It's been a few months since I last travelled to the depths of the Japanese web (;^Д^) Maybe I should take a deeper dive into the world of Namikare sites (涙枯れるまで泣くほうがいいかも; Namida kareru made naku hou ga ii kamo; roughly translates to "maybe it's better to cry until the tears die"). They've been almost-extinct for a long time, but they're similar and somewhat related to Ayashii World - many users of Namikare and Ayashii (along with LNB and Amezou) would frequent all of these sites, as there was no "stick to one site" culture at the time) Namikare started in 1998, originally as a sort of counselling site (hence the name, which is said to have derived from a lyric in the song "Okuru Kotoba" by Kaientai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58ktVHycDuU 0:44), but soon became home to a unique culture based around random/surreal posts and replies. Unlike Ayashii World and many other BBSes of the era, which generally used rescue-san's MiniBBS as their basis, Namikare instead used scripts based on Shigeto Nakazawa-san's Ans.Q script. It's basically a single-line BBS/chat with a reply feature, but it's formatted in the style of questions & answers, and has a low character limit ---------------------------------------- Namikare sites ---------------------------------------- An extant and relatively active Namikare site: http://namikare.under.jp/nami.cgi An extant but not-so active Namikare site: http://fx2.sakura.ne.jp/kagu/kaguya.cgi A recently-deceased imageboard-style Namikare site that was taken offline a month or two ago due to the admin (who hosted several BBSes including the unique Ayashii World@Kohan no Mori and one of the very last Nazo boards) ragequitting the internet after getting fined for something that was posted on one of his sites (RIP ;_;7): https://web.archive.org/web/20211122155000/http://namikare.org/cgi-bin/nami.cgi The URL to the very first Namikare site in 1998 - not archived anywhere as far as I know, but I might as well post it since I found it: http://210.154.14.45/~otasuke/cgi-bin/ansq/ansq.cgi ---------------------------------------- Namikare info & links ---------------------------------------- Namikare wikipedia page with a brief overview and history: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/涙枯れるまで泣く方がいいかも Namikare uncyclopedia page (mostly the kind of inane nonsense you would expect on comedy wikis, but it is kinda funny): https://ja.uncyclopedia.info/wiki/涙枯れるまで泣く方がいいかも Archive of an old geocities-based Namikare link site (originally created in 1998, but received a final update in 2010): https://web.archive.org/web/20160904185001/http://www.geocities.co.jp/Milkyway-Kaigan/7554/ Archive of Kuron-Zero's Namikare link site (originally created in 2002, last updated in 2012): https://web.archive.org/web/20200216132453/http://www.kuron-zero.com/namikare/ ---------------------------------------- Namikare scripts (all of these are archived and downloadable!) ---------------------------------------- Archive of CGI-StaTion's page hosting Shigeto Nakazawa-san's Ans.Q: https://web.archive.org/web/20000919215932/http://www7.big.or.jp/~jawa/download/ansq/ Example of the stock Ans.Q: https://web.archive.org/web/19990916062244/http://www7.big.or.jp/%7Ejawa/cgi-bin/ansq/ansq.cgi Archive of T.Kagaya-san's original Namikare script page: https://web.archive.org/web/19990508002744/http://www.tky.3web.ne.jp/%7Et0kagaya/lib/apl/nami080.html Example of T.Kagaya-san's original Namikare scripts: Light colors - https://web.archive.org/web/19990508002744/http://from.knc.ne.jp/kagaya/nami082/nami.cgi Dark colors - https://web.archive.org/web/19991005083147/http://from.knc.ne.jp/kagaya/nami082/namiq.cgi I don't believe that the modified versions of the Namikare script used on the currently-existing Namikare sites are available, but they don't seem to be too different to the original on the surface ---------------------------------------- BONUS!!!!!!!! ---------------------------------------- Related to Namikare, there's the Toilet (トイレ) script also made by T.Kagaya-san - as the name implies, it's the internet equivalent of a toilet. I believe anyone can delete (or rather, "flush") anyone's posts away at any time... An extant instance of the Toilet script: http://namikare.under.jp/toto.cgi Archive of T.Kagaya's original Toilet script page: https://web.archive.org/web/19991007050547/http://www.tky.3web.ne.jp/%7Et0kagaya/lib/apl/toto060.html --- Crap I forgot to include this - full logs for Namikare 3 circa 1998: https://namiscape2.tripod.com/ I've only skimmed them so far, but there's a lot of interesting stuff in here - including stuff about Ayashii World