Hi, my name is Andy Kitkowski, and I'm a Mangaholic.
"Hi, Andy"

Ok, it's not that bad.  To tell the truth, I'm not that much into Japanese Manga.  I used to read it only as a means to improve my Japanese reading/comprehension ability.  As with Japanese Anime, I think that most Manga tends to either have a great concept, story, art, plot, or dialogue.  And most of the time a decent, or "publicly respected" anime or manga has like only ONE of the above, maybe two or three.  Actually, most manga in Japan gets sold on the count that it has a good general story, not necisserily for good art (which is a requirement for American comics- at the expense of a decent or long story).  But for me, Mugen no Jyuunin has ALL the above.  Every Japanese friend I know who has read MnJ loves it, but truth is, MnJ is barely known in Japan.  There are just too damn many manga for one to be clearly chosen over another.
Manga in Japan sells a lot like music in the US:  Most hot selling manga are on the Jump or Morning labels (publisher).  MnJ is on the Afternoon Comics label, a minor player, perhaps the equivalent of a popular "underground" label.

Anyway, back to me.  I first ran into Blade of the Immortal at a comics store in Madison, WI, and I thought that the art and "bloody" layouts were awesome.  I didn't buy it, though, and by the time that I got home I forgot the name of the comic.  It wasn't until I was about to go back to Japan that I looked into it again.  I found some references to it in a mail-order catalog at a comic shop in Chapel Hill, NC.  This time I memorized the English and Japanese names, and went hunting for it as soon as I got settled into life in Japan. I found some MnJ books at a used manga store, and trying to translate those beasts help pass the boring and too too hot Japanese summer.

So what am I doing in Japan, you might ask?  Well, it was my senior year in college when I decided to do a little job hunting.  I thought about all the kinds of interesting jobs I could get with my Philosophy and Sociology majors.  I also thought about my writing abilities, my computer skills, and some of my supposed 'leadership skills'.  I took all this into consideration, and then said, "Fuck it, I'll just go to Japan and teach English".  And that's what I do now- I am a teacher with the JET program at a Junior High School in Japan.
Actually, I did have a minor in Japanese, plus I went to Tokyo to study for a semester, so going to Japan wasn't completely out of the blue.  I can get by pretty well with my Japanese, and can read about half of anything I see without running for my Kanji (Chinese character) dictionary.  Still, though, when it comes to culture and customs I'm pretty much in the void (gift giving, strange holidays, stuff like that).  The same when it comes to unusual Japanese expressions and odd bits of Japanese history that pop up here or there on TV or in the pages of the manga I infrequently read.
Anyway, I keep a homepage up about my life (daily and unusual) in Japan.  It's called Virtual Gaijin and you can reach it by clicking here.

The gang busy at work NOT translating MnJ at this very moment are myself, Orie Hiromachi and Shigeru Hosono.
My wife Orie (pictured here with me) is a graphic designer- she can't install basic computer software, but she can run circles around other designers on Photoshop, Illustrator, and Shade.  She spends some of her free time teaching as a tutor to high school kids in the area, or reading books/manga and watching movies. However, she spends most of her free time kicking my ass at Virtua Fighter.  Her English is great (we can totally communicate), and she has many friends in Canada and Australia.  She knew and totally loved MnJ before I even met her.  She's the one who told me most of the stories behind the later manga books.
Shigeru Hosono was one of the first friends I made here in Gunma.  He's a writer, but he spends most of his time working to stockpile cash at the local Village Office in the Social Education section.  I report to the village office as a teacher, and it was there that I met him.  He could speak a little English, but we could mostly communicate because we both liked movies, writing and reading.  I introduced him to MnJ and got him hooked on it, and he likes to try to translate Hiroaki Samura's poems.  His homepage is here.  You can also find more information about him on my Virtual Gaijin Stories page.

And me?  My own homepages are linked to one "Perihelion" page, which you can get to by clicking HERE.

EMAIL or Comments?  Send them to Manji@sunfield.or.jp