Sad, but true. Since the Dome Tour 2001 she has had some hearing problems in her left ear. It began with a whistling sound that would not stop throughout rehearsals, and got worse and worse until she eventually lost all hearing in that ear. The doctor told her that it is irreversable, and that if she doesn't stop doing such high-volume concerts she could lose her hearing altogether. This hasn't stopped her yet, but you'll probably notice that she finds it difficult to hear some of the quieter musical accompaniments and occasionally strays out of time or off-key because of it.

(This information is accurate, because it was taken from various TeamAyu messages posted by Ayu herself, and official reports from Avex.)

The programs I use are freeware and are fairly easy to use once you get the hang of them - Sub Station Alpha v4.08 to write and time the subtitles in whichever style I want (save as .ssa file), VirtualDub to add them to the video for previewing (select "filter" and "subtitles", then the .ssa file), and then TMPEGEnc to convert and compress the subtitled video. These together create hardsubbed MPEG files.

Note: To create an avi file on VirtualDub that doesn't need to be put through TMPEGEnc afterwards, select "Compression" and use the "DivX" codec. There are more in depth guides to these programs available online somewhere.

I've been a Japanese language student for 5 years, so I can understand enough Japanese to enjoy the country's music. Lyrics have always been very important to me, and Ayu's especially. I like to dig deep into them, behind the words themselves, analyse the context, and find the original meaning - not just a word-for-word translation. I try to make my translations as accurate and at the same time comprehensive to English speaking people as possible.

I wanted my site to highlight Ayumi's real talent, rather than just her image and popularity. I'm very proud of the way that she's improved over the years, trained her voice well, tried many different styles of music, honed her poetry skills to create beautiful lyrics, and developed composing skills that put many modern "artists" to shame. I hate it when she releases songs that were composed by other people (although she always writes all her own lyrics), because I personally think that she is a far better composer than any of them are. Through her own creations such as "Endless Sorrow", "Heartplace" and "Dolls", her true artistic talents shine. That's the Ayu that I admire so much.