Ayukawataur

Ayukawataur (鮎川タウル), initially Ayukawa, formerly known as EVE Tokimatsuri (real name Miyagami Noriko [宮雅味 記子]; born April 1970), is a female furry artist and writer and former MILFur who lives in Oregon, USA.

Biography
Miyagami Noriko (宮雅味 記子) was born in April of 1970. Shortly after her birth, her family broke apart. Throughout the early years of her life she lived in multiple cities, climates, and as a result never developed a feeling for what may often be called home.

She is extreme in her proportion, being 6' 3" (1.9 meters) and averaging around 165 lb. (75 kilograms), which is considered slightly below recommended for her build. Noriko is very obsessed with appearance and looking young. In her late 30s, she is often mistaken for being in her early 20s. To this end she avoids sunlight of all kinds and strives to be as pale as possible.

Early in her life she developed a love of art of many kinds, including writing of short stories, poetry, illustration and animation. Many of her works were published under a pen name during the eighties.

She developed an affinity for anime at a very young age. Before anime was popular, or even known by the average individual in the United States, she was working toward distribution and popularization of anime for everyone. At a young age she worked with Fred Patten, Dean Lee Norton, David Bliss and others, creating the Inland Empire branch of the C/FO; later renamed to Inland Empire Anime, and becoming one of the founding three members and the first chief officer. Later she also worked as one of the founding three members of N.O.V.A. (Northern Oregon Vancouver Anime), but was forced to leave due to personal issues.

During these years she participated as one of the early private BBS Sysops, constantly working with multiple computers and software, using the name EVE Tokimatsuri after a character in one of her favorite anime who was a program in a supercomputer controlling a city.

At a young age, she joined the United States Army Intelligence branch. During this time she was forced to place most of her projects on hold. However, shortly after leaving the service, she took up her projects with more vigor than ever.

Throughout her life she has worked in both software and hardware design. Working with everything from basic handheld components to programming an entire Fuji SMT line for optimal performance.Her experience, professionally, includes the following:


 * Dec Alpha in numerous formats
 * Sun Sparc & Solaris
 * SCO
 * Linux - Too many to list
 * Numerous proprietary private, military and civil service systems

After the death of her first wife, she lost hope in her purpose and spent a great deal of time as an alcoholic, a time during which she still claims her true purpose was only to combine drink and work to kill herself.

In August of her 27th year she met a young high school girl named Kacey Maltzman. Shortly after they formed a friendship which evolved into a relationship, and as time grew on, Noriko adopted another name so as to signify the changes in her life: Ayukawa.

She used this name until she rejoined the furry fandom in which she added the term taur to the end, finally adding a capitalized The as an honorific to her name when she took over as Administaur of FurBid-SF.

The name Ayukawataur (pronounced ah-you-kha-wah-taur) is formed of two Kanji characters, with a suffix in katakana:


 * "Ayu" (鮎) is a small silver colored freshwater stream fish.
 * "kawa" (川) is the kanji for river.
 * "taur" (タウル) is the suffix to signify her avatar, a taur breed.

Ayukawataur is sometimes very bright, cheerful and just the person you want to be around. And on the other side of the coin she can be very dark, moody and, some say, quite intimidating to be around. There are no in-between phases for her.

Psychology
Noriko is often considered to be "out there" by most people who know her. Her upbringing was non-standard to most western minded individuals. As a result, everything from her mental process to motivations and responses are usually near alien to people she associates with.

Her religious belief is Shinto-Taoism. Though she is an avid follower of her belief, she openly accepts any other religion, or lack of religion, as holding as much validity as her own. Often to the point of suppressing her own belief to allow for others to be expressed. A very good thing as her wife is Jewish. Also, due to this religious belief, she is not able to be angry, hateful, or hold a grudge. Often she cites that doing such both is bad for the soul and would require too much energy to be wasted.

She considers herself to be a vegetarian. Her diet consists mostly of rice, seaweed, and vegetable based dishes. She does not consider fish to be meat — though she does dislike almost all types of cooked fish — and will eat white chicken on occasion. The reason she often gives for her vegetarian nature is a dislike of the taste and texture of red meat.

Dealing with Noriko means dealing with multiple language barriers. When communicating in English, she often makes mistakes. Pronunciation, spelling, complete sentences, and colloquial language are often concepts completely lost to her. She never uses contractions in her daily language.

She also does not understand colloquial use of vulgarities, not only refusing to use them herself, but insists those around her not use them in her presence. Failure to comply often results in termination of the conversation. Unless she is writing for official purposes, her writing never has capitalization. Something she claims is a holdover from early computing days when there was only one case.

Kacey Maltzman
Her first meeting with Kacey was a chance meeting arranged through a friend in Pennsylvania who wanted to help Kacey become a better artist. They quickly became friends and within a short time after her 16th birthday, Kacey declared her love for Noriko.

Noriko's initial reaction was not a positive one. Though she did not wish to hurt Kacey's feelings, and she cared for her as a friend, she still considered herself in a mourning period from her first wife and was not ready for another relationship. This eventually changed, leading to a short lived early relationship that same year, ending when Noriko betrayed Kacey's trust.

Over the next year and a half, they went through a six month period of non-contact, followed by speaking online, to phone conversations, and finally actual visits and dates. Their first official date as a couple being at the Long Beach Aquarium. This continued until January of 2000 when Noriko left her last job and moved into a small house in Los Angeles, six months later into a small apartment with Kacey within walking distance of USC.

Immediately following Kacey's parents discovered the existence of her relationship with an older woman. Their initial response was to cut Kacey off financially, hire investigators to examine Noriko's past, and begin a series of threats and actions which to this day Noriko credits with strengthening the bonds of their relationship, and allowing it to stand as strong as it is.

It was also during this period that, due to Kacey wishing to have some form of income through art, that Noriko was pulled back into the furry fandom.

Delighting in her life long dream of being a housewife being partially fulfilled, Noriko tended to Kacey through her college years. Not only taking care of home, but assisting as much as possible with Kacey's classwork. This continued after college when they moved to Sherman Oaks, California.

Noriko and Kacey had expressed their desire to her parents to be married. Their response was not very positive. For many years Noriko had been exploring the legal system attempting to find a solution. It was Kacey's father, a lawyer, who found a minor loophole in the law which exploited Noriko's legal status and made possible their marriage on October 12, 2004. This loophole was closed shortly after making it impossible for any other potential same sex marriages to occur through exploitation, but not before the decision to validate their marriage on a federal level was reached.

Currently Noriko remains married to Kacey, living in Oregon. She continues her dream of being a housewife to the best of her ability. They travel whenever they find time and enjoy a very positive standing with Kacey's parents.

Fandom involvement
Ayukawataur is the The Administaur (Administrator) of FurBid-SF since 2004. She was the Dealers Room co-second for Further Confusion 2006, 2007 and 2008, the Dealers Room second lead for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 where she announced her retirement from the position. She has since been hired once more for a position as Dealers Room Supervisor for 2015 and 2016. She was also a security volunteer at All Fur Fun 2007.

FurBid-SF
In the year 2004 The Ayukawataur took over the operations of FurBid-SF from the creator and original administrator, Aatheus. This was not the first time she had taken the position of an administrator.

Her career as an admin originated with her building an old BBS system which specifically catered to lovers of then near impossible to find anime. Later she upgraded her system to be one of the earliest WWIV multi-node systems, expanding her services to include many popular doors, but never dropped her primary purpose of bringing anime fans together.

It was during her time as Sysop of Fairy Dust BBS that she developed the belief that a good Sysop, and later admin, is one who never participated directly in the day to day operations of their system as a user. This she credits to an event on Tradewars in which a local Sysop used the game editor to reverse a hostile takeover she had orchestrated in game against the Sysops corporation causing the complete deletion of all of her group's resources.

This continues through to current times as she does not use her system FurBid-SF as a resource for buying and selling. She believes since she has direct access to the entire database, it would be unfair to anyone if she were to conduct business. Consequently she has also prohibited her wife, Kacey, from using anything other than the most basic of features of listing and bidding. None of the extras, such as image hosting, attention grabbing, or even front page display, are permitted her so as to prevent any potential of conflict of interest.

Avatar
Ayukawataur's avatar species is the only known surviving member of her breed. Often mistaken for a chakat, she is an offshoot breed of felitaur possessing only the feminine sexual characteristics. Her genetic makeup could be most easily defined as a Purple-Spotted-Leopard-Panther-Felitaur directly descendant from the Iriomote Yamaneko (西表山猫) of Iriomote-jima (西表島).

She is a loner. Preferring to isolate herself for weeks, and often months at a time. More often than not she loves to bury herself in her latest project, sometimes to the exclusion of all but sleep and hygiene. She places a great deal of importance on learning.

Members of her breed have two unique aspects:


 * Her green eyes have no visible pupils. This does not interfere with her ability to see.
 * Though her breed evolved from predators, she has somewhat underdeveloped jaw muscles and has a smaller muzzle than one might expect. Her diet is of a vegetarian nature, though she allows herself to eat sashimi.
 * Due to the silver coloration of the Ayu's scales, they sometimes reflect light from the sun. This causes a very beautiful phenomenon where the streams and/or rivers seem to sparkle. And, sometimes, they do not reflect, and so the river remains dark.

She is a cosplay fanatic, never being seen wearing the same clothing twice, with the only common thread being she refuses to wear anything that would be considered male clothing.

As the only known survivor of her breed, she capitalizes the honorific in her name, hence The Ayukawataur. She also capitalizes her title of Administaur. Reassembled, the name "AyuKawaTaur" (鮎川タウル) is a name representative of the taur who sometimes sparkles bright as one to bask in her light, and is sometimes dark and one you want nothing to do with.

The Ayukawataur in Her Natural Environment
The image The Ayukawataur in Her Natural Environment was created by Kacey Miyagami as a birthday present for Noriko. It was designed to illustrate many of her loves in life all in one image. These loves include, but are not limited to:
 * Computers and the Cyberpunk genre.
 * Giant saltwater aquariums and really weird looking fish. Especially the spiny box puffer
 * Isolationism
 * Astronomy and Astrology
 * Anime Cosplay
 * Hard science
 * Stuffed plushie weirdness
 * Minimalist decorations

The outfit The Ayukawataur wears in this image is stylized after the Science Academy uniform of the genius mad scientist Washuu from Tenchi Muyo Ryo-Ohki.

Being that this is the most distributed image she uses, she has created an icon focusing only on the face and some of the uniform. This icon is her standard avatar image for her own Discussion Board, LiveJournal, and many public and private sites around the world.

Convention attendance

 * All Fur Fun - 2007(*)
 * Anthrocon: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
 * Biggest Little Fur Con: 2016, 2017, 2018
 * Eurofurence: 13, 16, 17, 18, 20
 * Furlandia: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
 * Further Confusion 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,(*) 2006,(*) 2007,(*) 2008,(*) 2009,(*) 2010,(*) 2011,(*) 2012,(*) 2013,(*) 2015,(*) 2016,(*) 2017,(*) 2018
 * Furry Connection North: 2011
 * RainFurrest: 2010, 2011, 2012

(*) Staff member

Hobbies
Noriko is an author who has worked under various pen names. Many of her poems and short stories have been published over the years. Currently (Oct. 2007) she is writing her first novel in English, which is a lesbian love/drama. The story is loosely based off of two characters owned by her and her wife, Ace and Kristania.

She enjoys playing MMORPGs. Over the past ten years she has played Ultima Online, EverQuest, Earth & Beyond, EverQuest II, EVE Online and a Draenei Priest named Hannyu that resides on the Scarlet Crusade server in World of Warcraft.

Noriko is a long term collector of anime. The majority of her collection being what she terms "Classic Anime", or Anime from the 1970's-1980's. This collection contains many tens of thousands of hours on all forms of media, including but not limited to LaserDisc, VHS, Betamax, VCD, DVD, and much more.

As part of her Anime obsession, she enjoys creating Anime Music Videos. Many of her videos have been uploaded to her YouTube account.

The majority of her life, Noriko has been a practitioner of the Martial Arts. She has studied many styles, but her primary focus has always been on the most pure form of Ch'in-na possible. As supplementary arts she has incorporated Tai Chi Ch'uan (and Qigong), Aikido, and Iaijitsu.

Noriko collects media with an excess amount of blood. She is not a fan of gore, or guro. This collection spans across sketches, paintings, and movies. Over her life she has developed an affinity for Asian schoolgirl horror movies, with her favorites being the Eko Eko Azaraku series.