"Jpop Mp3" was the site with the different links (to places like oshima and mikemike and rie)... oshima had its own uploads. It was my big source of mp3 links that actually worked
~ It had a black background. And I remember when hitomi's "Love Life" album came out, they like... put a mosaic over the cover cuz it was semi-nude XD that cracked me up. But yeah, it was haaaaaaaard to find mp3s back then - I used napster most of the time.
And I didn't know what Oricon was yet, back in those days... not sure when I learned about Oricon, but it didn't take too long. I never did see the old version of the site, was it bad? XD
And it's depressing about the 300,000 limited singles... cuz like, ayu doesn't even reach 300,000 copies too often anymore. Ayu should do like, a 100,000 copies limited single. That'd be interesting
And AYUppears actually still exists, it just hasn't been updated in ages... some of the content doesn't work anymore, but it'll still bring memories back, probably
http://www.geocities.com/yuka_best/main.html (when the "new version of AYUppears" dialog comes up, click Cancel cuz version 3 doesn't exist anymore.
) I'm still immortalized there as the 88888th visitor! XD It's the pink graphic of ayu doing the "ssh" face with a smile, under the main navigation. hitomi-x/CREA always did graphics for her milestones (alot of sites did back in those days... I miss that ^^).