
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--> Mason (October 7, 2002)

Plans for Tomobiki.com J-pop Guide
(from October to December 2002)

Updates to Artist Profiles
Much of the information provided here is old news by now. I'll be updating a lot of the content. Apart from updating all of the information about current artists. I'll be adding many new artist profiles in quick succession. The artists I'm planning to add include (but aren't limited to):

Shéna Ringo
UA
Number Girl
Thee Michelle Gun Elephant
fra-foa
Spitz
Go! Go! 7188
Chocolat
Blankey Jet City
The Yellow Monkey
hitomi
Bugy Craxone
Iwasaki Hiromi (70's singer)
Mr. Children

Redesign
One of the main things that have always bothered me about this site is the design. I came up with the look of the site rather quickly in 1998, long before my skills as a graphic designer had fully developed. Some people seem to like the look of the site, but I've wanted to change it for a long time.

From a functionality standpoint, it relies way too much on large images and is sluggish to navigate. The new look will be attractive, but more clean and simple in its execution. It'll rely much less on graphics, although there'll still be plenty of eye candy to keep it visually interesting.

Restructure
The site will also be reorganized. The site will break out of its current frames and artist pages will be given sub pages for discography, pictures, links, etc. This will be an improvement on the current format which has all information on a single running page.

The biggest change however will be in the coding. I plan to do the site completely in cascading style sheets, which will make for pages that load quickly and are much more readable. It'll be prettier too. It'll also make updating a breeze. The easier the site is for me to update, the more updates there'll be. It won't hurt being more SCC compliant (as if you care).

Reimagining
From the beginning, this site has always been about telling people about the artists I like, and not a definitive guide to Japanese music. That probably won't change. However the scope of the site will expand to be more of an information source rather than just a collection of run-on essays with pictures. It'll be more useful to hardcore fans and not just newbies. This may include having more CD reviews on site.

My tastes in music are pretty eclectic. I like any kind of music that has some substance to it. But generally I tend to lean towards rock. I may make rock the focus of the site, but still including pop and possibly expanding to electronica and R&B. In the past there also have been misconceptions from this site that I was a big visual-kei fan. I like a few artists that happen to fall in that category and I have an essay about it, but otherwise this has never been what I considered visual-kei site. I'm hoping to downplay that aspect of things, and make it more about the music.

Since I'm trying to refocus the scope of the site, I may also change its name of the site. It may hurt my "brand equity" (a loathsome marketing word) but in the end it'll serve me better.