The author... ah, yes, that would be me.

My name is Chris, I'm 25 26 years old, British, and I live and work in Tokyo, Japan.

I started building The Kanji SITE as a way to force myself to learn the kanji needed for Level 3 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which I took in December 1999. I passed that one, so even if the traffic dries up completely tomorrow, it won't have been a complete waste of time.

As the site has progressed from hobby to mild obsession to full-blown labour of love, I've still somehow managed to find the time to hold down a full-time job, study Japanese, go clubbing, learn to snowboard, and undertake freelance web design work. The cruel price of this dedication has been an over-reliance on delivery pizza, a rapidly declining level of physical fitness and an even-more-rapidly receding hairline. (And I recently realised that I've started going bald from the top down, as well as from the front back. Either that or aliens have been carving crop circles into my scalp while I sleep. There's no justice.)

If you should feel like contacting me to offer criticism, assistance, abuse, financial support, moral support, hair transplants, alcohol or even just a word or two of thanks, then I can be reached by e-mail (kanjisite at kanjisite dot com) or on AIM (where my screen name is chrissan7). All offers will be sincerely considered, except those proffering used underwear. (Clean underwear, however, is always useful.)

Oh, yes; the SITE of the title stands for "Self-Indulgent Tripe Extravaganza", which was the name of my original personal homepage. It fell into disrepair, unfortunately, but I've recently returned to the web with tokyotales.com, a blog-style journal and collection of early e-mails from Japan to friends back home. It's probably about as bad as most other blogs out there, but some of you might find some of it interesting or even funny. Hey, look at that - a flying pig. Well I never.