Back then graphics were as basic as you could get, but for a lad living in Hawaii and as far from Japan as he could be, the fan pages set up there were a treasure trove of information! Hikaru Nishida, Zard, Princess Princess Chisato Moritaka, there were fun pages to discover (and many, many scans and pin-ups to download) if you delved deep enough!
One big drawback I had was that back then not a lot of regular computers could read Japanese characters, so you got that wingding looking "gobbledegook" (those pink symbols you see at the upper right of the page). You had to upload Japanese fonts into your computer to make it "decode" the stuff.
Ah, those early days, sitting at the computer wandering through GeoCities sites. there was a great Nishida Hikaru one called something like "Hikaru Land" and there was a map with 'islands" you clicked on to take you to the various departments. Wish I had kept an image of that page. Heck, I never even saved an image of my original Geocities J-drama trading page, the place where I got my namesake!
