Henry J. Cobb wrote:

My dear Trikster-kun...

Huh? I'm not male,

There is a very famous anime couple who call each other Usa-kun and
Mamo-chan.

Can you guess their genders?  (Hint, their pink-haired daughter sleeps
between them.)

Hint 2: I don't think that they've been to Jusenkyo, but Ut'chan's
Ran-chan has.

What it boils down to is, Japanese honorifics and the issue of whether 
to use personal name or family name are both more complicated and more 
individual than we generally realise.  The choice between "-kun" and 
"-chan" is not generally a matter of gender but of familiarity.  It just 
so happens that in Japanese it is generally more appropriate to address 
a teen-age girl with great familiarity than it is to address a boy of 
the same age in the same way.  Ukyo "chans" everyone (boy or girl) 
because she's so friendly most of the time.  Kyosuke calls Hikaru "chan" 
but refers to Madoka as "Ayukawa" without an honorific.  Ranma leaves 
off honorifics because he's a mannerless oaf.  Swartzenegger is known in 
Japan as "chan" because he's a popular actor and it's standard for fans 
to address their entertainers with familiarity.  

What this means of course, among other things, is that no-one would 
think twice if they heard Ranma being referred to as "Ranma-kun" in 
female form, except to think that the person so addressing "her" is 
being a little formal.  "San" is of course downright distant.

        Henry J. Cobb   hcobb@slip.net          http://www.io.com/~hcobb
    If Mr Gates doesn't like the law, he should do the American thing
    and buy the presidency.