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just got back from sunny arizona, and seattle seems a lot like the north pole minus the snow. at any rate, i had a nice happy present in the form of shokomi 2000-1 waiting for me when i got back, and the furoku for this issue was a mini 2000 calendar. it had a pretty picture of aya and tooya for the jan/feb artwork, so i've scanned that (with the shiny new scanner i got for christmas!) and added it to the gallery. it was also pretty close to the proper dimensions for wallpaper, so it's now available for download in that area as well. more to come shortly!

whew! school is over, finals are wednesday, and i finally have time to work on the site again! i've finished posting part one and part 2 of volume 2. about time, eh? i'm on to working on part 3 now, but i've learned my lesson about making guarantees as to when that'll be. ^^;; i will, however, do my very best to get caught up over winter break.
i've noticed that with the new structure of the site, some people are still browsing to the old filenames, which i kept up for the transition period. i'm not sure whether this is due to errors in my code or outdated bookmarks, since there's so many pages to look through... so i've deleted the old files. if you find yourself getting a 404 file not found error--please, please, let me know what page you were on when it happened, and what page you were trying to get to. thanks!

many pages have changed, update your bookmarks! ayashi.net is in the process of receiving a major facelift. the overall layout of the site isn't changing significantly, but the interface is. almost all of the sub-pages have been redesigned to take advantage of server-side includes (SSI), which permits me to (among other things) have templates for all my header and footer code which just plugs right into the pages. it makes updates a thousand times easier, and it should make navigating the site much quicker. because all of the pages are changing to .shtml extensions, you may need to update your bookmarks. (if you have links to subpages of ayashi.net on your site, please point them at the main page)
as with all major revisions, there are bound to be some bugs or problems. please, if you see any broken links or other such mistakes, please let me know so that i can fix them! thanks for your patience!

i've completely redesigned the gallery page, and renamed the desktop wallpaper page to desktop stuff, since it now includes a wider variety of content--namely, a really great ayashi no ceres screen saver designed by lorna at the anime girl network from the wallpapers i made. be sure to thank her for this and check her site out!

seems like everthing that can go wrong this weekend, has--i had to take a few days off work to move into my new apartment, and as a result i didn't have access to ayashi.net for the weekend. i just discovered that for some reason, the counter reset at 17,000 hits. it's been restored.

for those who don't know about this magnificent movie, i officially posted my little tribute page of why everyone should see princess mononoke. you can now download the miramax trailers from ayashi.ne t if nausicaa.net is overloaded. i also updated the links page with the new url of seimei's ignisfatuus art, and added a new 200x40 ba nner to ayashi.net's how to link page. enjoy!

just a minor update this week. i've been slowly cleaning up minor link problems around the site, and updating/fixing the translation pages as necessary. i've finally realized that the translation project has grown beyond the point where it can be managed with post-it notes and a slick email client, so i sat down today and spent about an hour learning to use microsoft excel. i'm not always the biggest cheering section for microsoft, but this is actually a really nice program. i've now got a nifty spreadsheet of the translation project set up, which should allow me to keep much better track of what needs to be done.
boys and girls, november is feedback month for ayashi.net! actually, every month is feedback month, but this month i'm specifically suggesting it. anything that you've noticed on ayashi.net that's broken? anything that i've neglected to complete and just forgot about, that you'd like to see? feedback in general? want to know why you should go see princess mononoke? let me know!
for my japanese visitors: 僕は今、このサイトの日本語版ページの改善をしています。もしあなたが日本語で見たいと思っているものや、僕の日本語に間違いがあれば、僕にメールを下さいませんか？日本語のメールも読めますので、気 軽にご意見を聞かせて下さい。

ayashi.net has now passed 15,000 hits! if you do the math, that means we're bringing in around 5,000 visitors each month... gotsui naa! as a sort of present for all of you who help make ayashi.net what it is, i've got some new anc scans posted in the aya/tooya and group sections of the art gallery, as well as a new piece of original artwork.
also, thanks to emmy and junko abe, the translation of volume 11 has begun! between emmy's translation and junko's editing, they've completed part one and are starting work on the rest.
anyway, on a more mundane note, you'll see little things fixed here and there as i clean up the code of the site and reorganize some of the style sheets to be more efficient and mesh better with each other. the fonts still won't always display correctly in netscape, but that's not a problem with the site, it's netscape's problem with properly supporting style sheets... and frankly i refuse to bloat the code of this site in order to make up for netscape's deficiencies. </rant> ^^;;
for those of you wondering what's up with the spoiler sections in the character guide... er, boku no sei. i still haven't gotten the time to write them up, and probably won't have time to expand the character guide until i'm caught up on shokomi. that may be a little while. sunmasen. -.-

well, i would've been done with it were it not for the ever-present school and work matters... and the fact that anc volume 12 is out now! i havemost of it posted. why most, and not all? well, for whatever reason, either the publisher or watase-sensei chose to chop up parts of shokomi 11 when they compiled it into part one of volume 12. in fact, they went so far as to remove a few parts, rearrange some of the panels, and completely change some of the dialogue. because of how drastic the changes are, i need to retranslate parts of shokomi 11, so it might take a little longer to get that posted. in the meantime, you can read shokomi 11 if you want to know what happens in part 1, and i'd recommend doing so anyway, since it has more detail about a few minor things. the rest of volume 12 was unchanged, and is posted.
volume 2 is done up to page 92, but i haven't had the time to htmlize and post this yet. i'm about four issues behind on shokomi, but i won't be getting back to that until i'm done htmlizing what we have of volume 2. if you want to know what's going on in the meantime, feel free to join the anc mailing list and watch for tetris no miko's updates as shokomi comes out in japan.

just a minor update, but maybe not so minor to some of you. dana-chan gave me the link to the place on her page where she has her friend karen's partial translation of volume 2. so between yuu-chan and that, we have about half of volume 2 done. independently, mari and i have finished pp5-55 of volume 2, so i'm working on htmlizing it and merging it with karen's translations. this will eventually replace yuu-chan's translation with a locally hosted version. it's slow going, so in the meantime, you can get at part one from this link. i'll link to them from the volume 2 page once they're done.
as an aside, shokomi postings are temporarily on hold until i finish htmlizing volume 2. i expect to be done with that this week or early next week, and after that i'll make an effort to post the backlog of shokomi quickly. gomennasai, minasan... i'm working full time and back to school now, so i'm spending more time studying japanese than translating it. ^v~

i finished porting the new index page to the japanese version of ayashi.net. i never quite realized what a pain it would be to reformed a graphical interface to take the different sizes of japanese and english text into consideration... but i digress. it's done now, and it works. i also sat down and translated the other hosted sites page into japanese... not that most of you will care, but hey, maybe some of my japanese visitors will be interested in my band. ^v~

i've finally finished the new index page for ayashi.net that i've been working on. most of the time was spent making it (relatively) netscape-friendly, as many workarounds were needed to make up for its many bugs and poor support of the html 4.0 and css standards. anyone with a css-enabled browser (including netscape 4.5 or above) should be able to view the page, but it will only look correct in a browser which supports the international html 4.0 standard, such as internet explorer 4 or above.
much of the site's content is essentially the same--the front page is just prettier and, imo, more navigable now.
the only drawback is that i haven't been able to get it to work with the japanese version of the page--but i'm working on it.
oh, and by the way... shokomi 17 is done!

10,000th visitor!
as of midday yesterday, ayashi.net received its 10,000th visitor! and the site hasn't even been open for six months yet... wow. i have to say, i'm flattered that you all like the page so much. thanks to everyone who's come to visit us here--i hope that i can continue to make this a place you enjoy coming to!
oh, by the way, for those of you wondering about the status of shokomi... 17 is done, but i'm waiting on a friend of mine to get back to me with a few minor linguistic details on it. i'm still working on the rough draft for 18, and kinokuniya should have shokomi 19 in by tomorrow. the rough draft for the first half of volume 2 is done, now i just need to find time to work on it. bear with me, that might take some time--it's back to school week and all hell is breaking loose.

well, finally i got a lot of things done that i've been working on for a long time. i've completely revamped the image gallery, which now contains various anc scans as well as the original art that was there before. the structure makes a lot more sense now, and most images have thumbnails.
finally, at long last, the character guide for ayashi.net is done! well not completely, but enough so that i can post it. the page is functional and informative, and the only part i haven't completed yet are the spoiler sections. trust me, it'll be better this way once i'm done; a person of any spoiler level will be able to go in there and feel comfortable getting only the information they wanted. there are also a handful of characters missing; i just need to fish out the right image for each of them.
a minor addition, but noteworthy nonetheless, is my translator's pholosophy page. i'd recommend everyone read it at least once, especially if you have questions or concerns about my translation style.
finally, i've removed the text-only version of ayashi.net. i apologize if you were one of the few people who used it; this section received very little traffic and nearly doubled the time it took to finish any update.
please enjoy all the changes, and let me know if you find any broken links (aside from the spoiler links in the character guide, which i'm aware of). matana~!

phew! shokomi 16 is done, and frankly, it's about the toughest yet. lots of kagami dialogue, so if you go for his long-winded explanations, check it out. a lot seems to be happening in anc right now--shokomi 16, 17, and 18 are all pretty heavy on plot twists.
ayashi.net has undergone a handful of minor cosmetic changes over the past week or so, and more are coming. interestingly, usage of the web forum has picked up suddenly, so be sure to check there often--and to post, if you have something to say. ^v^

after much work, shokomi 15 is up! the rough draft for 16 is completed, but it's going to take me a while to smooth and htmlize it--there's a *lot* of kagami in it, and you know how much he loves using those big words... ^^;;
i went through the pages for each volume and added a "status" section which gives a clear picture of where everything stands in the translation project. this should hopefully clear up any uncertainty (as well as all the "when are you going to finish volume 2" emails ^v~).

the rough drafts of the translations for shokomi 15 and 16 are finished. i'm working on typing up issue 15 at this moment, and 16 is on its way. which is probably a good thing, since issue 17 arrives at the seattle kinokuniya on wednesday...
on another note, i had a rare burst of graphical inspiration the other day, so i decided to make an inappropriately high-bandwidth banner ad. you can find it on the new page i added, which gives information on how to link to us.

again, my sincere apologies for the delays in updating. shokomi 13 is finally finished and htmlized, and has been posted. yay! we're currently working on 15 and 16, and should have them up in a week or two at the outside.
minor changes here and there. i've added a new link or two, and fixed little things here and there.
yes, this is a really brief update. ^v~ more to come soon.

everyone, i must apologize profusely for the delays in updates, especially on the translations. everyone involved with the translation project has been really busy, it seems, and mari and i have been no different--most of volumes five through eight are done, and are online, but i still haven't been able to get around to htmlizing them and posting them on ayashi.net yet. mainly because there's no immediate rush--the respective translators have the translations up on their sites, and i've linked to them.
however, school's out for the next few weeks, and you'll start to see many more updates shortly. the first one is fairly small--i added some photo scans to my personal page, and have cleaned up a few of the broken links in the japanese and text-only versions of ayashi.net. the text-only version still has a lot of problems--mostly just translations that i haven't converted to text-only yet--but it's mostly functional. i'm afraid the text-only version will always lag behind the main page a little bit. mari and i are a couple issues behind on shokomi, and we'll be doing our best to get those up for you soon. the back issues of the manga volumes are coming, i just need to contact the people who were working on volumes 2 and 3, and see if they still are. many apologies to the people we haven't had a chance to write back to in the past couple weeks, and a big arigatou gozaimashita to everyone who's continued stopping by to check on the site! be seeing you soon. ^v~

today, ayashi.net received its 5000th visitor! not bad for just getting started in may. anyway, all is well on the translation front. my friend seimei requested that i color my sakura-chan picture, so i did so in a rare fit of inspiration. you can find the color version in the art section.

whew! i'm finally caught up with most of what's been taking up my time, so updates are happening again. i suppose that's always a good thing. ^v~ between the power tag-teams of michelle mok, joy wang, and tetris no miko, volumes 5 and 7 are finished, along with much of volume 8. kanojora ga yappari sugoku jouzu da na. ;;*_*;; shokomi 13 is done but not htmlized (i really need to finish doing that to volumes 5, 6, 7, and 8...), and we'll be working on shokomi 15 soon. (probably right about the time that 16 comes out...!)

sorry about the delays in updates this last few weeks--i've been overloaded with about a thousand different matters, so translation and web stuff had to take a backseat. anyway, the translation of shokomi 14 is up, and boy is it a doozy. **not for the faint of heart**

shokomi 14 also came with a great anc poster, which i decided to scan and turn into wallpaper. it's now posted in the art section. speaking of which, does the javascript pop-up make viewing images easier? indifferent? mendoukusai? let me know if you have an opinion.

speaking of which, i'd really like to hear from everyone. is there anything on ayashi.net you think could be improved? i'm listening. anything in particular that you like and want to see more of? tell me, please. just want to stop by and say hi? go for it! there are lots of ways to get in touch...

email is great. i like email. i'm real busy so i don't always answer it right away, but i read all of it. if you want to send me email, my address is nekojita@ayashi.net. しかし、僕は日本語でメールを読めます。僕の日本語があまりうまくありませんのに日本の文通が好きんです。(If you can't read that, don't worry about it.)

there's also the ayashi.net web forum. this is possibly one of the most underused features of ayashi.net. it's not really for general anc discussion--yuu watase-chan's forum is a great place for that. it's intended, rather, as a place for discussing anything related to anc translations, japanese language, and ayashi.net in specific.

finally, there's the guestbook. i really like it when people sign the guestbook. ^v~ reading it is also often a great way to find other cool web pages.

well, shokomi 12 has been posted, and seems to be popular so far. if for some reason you have your javascript turned off, or have problems viewing javascript, you can still browse to the text-only version, which doesn't use javascript.

i should be finished htmlizing and posting issue 12 of shokomi by the end of tonight. to be honest, i spent most of my time at work today in a rare spate of inspiration for working on digital art, and thus did my first cg in quite some time--at least, the first one that wasn't done specifically for part of ayashi.net. check the art section to see what's up. speaking of which, i also made a few revisions to the code in that section; it now sports a nifty javascript window opener to make browsing images a little easier. mark it well; it's the first use on this site i've made of javascript, which i normally avoid.

the translations of volume 4 are now finished, and all posted. go for it! shokomi 12 is also almost done--which is good, since shokomi 13 is coming out in a few days. ^v~ i finished designing a graphic for the anc webring, which ayashi.net has been submitted to. you should see this on the lower-right of the page. if you're the webring-cruising sort, feel free to browse the other anc sites out there. finally, one of my penpals, yuumi, pointed out a few grammar errors of mine on the japanese version of ayashi.net. gratefully fixed!

i'm in the process of htmlizing the volume 4 translations for posting on ayashi.net. i'm about halfway done now, and since today is my friday, i should be able to get them finished pretty quickly. there might be a few dead links in the volume 4 section until then, but bear with me, they'll go away. i also updated the text-only page to reflect the changes in the main pages. as an aside, the text-only page will usually be at least a few days behind the main page in terms of updates.

i decided that the index page was long overdue for a facelift. the load time is a little higher than before, but the page is still under 64k and it loads pretty quickly on my poor 14.4 modem at home. ^v^ anyway, there's now a link to joy and tetris no miko's volume 4 translations page, and mari and i should have shokomi done within a few days. gomennasai minna, it's finals week for mari and frustrating customer week for me.

i've added a few new resources to the japanese help section. the places page now has many new links, including several japanese-only pages and a link to the ayashi no ceres mailing list. i've also changed the tennyo watermark image to something more bandwidth-friendly--the old one was 28k in size and was too bright anyway; it interfered with the text too much. plus, I made the new one from scratch, so i'm right proud of it. ^v~ finally, i decided to move the counter to the index page instead of my personal page, which should improve the accuracy of hit-counting. consequently, the index page has been renamed to index.shtml. unless you're specifically browsing to http://ayashi.net/index.html, this won't affect you; if you just point to http://ayashi.net then it automatically uses the correct start page.

i corrected a few grammar and typographical mistakes in the japanese help section. that's what i get for trying to rush through putting up japanese information. ^v^ ayashi.net also now has a japanese version for some pages. mind you, i'm not japanese, so i'm sure my grammar isn't perfect... corrections are welcome.

ayashi.net now has a section for japanese help. it's not really a comprehensive tutorial, more like a reference section for those reading manga or translating. right now there's a kana chart in gif format, a rundown on japanese pronouns, and a posting of my old vocabulary lists from anc volumes 1 and 2. i'm currently working on pages for common manga vocabulary translation tips.

the translations section now has a page for translations of shokomi issues. as of today, the only one posted is 1999 issue 11, but as i have time i may do more. if any of you have recent shokomi translations for volumes of anc that haven't been released yet, please let me know.

i finally got around to posting a page of my miscellaneous rants and ramblings. you'll need to go through a screening page before getting there, basically to let you know that you may encounter strong opinions that will bother you. if you like, feel free to throw the destination page in your favorites/bookmarks once you're there. i also posted more of joy and tetris no miko's excellent volume 6 translations, and a little more on volume 3. sorry about the slack time, mari and i have been really busy this last week.

just to be on the safe side, i've composed a rather wordy legal disclaimer page, which you can now find at the bottom of just about every page on this site. we all know that watase-sama seems rather friendly towards the fandom scene, but i just like to make sure the air is clear--more importantly, it makes it clear in no uncertain words that the translations should not be reposted, etc without permission of the translator. (not necessarily me--the translator of each section is listed on the respective page)

due to a quirk of the way my host handles ssi (server-side-includes), i had to rename my miscellany page to nekojita.shtml in order to make the counter work. aside from the fact that i can't help pronouncing .shtml as 'shit-mill', this shouldn't impact anyone. be sure to update any links/favorites/bookmarks you have pointing to the old url. the vol 6 translations by joy and tetris no miko are now online! well, at least the first 35 pages are. the rest will be htmlized at work tomorrow; it's time for me to go home now.

i reorganized the translations page, since i'll be posting translations of more than one volume--and not just what mari and i have done, either! check it out and you'll see what i mean; i'll also soon have more volume 3 translations from anctp members to post.

more translation stuff done on vol 3; posted. i finally got around to reposting my band's web page, which is rather horribly out of date. there's still plenty of cool music there, though, so check it out. also updated the about me page with more info on anc and my other hobbies.

all is well in the land of ayashi.net... the translation of volume 3 is progressing well. i decided to put up an obligatory about me page, for those twisted people who really wanted to know all the details. ^v^ enjoy this link-rich environment. also added this update history.

ayashi.net arrives, and the new home for the anctp is posted. the new site makes extensive use of cascading style sheets, a standard feature of html 4.0 which is unfortunately not properly supported by netscape, which has a number of unforgivable and known bugs and omissions in its css implementation.
i've done my level best to make the page accessible to people with all browsers, down to and including lynx. however, if you want to see it the way it's supposed to look, you will need a browser that properly supports the css standard, such as ie 4.0 or above.

the idea of the ayashi no ceres translation project is born when mari and i begin trying to translate volume 3. a major redesign of the old site begins, with the intent of making it much more expandable, and independent of javascript and nowhere near as graphics-heavy.

the original site goes up on io.com. basically just a personal page at this point, when i finished it i realized it was too heavy on graphics and javascript for my taste (although it did have a fairly nice kanji cgi 'counter' that i worked rather hard on).