User:Mdziesinski

I've been lurking around Wikipedia since late 2004, but didn't get around to creating an account until Spring of 2005. I've mostly restricted myself to only reading the entries at first because I guess it took me awhile to wrap my mind around a community based encyclopedia. With the vastness of the web out there, I guess I harbored the feeling that there is someone out there more informed on a topic, so I took a wait and see stance on entries that interested me before I added my own two cents.

I'm a writer for HP Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying games, I have a website for my book Secrets of Japan: and also have plans to expand out into genre-based novel writing as soon as my academic career becomes less hectic.

I've just finished a Master's thesis on hikikomori for a Japanese Studies degree and I'm also a PhD student in Sociology. (Ah. WIll the grind of classes ever end?).

Related to my academic interests on Japanese culture, I maintain a blog on Japan's Lost Generation , focused on the turbulence and eddies that 21st century youth must navigate on their way to adulthood in Japan.

Having lived in Japan almost six years and studied the culture for over twelve, I'm understandably a Japanese pop-culture junkie and enjoy karaoke (though not Enka), manga, anime (though recently I prefer more mature story-lines such as Monster), Japanese movies, chambara dramas and the like.

To balance out the junk food culture, I also practice Japanese Tea Ceremony, sumi-e ink wash art, and Kendo when I'm not so busy with thesis deadlines.

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