I discovered Ayu when I was 15 back in 2002. Me and my brother were into anime at the time so my only experience of Japanese music was through intros/outros and I had a few on my Winamp playlist. My brother had built his own anime review website so had made a few friends through it and one of them sent him 'Boys & Girls'. I remember him being quite smug, playing it to me and saying it was a "proper" J-pop song and not from an anime. I thought it was OK and added it to my playlist.
Boys & Girls happened to play when I was bored one afternoon so I decided to Google 'Ayumu Hamazaki'. I found a website that listed all of her singles, including their chart placement and how much they had sold. I was really surprised to see how popular she was and decided to do some more research. LOVE ~destiny~ was the first song I downloaded and I loved it. To this day it gives me a really nostalgic feel. The next one was evolution and that was that. I was a fan. (Spent an absolute AGE searching for 'A' and I remember being really annoyed about it before I realised that even though it was a single, it was 4 separate songs and none them were titled 'A' haha). I asked for the RAINBOW album for my birthday in January 2003 and it was my most treasured possession haha.
Funnily enough, my brother never got into J-pop and thought I was weird for liking it so much. However without him I wouldn't have found so many artists who I still love, wouldn't have seen the smattering who have performed in the UK and wouldn't have travelled all the way to Japan 12 years ago to see Ayu in concert. So I owe him a lot for my great experiences
