A letter from me!

Welcome! This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Jun Mihara fan page on the internet written in English. I became a fan of the late Ms. Mihara in an unusual way. I've been a fan of Japanese manga and anime for some time. However, most of the series that I am a fan of are those that have had some kind of English presentation, whether it was dubbed or subtitled anime, or else a translated manga. However, a couple of years ago I found myself branching out, thanks largely to a used Japanese book store (that has unfortunately closed now). The proprietor of the store and I got along well, and one day she gave me an old volume of Hana to Yume from the late 1970's. I love a lot of the artwork from older manga, and I was thrilled to have something so neat. Browsing through the magazine, I was drawn to several titles, including Shinji Wada's Sukeban Deka. (I've also become a great fan of Mr. Wada.) However, there was one story that caught my eye. It was a strange, almost surreal, short story about 4 young boys. Thanks to Kuniko Tomita on the shoujo mailing list, I found out a bit about the series, called Hamidashikko. It turns out that the issue I had first stumbled on was actually quite a bit more surreal than most of the rest of the series, but I was entranced by the character designs and the art style. The proprietor of the used book store gave me several more of those old Hana to Yume magazines, and I decided that I had to get the rest of the series. Once again, Kuniko Tomita came to the rescue, announcing that the bunko version of the series had been released. I bought them, and was able to finally connect the pieces of the story together. Searching on the internet, I found a few Japanese web sites devoted to Jun Mihara's work, but not a single English reference, with the exception of a listing in PRISMS. I decided that I would create this web page, both to help promote this excellent, though mostly unheardof in the United States, series, and as a challenge to myself. Because there are no other English web pages or other information that I can find, I'm having to start from scratch. Though I've taken classes, my Japanese is still not very good, and it's sometimes difficult for me to figure out exactly what's going on in the manga. However, I'll do my best to make this an informative webpage. If anyone has any corrections or changes that I should make to any of the information contained in these pages, please let me know at the address below. Thank you very much!! Jennifer