About Me

I go by the name Thennary Nak online and I use they/them promouns as I am non-binary.


Personal history

I was born in Australia but lived most of my life in the U.S. I have lived in various locations in the U.S. but I consider Western Washington State the place I am from, as it felt the most like home to me. Unfortunately I am not currently living there but hope I could move back one day.

While in university I went to Japan to be an exchange student for about a year. I attended Sophia University there and stayed in Saitama during my stay.

I graduated university with a B.A. in Asian Studies and I currently have a work from home job that pays my bills and my hobbies.

J-pop fan history

I have been into Japanese pop music since 1999 when I discovered Utada Hikaru and her debut album First Love.

I did not get into Starto until 2007 when an online friend would not stop talking about a new group she had found and loved, NEWS. NEWS was the first Starto group I loved and was the gateway into the rest of Starto as I discovered their connections to the other Starto groups.

At the very end of 2007 I decided to start my blog here at Blogger. At first it was solely devoted to Starto but as I have expanded to following some other idol groups I have decided to expand a little on the blog to write about those sometimes as well.

K-pop fan history

I got into K-pop through J-pop mostly during the 2nd hallyu wave in Japan. While I knew of BoA and liked some of her songs I did not follow her or anything. The first K-pop act that holds that place is TVXQ (known as Tohoshinki in Japan). I fell in love with them and their music around 2008 and checked out a few of the other groups breaking into Japan around that time, also finding KARA that way. When I finally made the jump to seeing what K-pop groups were popular in Korea and not crossing over I found Wonder Girls and fell in love. And from Wonder Girls I got to become a fan of 2PM shortly after their debut.

When the lawsuit between the JYJ members of TVXQ happened with SM Entertainment I became partly disillusioned with K-pop, especially with other high profile lawsuits between artists and their companies happening in the next couple of years. I still somewhat followed Wonder Girls and 2PM but largely fell out of K-pop.

Then in 2019 I decided to give K-pop another chance and would listen to compilation videos on Youtube of recent K-pop releases and found one group that caught my attention, Tomorrow X Together. From there I found myself getting into other groups and overall most of the groups that I love the most are from JYP Entertainment these days.