Kamiya belts it out at the AX Karaoke!

Kamiya Akira is best loved by anime fans for diverse voice acting roles like CITY HUNTER's Saeba Ryo, MAISON IKKOKU's Mitaka Shun, and MACROSS' Roy Focker. But it turns out that his acting career is as varied as his voice roles.
Mr. Kamiya wanted to be a stage actor, so he joined an acting group. While in this group he met some accomplished voice actors—including LUPIN III's Yamada Yasuo—and this led him to choose voice acting as a career. At age 29 he began working in the field he called his "job sent from heaven," although he still does a lot of other acting, including stage work about once a year, dubbing for foreign films, and even hosting radio and singing. Since the audience cannot see him, he feels voice acting is less limiting than stage work. The characters he plays in anime are more open to his interpretation, allowing him to be more than himself. (For example, he gets to play really tall characters!)
Interestingly enough, Mr. Kamiya enjoys radio for the opposite reason; it allows his own personality to come forth. And because of radio's more general audience, he feels it lets him connect with a broader spectrum of people.

Now, about those characters we love. Asked if he shared any traits with the personalities he portrays, Mr. Kamiya conceded that although he tries not to overwhelm a character's scripted persona, it would be impossible not to leak at least some of himself into the part. As an example, he explained that some of the "cute" qualities in his parts are from his own persona. His colleagues have noted that even his menacing or evil characters, like RECORD OF LODOSS WAR's Ashram, have at least a hint of cuteness!
Mr. Kamiya's favorite character, as one might guess, is Saeba Ryo. Ryo's wild personality changes and wide range of emotions makes him both fun and challenging to play. He can be warm, butch, wild, goofy, and serious all in one scene--all in one take! In fact this challenge makes the payoff that much greater for Kamiya-san.
And the work is surprisingly difficult! You'd think a voice actor gets a fair amount of time to prepare for a role, but that would be too easy. If there is a pre-existing work available, such as a manga, an actor can study that to gain insight into the role. But often voice actors have nothing more than a script to work with. Hard enough, but the script is usually presented to the actor at the recording studio!
The actors get a preview to look over the script, a test run through, a last test to work out kinks, and finally the shoot to record the tracks. It will usually take about 3 to 4 hours to record for 30 minutes of tape.
Eventually, the series regulars will have had practice and experience, but special guests and newcomers essentially get one shot to pull off their parts. The pressure is very high, but that's why the pros are in such demand. As if that wasn't enough, an established concept (such as a pre-existing manga, live action show, etc.) will have given fans certain expectations as to what the characters will be like on screen. This can lead to disappointment if an actor's interpretation differs from those expectations. But Mr. Kamiya has found that after a few months the audience will come around. Because of the vast range of character personalities and the technical pressures of the job, Mr. Kamiya feels Japanese voice actors are, at least in terms of technique, the best in the business.

When asked what he was working on now, Mr. Kamiya also offered the following interesting tidbit: in the forthcoming NUKU NUKU series, he will play Ryunosuke's father while Ikura Kazue (who plays Makimura Kaori, Ryo's female partner in CITY HUNTER) will play the young boy, Ryunosuke!