[Kanzaki]

In Denmark: No. I've met two people who knew her, and only one was a fan. The other one was a girl obsessed with Antique Café and all things VK (sounds familiar, right?) xD VK is much more popular amongst anime/manga followers in Denmark, and those have increased greatly since I first got into Ayu back in 2003. But I'd say maybe 1/50.000 knows who she is, which is a rough estimate. On danish youth radio (P3) back in 2005/2006 they did have a whole day dedicated to japanese popular culture and music, and they played at least one song of Ayu's. But I don't think it really converted anyone. Danes are very much into alternative rock and pop, and tend to be very stubborn and unwilling to take in anything more foreign than French pop music. These are just my observations, I haven't lived in Denmark for 4 years now, and things might've changed just a bit since then.

As for Sweden, it's pretty much the same, except swedes (generalizing heavily now, so bear with me) are into pop tunes and eurovision type, catchy euro-techno tunes, and they LOVE their own music (and they should, because they include ABBA, Robyn, Kent etc.) Despite this, they seem a bit more open towards japanese music than danes in my experience. Whereas a dane would be like "Oh God, she's got a highpitched voice..." a swede would be more like: "She's very highpitched, but I like the melody very much!"