"Maybe I’m just dense, but I didn’t even realize that a boom was happening. I might have felt like it was a boom if it was as natural as how you’d see certain products every time you stopped by the convenience store – not seeing watermelons only in the summer, but something that would always be on the shelves throughout the seasons. Discounting the anime shops, you’d rarely get to see anime songs on display in HMV or Tower Records. It felt like [anime was] being given the cold shoulder. Anime songs are too much of a niche genre which means that the CDs are in the same way, only sold in niche retailers. People who liked me were embarrassed about it, telling me that “I can’t openly admit that I like you” – with that kind of situation, I couldn’t really feel that there was a boom at all."