Half a decade of kakko-ii.com

by zush · September 9, 2008

It’s now over 5 years ago when I began to run kakko-ii.com. In the beginning of 2003 I got this domain and was surprised that this kind of cool name was still available. During first months here wasn’t anything noteworthy going on. I kept this site as my picture storage place and here was only two photo albums for my online friends. Back then I was quite active member at MM-BBS and I had here also collection of member photos from that forum.

In the beginning

Then came summer 2003 and I started thinking that kakko-ii.com should be something more than just my almost private storage space. I had been collecting Hello! Project related pictures from the web some years then and I thought why not show them also to other H!P fans. It was late summer when Kakko-ii’s H!P Picture Gallery was up and running. Since then our portal’s main feature has been this Gallery.

During first years I had also plans to broaden site’s content to cover H!P news. But as I did not find any contributors from Japan I gave up with that plan. Also at that time there came up a couple of new sites those delivered J-pop & H!P news so I thought there wasn’t room for another same sort of service.

The work must be done

As I am pedantic, systematic and maybe even ambitious I must confess that taking care of our Gallery drives me sometimes into minor or even bigger crisis. It’s not only that I want to keep Gallery regularly updated but I also want all pictures there to be correctly re-named, dated and put to right photo sets & categories. In other words: that means lot of work to do and sometimes I feel that it’s too much for me to carry on. Especially when I do this as a hobby without paycheck or compensation. Hah, kakko-ii.com takes my time and my money. Kind of miracle that I’m still here and running this site.

I can’t yet say that “It’s been a long journey” but many things has anyway happened in these 5 years when kakko-ii.com has been online. In late summer 2003 Morning Musume released their Shabondama single introducing fresh 6th gen members first time on MM record. It was time when Morning Musume had 15 members and Mini Moni was still alive (although Ai-chan had replaced Marippe). Since those days many things have changed in Tsunku’s Dynasty. For me the most significant positive thing has been the rise of Berryz Kobo. But there has also been not so glorious moments in H!P’s last five years. If I bring up Aibon’s name you know what I mean. I can’t say how happy I am that Ai Kago is fine and now back in business.

Berryz changed everything

When Berryz Kobo then came and suddenly took my heart it was inevitable that sooner or later this group is going to show up also in kakko-ii.com. Actually my first Berryz Kobo blog was at VOX. Then I left VOX and moved my blog under the kakko-ii.com domain. It was called Kakko-ii Berryz Limited Edition. If you have any interest you can check these blogs because they are still online. Some months went by with KBLE before I realised that berryz-kobo-international.com domain name was still free & available. I got that domain and new server location & account and moved once again my BK blog. I’m still amazed that Up-Front International had not taken this domain name. So from the beginning of 2008 Berryz Kobo International has been up and I’ve been busy with a blog there. I’m confident that in the future BKI is going to have more content than just a blog.

How cool ?

When talking about blogs, our main kakko-ii.com site has had this blog (you are now reading) running now over two years. Unfortunately I have had less time & energy to keep this blog rockin’ because of BKI blog. Earlier I tried to have here contributors but in almost every case it didn’t work out very well. One thing I learned then was that there is always a risk when you ask people who have their own blogs to contribute also your blog. It’s easy to understand that when you are working with your own blog(s) you have less time to other activities. Hope you girls who were doing some blog entries here are doing well where ever you are now.

And then there is my mate Wu-san. I was lucky to have him to our blog team. As you active J-pop/rock blogosphere surfers might know, Wu-san has an unique subjective style of writing. I enjoy reading his observations on J-pop/rock artists & music and also on life itself, on those little things that make a difference. I just hope that Wu-san has still time for kakko-ii.com although he has also his own blogs.

The future of kakko-ii.com then? You never know. At this moment there is not too dark clouds on sight but there might come time when Gallery section of this site could be on my cut down list. As long as I enjoy doing this you can trust that kakko-ii.com is alive.

Some site statistics

In August 2008 kakko-ii.com had 29.011 visitors and most busiest month so far was this year’s April with 139.827 visitors.

Visitors by country Top Ten looks like this: 1. United States, 2. Thailand, 3. Japan, 4. Hong Kong, 5. Korea, 6. Canada, 7. Russian Federation, 8. China, 9. France and 10. Malaysia.

Looking back

Sept 2003 – First version of kakko-ii.com front page. Risa has outfit she was wearing in Shabondama PV.

Sept 2003 – Photo Gallery pages looked like this at that time. As you can see Gallery had still more than just H!P pictures. Also MM-BBS members portraits were there.

April 2004 – Before Forum we had simple Guestbook. Mokyomi & Lainay were two of those active members back then.

Nov 2004 – Sites front page in the end of 2004. Reina love.

Now 2004 – Also Gallery was having some layout changes. New Forum was just opened.

Jan 2005 – New year and completely new candy layout. Konkon in header banner with that sweet smile.

July 2005 – It was again time to change layout. Terrible Twins a.k.a. Double U rocked our socks. We got new feature: Remote Picture Archive where I uploaded those old photos I had removed from Gallery. Arcive is still running.