Downloads & Sources

Lyrics Sources
- For current songs, I use the lyrics from the booklet or jacket that comes with the CD.
- For slightly older songs, I use Anime Song no Kashi nara Koko ni O-makase? and goo Music.
- For the newest of new songs, like OP and EDs that only aired a day ago on TV, or doujin music, I use NicoNico Douga.
- For Vocaloid songs I use the Hatsune Miku Wiki.

Music News & Downloads
- I update the Upcoming Releases page according to Animate’s CD releases page.
- A good place to start looking for mp3 downloads is http://www.gendou.com/amusic, which has thousands of songs. Just register a free account and download one song at a time.
- For higher quality or the most recently released songs, try torrenting files from Tokyo Toshokan.
- If you’re looking for Digimon songs, try the forums known as DATS. Poke around and you’ll find links for every single Digimon song ever.
- I make downloads available for some certain songs. You can click on Entry with a Download under Categories menu to the right to see all lyrics that have some sort of song download available.

Translation Resources
- I mainly use goo Dictionary and Tangorin to look up Japanese words.
- For sentences and longer passages, I use excite Translations. That is the best passage-translator I’ve come across so far. It’s a lot better than Google Translate or Babelfish.

Merchandise News & Purchases
- I follow Akiba Hobby, Moeyo, Famitsu, and Wcloux (kumo)’s Blog for most of my merchandise and figurine-related news.
- I buy most of my merchandise from AmiAmi, Animate, and HobbyLink Japan.
- For the rarer stuff or scoring secondhand goods at a discount I use Yahoo! Auction Japan and MobiAuc.
- For cosplay goods I follow and purchase from Animate’s ACOS and Cospa (and its branch companies, such as Cospatio).
- A quick guide:

1. AmiAmi and HobbyLink Japan do have English sites and ship internationally.
2. Animate, ACOS, and Cospa are all Japanese and do not ship internationally. You need to go through a proxy service if you want to order from them. However, some of their merchandise are also carried by AmiAmi and HobbyLink Japan mentioned above.
3. Yahoo! Auction Japan and MobiAuc, for the most part, do not ship internationally. A few individual sellers do take PayPal and ship overseas, but you will have to check the product listing’s page for the specifics.

Cosplay Resources
- Random Anime Characters Stats database page here. Be forewarned, this database is solely created to be a collection of characters with stats that I’m interested in. This will be updated irregularly. All heights are official or tediously calculated.
- Burda Style is really helpful for simple tutorials on a variety of sewing techniques and guides. I also ask around 4chan’s /cgl/ board when quick questions arise.

Art & Scans Resources
- The top source I use is the anime’s official (koushiki) book, also known as the guide/visual/fan/perfect (usually it’s two of those words in a combo) book. That carries the true color of outfits and will beat any printout anyday, and more-or-less convenient to take directly into a fabrics store and match colors right off the rack.
- I also look for magazine scans or poster art sometimes for cosplay references. The first site I usually check is moe.imouto, followed by danbooru and Konachan.
- If I’m unsatisfied with the results, I consult Anime Paper or Mini Tokyo, both of which have a pesky “this images costs XX to download” system, so usually I just grab the preview version, since I don’t need it for actually making a wallpaper or anything clean or hi-res. Aetherality is very nice, too, but the library is somewhat lacking in comparison.
- For vectors and custom paintbrushes and patterns I usually check on deviantART to see if there’s something useful.

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