I'm currently a writer and editor for Japanator, a Japanese culture blog (receiving 900,000 page views a month), having contributed 800 articles since my first day February 19th, 2007. I started there as a simple anything-goes contributor, covering anime and manga news as well as whatever odd cultural tid-bits I could dig up. Eventually I found my niche covering Japanese music almost exclusively. I've been a huge fan of Japanese music since the mid-1990s. In fact my favorite band of all time is the Japanese new-wave art-punk band Polysics.
From my rabid music coverage emerged Japanator Radio, an hour long weekly Japanese music podcast. It quickly gained a strong following, and currently receives an average of 2000 downloads a week.
My music coverage at Japanator has also led to the inclusion of my quotes on various official press releases, as well as several opportunities to interview Japanese bands touring America. Years ago as a college music DJ I had the chance to cut my teeth interviewing the likes of Moby and BT. I've built upon those experiences to craft what I hope have been interviews not only interesting to the readers, but the bands as well.
My giant list of band profiles and album reviews on Japanator eventually outgrew that venue and I built my own Japanese music blog, ZB's A-Z of J-Music. Because of the various limitations of the Japanator site, I wanted to make my ever growing number of band profiles and album reviews easier to access and browse. I set up the A-Z site on my own time, and it now contains almost 300 band profiles spanning tens of thousands of words. Many other sites have cited it as an excellent resource for insightful English language reviews of Japanese bands, some of which have little to no other English coverage. My emphasis is on underground and unknown bands, though I do cover everything from indie bands to mega idols. I have a love for just about every genre, from rock to pop to electro to metal to vis-kei to shibuya-kei, and treat them all as equals.
In June of 2008 I started writing for Otaku USA Magazine, the leading magazine in America covering all thing pop Japan. I took over almost all the music writing, producing four pages of album reviews and band interviews every issue. Again, this move also resulted in even more access to big name bands in the Japanese music scene.
In August of 2009, I was hired as something of a taste-maker for HearJapan, an on-line music store making Japanese music available outside of Japan. My weekly column "Explore the Unexplored" delves into the massive HearJapan catalog to find the hidden gems that might get lost of the avalanche of new music that constantly hits the site.
While it may seem like I had sprung out of nowhere and landed at Japanator, that isn't exactly the case. Prior to that I has started my short lived (though technically still alive) gaming blog called The Atari Thief. I was also a music reviewer for a local independent newspaper called The Ripsaw News. In addition to doing weekly album reviews I also worked as a graphic designer, building ads as well as doing general page layout.
While I was studying for my Graphic Design major, I re-discovered my passion for writing. At the time I never would have thought I'd be just as interested in writing about design as actually designing, but thanks to one professor I did just that. Looking back now I don't think it was so much the subject matter as it was the simple act of writing itself. This goes back to my days in high-school, junior high and even before that to grade school. I had simply forgotten that I enjoyed writing sometime in the in-between days. Once I re-discovered it in college I began blogging, until, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, Japanator changed my life. And on it goes.
Writer
