I started to know about Japanese music in1998~
Ai that time I liked SPEED, but not ayu~
Actually,she has already been very popular in asia when I knew her
I first saw her performance in Kouhaku~
SHe was singing NO WAY TO SAY~
I didn't like her at first as her voice was bad~
But then, luckily,I have got a chance to watch her concert DVD
and I was really impressed by it
I couldn't watching it~and I started seaching everything about her~

I saw her first on YesAsia - I am... was in the top seller chart, and I'd come across her mentioned on a few sites, I was curious to see why she was popular, so I went and downloaded some stuff and I liked her voice.

I first heard of Ayu four summers ago (in July, exactly). I had met a friend who was a big fan of hers (he still is :P)...I remember I was flipping through his CD collection at JLA and I was like "Who the...? Who's this?" All the other girls with us were like "Oh gosh, that's Ayumi Hamasaki...look at her, she's so fake (talking about 'plastic surgery x_x')!" So...my first impression of Ayu wasn't so good, I kind of went with the others' opinions even though my friend liked Ayu a lot.

Throughout JLA though, I became more and more curious about Ayu since it seemed my friend was a huge huge fan of hers. So, after JLA, I started downloading a few random songs I could find...and yeah, since then, I've been hooked. :D

first impression: her beautiful eyes!!!! OMG!!!

A lot of my friends are in love with her huge eyes O_O;

It's beauty to asians, I guess. XD

Well, I first saw her in a german magazine (Daisuki) and thought "Woww she doesn't looks japanese! But she looks a bit conceited.
But when I read the Artikle I thought "Woww she seems to be a sympathic person"

When I listened then to her Rainbow Album my first impression of her singing was "Woww japanese doesn't sounds strange at all.(She my first J-Pop Artist^^) And the Music Style is similar to Western Music-and her Voice is great-I want to listen to more Songs of her!"
^^

well the very first ayu song i heard was M... at that time i was exposed to jpop on tv and i was impressed and wanted to start listening to japanese songs. so i look online and stumbled upon the oricon ranking charts and guess what, M was on the top of that oricon weekly chart... so i d/l the song, listened to it and i never look back... been a fan ever since...

I didn't exactly have a good first impression of Ayu. I listened to YOU way back in 1999, and I didn't exactly like her voice or look back then. It wasn't until STEP you/is this LOVE? that I started to really take notice of her. And since then I've been hooked.

In short, it took me a really long time to get to like her.

i thought her songs were weird and crap (i am... album songs) she's an overrated artist etc

xD

first impression: beautiful, famous, hot, nice mtvs (i didn't know it is called pvs then) and her music is way better than what i'm listening then (western boybands), coz they have a special feeling. I was watching some parts of the M pv on tv where they advertise for her new album, and was totally flabberghasted by it XDD

But then i dun have internet nor money to buy anything, so it was till 2005 when i finally have a decent allowance to allow me to buy her MY STORY album that i started to OFFICIALLY become a fan of hers...

yeah they get me too.

In 2005 I downloaded CyberTrance album and I listened only Depend on you (Svenson & Gielen remix). I thought that Ayumi's voice was funny, weird and too high and I didn't listen other songs very much. The voice on Depend on you was attractive somehow anyway.

There were months and then I listened other songs more and I got an idea to download more of her songs, original ones. I was getting used to her voice and actually Ayu's voice wasn't that bad, I thought.

When I saw a picture of Ayu, I doubtless thought that she is cute.

Well one day i was downloading some inuyasha songs and was like dearest sounds like an interesting song and so im just sitting there reading as i was listening to the song and i stopped when i heared the chorus.... her voice was mesmorizing.

I thought: such big eyes for an asian girl!
Then, when I heard her for the first time: What strange and unique voice!

Four years ago, I stayed home from school one day because I was sick and watched TV pretty much all day. Anyway, in Canada there is a music station called Much More Music and I was watching a show called Clip Trip because there was nothing else on. On the show, they play music videos from international artists, and occassionally they play some Japanese artists. The day I watched it, the first video they played was "Dearest" and I fell in love with the song (strangely, it's one of my least favourite Ayu ballads now) and I thought Ayu was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

Three years later, in August 2004, I was bored one summer day and decided to search for the song Dearest. Afterward, I start reading a bunch of stuff about Ayu on the Internet and decided to listen to more of her songs. The second song I heard was Real me, which I loved, but the PV gave me the impression that Ayu was just some Japanese pop tart. The third song I heard was INSPIRE, since the single had just been released, and it made me think Ayu was even more of a pop tart than I thought. Then I heard GAME and though maybe she isn't just another pop star. Finally, by the fifth song I heard by her, which was evolution, I fell in love.

When I was first getting into japanese music in Feb 2003, I downloaded some ayumi because I heard she was so popular and read about everyone talking about her on the internet. I did not like any songs that I downloaded at all, except for Trauma. Well, I deleted all her music from my comp. Then when No Way To Say was realeased later that year, I decided to give her another try, listening to no way to say first, and then downloading more stuff. All the songs that I had heard before and hated, I became to like them and they got stuck in my head.

And now she's my favorite singer, ever since I got my first Cd of her's, Rainbow, for Christmas that year.

ok, that's my story. XD

Ur story
 

Ive been thinking how other people from around the world have heard of Ayumi Hamasaki .so i was wondering how others started geting hooked on Ayu.share ur story here, what was the first song that got u hooked on Ayu??

For my story im a chinese person in america and the first time i heard Ayu songs when it was about 2003-2004 i use to not no who she was but i listen to her songs till i fell asleep. then for awhile i stoped and then picked it back up in 2005 when i found and AMV of evolution i loved it and then found her pv of fly high and theres where it started.after that i kept looking up songs and tours and count downs and stuff.:D




AYU's the best