The Girl
Hiya. I’m Akaihane, and I’m a 26-year-old web/graphic designer and I live in Belfast, Northern Ireland with my partner and our three kitties, as seen to the right ยป 
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I’ve always loved art and design. Although in my professional career I focus upon web design, I love art and design in all its forms, and have been working on getting back to illustration after several years from it. When it does come to web design, I’m a passionate compliance advocate (some may say I’m overly obsessed with getting CSS perfect), destest the existance of the IE browsers (and rant about it all of the time) and love Firefox.
Away from art and design, my primary passion is anime and manga. It’s been over 13 years since I picked up my first anime VHS *shudders*, and about nine since I first bought my first manga.
When it comes to music, I love a little of everything, and listen to a lot of JPOP and JROCK. My favourite movies are The Fifth Element, Infernal Affairs, Swallowtail Butterfly, Rocky Horror, Strange Days The Crow and almost anything by Terry Gilliam (well, maybe apart from The Brothers Grimm…) . As for TV, I’m an unapologetic trekker (though just when it comes to TNG and DS9), love Firefly, Arrested Development Dexter, am currently lamenting the end the Battlestar Galactica, and currently getting into 30 Rock (my boyfriend constantly reminds me that I’m just like Liz Lemon from 30 Rock. Not sure if that is meant as a compliment or not #-_-#)
Motivation
I originally planned to use this blog as a platform to talk about anime and manga, however, after a while, I found that I didn’t have the motivation. There are countless websites out there that review anime and manga; those bloggers post screenshots of new episodes, write in-depth synopsis, update the community on important news. So I felt there wasn’t anything new I could bring to that blogging community. I also felt it was wrong for someone who rarely read reviews to write them for the public; if I wasn’t really interested in reading other blogs dedicated to anime and manga, it wasn’t a smart move to make one of my own.
The types of blogs that I did visit were those dedicated to design, places like Design*Sponge, Design You Trust and NOTCOT (as well as more techy orientated site). One those sites, there wasn’t long speels of text, and they were focused on the visual. They were inspiration sites that helped keep my creative site active. I felt that I should make a blog I knew I would read if I was on the outside. But, of course, there already were numberous sites out there of this ilk.
Hopes & Dreams
Therefore, as a designer and an otaku, I decided to combine my two major loves and create a blog dedicated to a inspirational niche; Japanese art and design.
This site will showcase the best of Japanese inspired art and design, in a number of major categories:
- Fashion
- Music videos and movies
- Architecture
- Illustration (including manga)
- Posters and other promotional material
- CD/DVD/Book covers
- Animation
- and much more.
So please keep us in your bookmarks and we’ll keep you inspired and amused ^_^