The Kira-Kira.net Story
How the Domain Name and Site Design Came to Be
In the summer of 2007, when I was in Japan for the first time, the goal was to see the band w-inds. six times in ten days, which meant Tabris and I spent a lot of time on the Shinkansen. During the trip from Osaka to Tokyo, I ended up sitting beside a nice, older business man, who struck up a conversation with me about 20 minutes into the ride and we chatted for quite some time. He used halting but good English, while I operated in terrible yet enthusiastic Japanese.
The trouble was that I would usually forget the key word needed for my sentence, which is how it came to be that when asked what I thought of Osaka, I could not recall the word for ‘beautiful’ and could only come up with kirakira, “sparkly.”
Tabris, who was sitting across the aisle, laughed herself silly because my favorite w-inds. song is in fact entitled “Kirei Da” (You’re Beautiful), and she and the rest of my LJ friends have never let me live it down.
On my second trip to Japan in the summer of 2008, Jemz and Shabz took a special delight in forcing me to buy Suntory’s Lucky Cider, because its slogan is “the one with the kirakira sparkle.” Fortunately, I like Lucky Cider quite a bit, so it wasn’t much of a hardship.
Kirakira has become such a long-running joke with and about me, that it was the option with the most appeal when I was deciding on a new domain name to make the switch from theratbox.com. And so for the layout of my site, I borrowed more than a few style elements from the official Lucky Cider Website.
I think it suits me very well, the mix of Japanese and English, of bright colors and practical functionality, plus of course, the eternal mouse avatar.
About the Website
This website was designed using WordPress. The theme I’m using is Meadowland, although I’ve made enough changes to the stylesheet and the other templates that it’s hardly recognizable as Meadowland anymore. I’ve done the HTML and CSS myself, with a lot of trouble-shooting by Harloprillalar and Shinigamitabris. The site runs off two WP databases, one for stories, and the other for translations.
Written by Mousapelli, 2008.12.24
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By jemz, 2009.01.22 @ 4:38 pm
“…kimi wa kirei da.”
XD Sill one of my favorite memories of Japan. And don’t lie. We didn’t really have to force you all that hard to get you to buy it.
<3
By Diane Naruse, 2014.02.22 @ 10:58 pm
Hello! I’m a w-inds. fan from Philippines. I like reading your w-inds. fanfics – it amuses me a lot! Love w-inds. (^_^)<3
By Kat, 2015.10.12 @ 10:24 pm
hello! i stumble upon your blog in search for coat west and dbsk fanfictions.. but i got confuse regarding dbsk fanfics…are u know who, international huge and you are one person? thanks! 🙂