User:Simon Blackman

Simon Blackman was born on March 28, 1972 in Sydney, NSW, Australia. At age 18 he went to japan for the first time and fell in love with Japanese culture, especially Jpop music. Although he never embarked on his own music career, he has always had a passion for singing, notably Japanese songs where his favourite artists include Noriyuki Makihara (槇原 敬之), Wands (stylized as WANDS), Shizuka Kudo (工藤 静香), and Kan Kimura (木村 和) to name a few.

Many years of singing Karaoke lead him to realise that he actually wasn't too bad, and he decided to upload one of his original songs - 'Morning Rain' and other J-pop covers on YouTube.

His dream was to be able to sing on Japanese TV - and that dream finally came true in December 2012, when he was invited to sing on a Japanese singing contest called, '[http://www.ntv.co.jp/nodo/ Nodojiman The! World]' on NTV. Although he didn't win, he received an outstanding score of 388/400 - an excellent result for his debut.