If you've ever built a personal homepage in the early 2000s, you probably remember the hunt for the perfect background tile, the right set of matching icons, a cute little counter graphic to put at the bottom of your page. Sites that offered these things for free were the backbone of the personal web, and finding a good one felt like striking gold. Alice no Ouchi (Alice's House) is one of those sites, and it's still standing after more than two decades online.
The site launched on June 20, 2000. Let that sink in. That's nearly 25 years ago. And while Alice posted a notice in May 2019 saying that updates might stop (due to software and Windows 10 compatibility issues), and that the site could disappear suddenly, it's still here. Still serving up over 3,400 handmade free web materials to anyone who wants them.
So what kind of materials are we talking about? Wallpapers, line art, icons, animated GIFs, table and counter graphics, banners, and blog templates. Alice made FC2 blog templates in multiple styles: rose-themed two-column and three-column layouts, a Christmas version, a morning glory (asagao) design, and several "Alice in Wonderland" themed templates in blue and pink. The naming scheme alone tells you how much thought went into all of this. Templates named things like ali-aliceblue-3c and ali-rosepink2c give you a sense of the careful, systematic approach behind what is ultimately a labor of love.
Clicking around the site is a real experience. The homepage is decorated with sparkle text characters and a soft, feminine aesthetic that screams early 2000s Japanese web design. If you've spent any time browsing old Japanese personal sites, you know this look: pastel colors, tiny decorative elements, that particular warmth that comes from someone who clearly enjoyed every minute of putting their site together. The encoding on the pages is a bit rough in modern browsers (you'll see some garbled Shift_JIS text if your browser doesn't handle it automatically), but that's part of the charm. The structure is all there, and you can navigate through the menu to the materials pages, the info/rules page, and the link collection.
The Info page is worth reading carefully (with a translation tool if you need one). Alice laid out detailed usage rules: all materials are free, but redistribution and modification are prohibited. If you use the materials on a commercial site, you need to link back. If you're distributing templates or CGI scripts that include Alice's graphics, you need permission first. There's a seriousness here that I really respect. Alice made all of these graphics as originals using licensed Ulead software, and the rules make clear that copyright stays with Alice, period. No exceptions, commercial or otherwise.
The Link page is its own little treasure map. It connects to a network of Japanese free material search engines and directories, places like "Sozai no Mori" and other HP material search sites. These were the infrastructure of the old Japanese personal web, connecting creators to the people who needed their work. Some of those linked sites are probably gone now, but the ones that remain are worth exploring if you want to go deeper into this world.
What gets me about Alice no Ouchi is the scale of it. 3,400 individual graphics, all made by one person, all given away for free, maintained on a personal server for a quarter century. Alice even created matching counter graphics for FC2's counter service and designed rental counters and BBS skins. This wasn't a side project. This was someone's ongoing creative practice, shared openly with the web.
The 2019 notice about the site possibly disappearing makes visiting it feel a little urgent. Alice mentioned not being able to buy new website creation software compatible with Windows 10, and honestly, that's the kind of quiet, practical reason so many old sites eventually go dark. So if you have any affection for handmade web graphics, Japanese personal homepage culture, or just want to see what 3,400 pieces of one person's creative output looks like gathered in one place, go visit Alice's House while you still can.