A missing Japanese Internet friend

I lost contact with my Japanese Internet Friend before Christmas, 1999. We have been talking via email regularly for 1 year and he suddenly stopped replying. His email address became inactive few months after.

During the last 15 years I have been wondering what have happened to him. I really want to contact either himself or someone who knows him - just to make sure he is fine.

I only know his name (in kanji), birthday, birthplace & e-mail addresses at that time. I occasionally googled his name (in kanji) but come back with no research. I also tried searching on Facebook and Twitter but nothing come back.

Is there any way to search for him?

Thanks a lot! (^-^)

It could have simply been a time of big change in his life - could be that he simply got busy and dropped out of e-mailing, and then maybe that e-mail address was a free web-based one, which becomes inactive if you don't use it for several months?

If you've tried Facebook and Twitter with his full name with no result, it would be near impossible unless you have his street address back then (then you could send a postcard to that address and see what happens/comes back)... but 15 years is a long time, I must say.

The short answer is that if that's the only information you have about him and you've done all that, then I can't think of anything else.

But I understand what you mean. For example, I've traced a friend by Google Street Viewing her home address. I noticed that people still live there and my snail mail to her is not coming back, so I figured she is in good hands. Or I suddenly thought about adding a city name when I search on facebook, and I typed a friend's first name (just first!) and the city she might be related to, and found my best friend after 40 years.

If you have any other info at all, such as jobs, hobbies, friends' names, locations and so on, you can occasionally Google or Yahoo keywords, and some day technology may catch up. Things like Mixi is another popular SNS in Japan, but most people don't use real names there.

Also, I hope you are search-able yourself. Just in case he thinks about searching you, it would be helpful if you had your name and photo uploaded in "public."

Meanwhile, 1999 was the dawn of emailing in Japan. There were no rules and people weren't aware of internet addiction. Many users got caught up in too much emailing and then suddenly stopped when they realised they needed to live "normal" lives. So if you can't find him on the internet, maybe that's just a sign telling you that he's happy in the analog world.

You could try Line.
http://linecorp.com/en/

Did he have any nicknames/usernames that he liked to use on websites, maybe the same as his email address? If he did, maybe those usernames would be worth looking up.

Haha 1999 was when I was born things changed you might find them on google or facebook they might not remember you though

Thanks guys ... but no success...