hiroki

Yep! I'm getting tempted to give Tegami Bachi a try because of it, but at the same time I'm not sure because it's a totally different genre. I got one of his artbooks too and it's so nice ._.

Reissue of a manga series which started nearly 20 years ago. The art is so pretty ._.
 

Started travelling alone when I was 16.
 
In life, I was mentored by money-makers who wouldn`t spend a dime in excess, and would pinch every penny.
 
Look for cheap bus routes that make more stops and take longer,  but are way cheaper.
Book all planes as far in advance in possible.
It can be half the price to fly to one country, then take another flight to the one you want to go to by a cheap airline. For example, if you want to go to one European country, which is popular, it may cost $1000, but if you fly to a smaller, less popular country, then take their airline to your destination, it can be $4-500.
 
Hostels are good, but have their downsides. They can be dirty, or noisy, or less safe, but you will also meet many other travellers, learn things, and save money.
 
In Japan, you can stay in a regular hotel in Shinjuku for 10,000 Yen, or stay in a Capsule Hotel for 2,000...
 
If you want to teach in a foreign country, try to get the job before you go there. I know many people who work in Taiwan, South Korea, etc... 
 
Staying in Japan is hard if you are a foreigner, the best thing to do is enroll in a school, or transfer schools. Exchange programs are possible from High School upwards if you have good grades, and a little bit of money to put down sometimes.
 
When things have not worked out, I have had to sleep on the street. Find a good spot, either so secluded nobody will ever pass by, or in a busy place where there are enough people to be witnesses, so no-one will try anything, or steal your bag while you are sleeping. Wash in a bus station, airport, or go pay for one entry to a gym with showers. Do a short workout so they dont see what is up, and then hit the showers. I have always befriended homeless people, and found out the good spots to sleep, like one sweet place in a park, but the sprinklers turn on at a certain time, so you have to move...
 
Anyway, I have some experience, and like to share, so let me know if you guys need any help. Would love to hear you advice and stories as well.
 
Btw, in areas warm to foreigners, always mention you are not from around there, it makes you exotic and interesting, and people will want to get to know you, or give you good advice. Life is like a video game when you are travelling, and I find it pretty nice.

That seems like a decent reason to fire someone. But a petition isn't going to make him more proficient, so.... huh.

Sidenote: the title of this thread is hilarious.
 
WEERAH-A-GOIN' LEECHURRR HUH-N!'
 
 

Thank you for that. I agree with sai that this makes the most sense given how, like what you said, 10 uploaders want 10 different things.
 
 
 
 
Again, this sounds like a good idea to me. I've always been quite unsettled by how friendly the DL section is to anonymous phantom users.
 
At the same time Zess and 237Q have made good points about forcing people to thank just to download and the potential spam. Perhaps we can make a similar button to reveal the DL link when clicked (separate from the thanks button), and have the users who have clicked it logged in a list. This neither interferes with the whole thanks/reputation business (which isn't particularly important to me, but obviously does mean a lot to some), nor does it bump the entire thread to the 1st page when someone downloads an old file. I haven't made up my mind whether it's a good idea to disclose the list of users (e.g. append it to the first post) or keep it hidden and accessible only to the staff. If we go for the former, this button can serve a nice "post for link" function without all the hassle of spam control, bumping old threads, etc.
 
Anyway that's just an idea I have that may or may not be feasible.

1. I have added the "Respect the uploaders wishes"-rule to the official Download Rules and also added is as declaimer in the description of the DL forum. It has replaced the "use your own link" rule, since uploaders may or may not want that in the first place.
 
 
2. I have looked into possible anti-leech plugins for our forum software. I found this one so far. The cost would be 25$. Since Kai is already paying enough for the hosting of the site, I would probably have to pay it. It gives uploaders the option to hide their links until a user replies to the thread. Sadly there is no integration for the "Like" function so far, so it would be a source of a lot of spam. It would also put those uploaders at a disadvantage that choose to not hide their links (I for example wouldn't, I prefer comments given out of gratutide rather than force), since their topics don't get bumped up every time someone wants to download. Maybe there's a 3rd party mod for this plugin to make it work with the "like" button, I will keep looking. But for now it would just be a lot of spam and a lot of money for very little gain, so.... yeah. It's not stopping reposts, and those people that are too lazy to reply will just download from blogspots anyway.
 
 
3. Since all people with less than 5 posts are put in the "n00b" group, we could every now and then send a mass-pm to all members of this group (maybe every 6 months or so), inviting them to introduce themselves and be more active in the forum. I reckon that many n00b accounts are dead/unused anyway, but maybe a few will come out of lurking after all. As I said, we don't want to "hunt" away leechers, we want them to be active.

there's a ridiculous amount of sad disbandments lately ;_;

The following is my personal opinion and it isn't targeted at anyone in particular. I'm only writing this in the interest of generating more discussion.
 
I quote: "We strictly believe in the notion of "Share openly or don't share at all" and thus we base all our decisions regarding the download forums on that."
 
^ May I ask what's the rationale behind that?
 
I understand the whole argument of "regardless of what we do it's useless - anything posted is going to be distributed everywhere anyway; so why bother". But the fact is that there are tons of people who only want to share with a select group of people: I don't just mean people whom they know personally, but people who are part of a community. Whether that's rational or not is another issue, but such a preference is neither surprising nor uncommon. If the idea of "share with everyone or don't share at all" makes any sense, then we might as well have one gigantic server called Share Everything Here and have everyone use it to download music, anime, porn, culinary guides, etc. We don't; because people feel very differently towards having their rip shared with people within MH community, or those in the LJ communites, or the entire Jpopsuki community, etc.
 
Now, here I'm speaking only for myself: I don't give a shit about credits. As far as I'm concerned, all credits for the music belong exclusively to the band. HOWEVER, I do get terribly irritated when people post my rips outside MH without my knowledge. I want to make clear that the two are not mutually exclusive, and this annoyance is more a result of the disrespect of phantom distributors who blithely thumb their noses at the uploader and ignore his wishes, rather than any "self-serving" arrogance on the part of the uploader who's obsessed with having his ego stroked. Every time I post a rip I would request for people to at least inform me if they're going to re-post; currently half my rips are already on Jpopsuki and I've received zero PM informing me of it. If I had wanted to share my rip with the people on Jpopsuki I'd imagine I could have done so myself.
 
For me, the "doing anything is useless because x will still happen anyway" is a weak argument. I'm reminded of a recent election where the incumbent responded to the public outrage over the widening economic inequality in my country. Basically, the party officials shamelessly say, inequality is inevitable the moment we have a certain socioeconomic arrangement, with the free market and so on, and so what they've done would have been useless anyway. Of course we understand that inequality happens, but that does not mean that the government shouldn't give a shit about people who are picking up cardboard litter for a living or do more to help people who can't afford basic healthcare. The point here is that even if we acknowledge the problem cannot be solved in its entirety, there ought to be some attempt to do something about it to manage how fast the problem exacerbates, rather than just throwing our hands up in the air and demand everyone to feebly accept the unpalatable state of affairs. Clearly what happens in Jpopsuki or piratebay is outside the purview of MH - it would absurd to expect MH to "control" the spread of rips going on there - but we can definitely do something about how these get from here to there.
 
There's some truth in Zess' point: we've tried some stuff and they didn't work, or didn't work as well as we've liked. Some livejournal communities ban people who distribute stuff shared within, Chinese forums have a system where someone has to post in a thread to view a link, etc. I'll be the first to admit that not of these all methods are equally effective, and there are obvious practical difficulties for implementing something like what LJ communities do. If there's a Perfect Solution, content industries won't be shaking their fists and lobbying for stupid things in Congress once every two days. Still, there are two things that hurt me most (and, I suspect, a good majority of other uploaders who have become highly disillusioned - I'm sure we all know who they are):
　　(i) The issue is often trivialized and there's an apparent unwillingness to condemn such behavior - there's this general sentiment that people who rage over having their rip shared across the Internet are childish and simply don't understand how the Internet works;
　　(ii) There's absolutely zero regulatory mechanism on MH, no matter how simple or bypass-able they may be, to manage/reduce the distribution because "it's all useless anyway". (By the way I do feel that the "PM for password" thing is a bad idea, but uploaders are forced to resort to these last-ditch methods precisely because MH is uninterested in limiting distribution)
 
What we have here are then perfect conditions that not only endorse but encourage people to post everything here onto their blogs with a smug security because, hey, no one cares anyway!

The following is my personal opinion and it isn't targeted at anyone in particular. I'm only writing this in the interest of generating more discussion.
 
I quote: "We strictly believe in the notion of "Share openly or don't share at all" and thus we base all our decisions regarding the download forums on that."
 
^ May I ask what's the rationale behind that?
 
I understand the whole argument of "regardless of what we do it's useless - anything posted is going to be distributed everywhere anyway; so why bother". But the fact is that there are tons of people who only want to share with a select group of people: I don't just mean people whom they know personally, but people who are part of a community. Whether that's rational or not is another issue, but such a preference is neither surprising nor uncommon. If the idea of "share with everyone or don't share at all" makes any sense, then we might as well have one gigantic server called Share Everything Here and have everyone use it to download music, anime, porn, culinary guides, etc. We don't; because people feel very differently towards having their rip shared with people within MH community, or those in the LJ communites, or the entire Jpopsuki community, etc.
 
Now, here I'm speaking only for myself: I don't give a shit about credits. As far as I'm concerned, all credits for the music belong exclusively to the band. HOWEVER, I do get terribly irritated when people post my rips outside MH without my knowledge. I want to make clear that the two are not mutually exclusive, and this annoyance is more a result of the disrespect of phantom distributors who blithely thumb their noses at the uploader and ignore his wishes, rather than any "self-serving" arrogance on the part of the uploader who's obsessed with having his ego stroked. Every time I post a rip I would request for people to at least inform me if they're going to re-post; currently half my rips are already on Jpopsuki and I've received zero PM informing me of it. If I had wanted to share my rip with the people on Jpopsuki I'd imagine I could have done so myself.
 
For me, the "doing anything is useless because x will still happen anyway" is a weak argument. I'm reminded of a recent election where the incumbent responded to the public outrage over the widening economic inequality in my country. Basically, the party officials shamelessly say, inequality is inevitable the moment we have a certain socioeconomic arrangement, with the free market and so on, and so what they've done would have been useless anyway. Of course we understand that inequality happens, but that does not mean that the government shouldn't give a shit about people who are picking up cardboard litter for a living or do more to help people who can't afford basic healthcare. The point here is that even if we acknowledge the problem cannot be solved in its entirety, there ought to be some attempt to do something about it to manage how fast the problem exacerbates, rather than just throwing our hands up in the air and demand everyone to feebly accept the unpalatable state of affairs. Clearly what happens in Jpopsuki or piratebay is outside the purview of MH - it would absurd to expect MH to "control" the spread of rips going on there - but we can definitely do something about how these get from here to there.
 
There's some truth in Zess' point: we've tried some stuff and they didn't work, or didn't work as well as we've liked. Some livejournal communities ban people who distribute stuff shared within, Chinese forums have a system where someone has to post in a thread to view a link, etc. I'll be the first to admit that not of these all methods are equally effective, and there are obvious practical difficulties for implementing something like what LJ communities do. If there's a Perfect Solution, content industries won't be shaking their fists and lobbying for stupid things in Congress once every two days. Still, there are two things that hurt me most (and, I suspect, a good majority of other uploaders who have become highly disillusioned - I'm sure we all know who they are):
　　(i) The issue is often trivialized and there's an apparent unwillingness to condemn such behavior - there's this general sentiment that people who rage over having their rip shared across the Internet are childish and simply don't understand how the Internet works;
　　(ii) There's absolutely zero regulatory mechanism on MH, no matter how simple or bypass-able they may be, to manage/reduce the distribution because "it's all useless anyway". (By the way I do feel that the "PM for password" thing is a bad idea, but uploaders are forced to resort to these last-ditch methods precisely because MH is uninterested in limiting distribution)
 
What we have here are then perfect conditions that not only endorse but encourage people to post everything here onto their blogs with a smug security because, hey, no one cares anyway!

I understand both ends of this issue very well.
Some people are gonna tell you, "if you don't want your stuff reposted, then don't share at all". "That's just how the net works", blah, blah, blah.
While all of that IS true, that doesn't mean nothing that can be done about it.
So I will arrange to put something together, since you ARE NOT the only person that feels this way.

Lately as im checking the site , looking at active and inactive members , the times a file gets downloaded and how many posts/likes there are i starting to see that the forum is starting to turn in to a leecher base . There is so many users that registered over half a year ago , that check almost each post frequently but have 0 posts . Most of sites that have downloads have some regulations , like having at least 10 posts or more to get to the download section , or virtual money where you can buy downloads . I think it might be worth to at least think that idea through as MH EXCLUSIVE was abandoned and some ppl like me who work hard as hell and can afford only 1-2 albums every 2 months , dont want their uploads being stole and reposted on some stupid crappy blog of some ungrateful kiddo .
A quick example , one of my recent posted albums Salty Dog - Goodnight, Cruel World EP , was already downloaded 289 times , HOW? , the number of views is a little over 50 and it was posted yesterday . I already found it reposted on 2 crappy blogs without my premission , without any credits to me or at least this forum . I know that bloacking off users who only leech from this site will not stop this from happening , but it will be on lower scale .
For now i will see what other users and the forums admins and mods think about this and what do they have in mind , but for now im not gonna upload new stuff from myself cause i dont want my uploads to roam freely around the web and than losing my account on a sharing site cause of high traffic on a file (100000 downloads in 1 day when i posted only on 1 site and there only 5 ppl climed to download the file) .
Quick example of a person who only leech .
GustaveXII - registered almost 4 years ago , only 1 post , i see him online every 2-3 days .

There are tons of songs that I love and probably can't live without, but for the purposes of this I'm just gonna list 5 songs that I still have trouble listening to without losing it.
 
BLACK CAT - MAY
Clavier - Love Story (I cried the first time I heard this song)
DELUHI - 星の無い夜に
Kagrra, - 雫
SINCREA - RED
 
As you can tell, all these bands have disbanded. Among them, 2 vocalists out of 5 are still around doing music that would never ever be the same for me, another 2 have vanished/retired from the scene, and the last one has passed away.
 
 
Edit: I just saw Kles' list and I'm surprised... both フライト (ALSDEAD) and 紫苑 (2nd Dyz) mean a great deal to me as well.

actually they buy it to go to instore events XD

there were a lot of tears at the live today. you could feel how much everyone loves baddies. and their fans are the most welcoming group of ladies overall that i have met in vk. today was my 10th time seeing them and it's painful knowing that may 2nd might be my last time (i cant go June 1st).
of course, i dont think anyone was surprised but it's still tough to swallow. i hope for the best but it's hard to be optimistic with indefinite hiatuses...

I'm not at all familiar with these artists, but...
 
The KISAKI one appears to be: "KISAKI - 「地下線神言基地」 購入者特典kisakiレアcd"
Romaji: KISAKI - 「Chikasen Shingon Kichi」 (Bonus kisaki rare cd)
 
The Magverry one is here: http://www.puresound.co.jp/script/detail.php?id=101082161001
this one doesn't have a "title" - it just says 無料配布CD Ver.2 ("Free distributed CD Ver.2")
 
The KING one has no title, so..

I really love the song <3
 
Also, the "disbandment" photo with everyone's backs facing the camera makes me really sad for some reason ;;;_;;;
 

Just wow.. I don't even know how many times I've listened to it already

the Raid. new maxi single "レゾン・デートル(raison d'etre)" will be released at 2014/04/02 (3 TYPE)
 
TYPE A (1,890yen) will include CD+DVD (including "レゾン・デートル(raison d'etre)" PV & making), and TYPE B & C (1,575yen each) will include CD only
 
[CD track list]
01.レゾン・デートル(raison d'etre)
02.HYSTERICAL PARTY
03.ジレンマ(dilemma) (included in TYPE B )
03.嘘と雨空(uso to amazora) (included in TYPE C)
 

 
 
full PV of "レゾン・デートル(raison d'etre)" will be available for watching through YouTube if RT through twitter exceeds 1000

http://www.puresound.co.jp/script/detail.php?id=101009048000

;_;
 
So sad. Hopefully Xi goes on to form/join another band