I’ve been teaching myself Japanese, very on and off, as a hobby for the past few years… still a beginner though, when I say “on and off” I mean REALLY sporadically.

I never wanted to take any formal classes because I thought it would suck all the fun out of learning a new language. (I also speak Mandarin and French, and I always felt like being in a structured classroom setting made everything seem so tedious and boring at times. Maybe that’s just me!)

I’ve been thinking of what I want to do after graduation (I’m currently in my 3rd year of college) and the thought of going directly into grad school or possibly a real job in the adult world scares me. I’m starting to take learning Japanese more seriously now, because in the back of my mind, I’ve always secretly wanted to apply to The JET Programme! I figured I can convince my parents that I’m serious about it, (I’m the kind of person that starts many projects but never finishes anything… e.g. learning Japanese but not really) especially if I actually learn Japanese this time around, the chances they would let apply definitely increase.

TextFugu, is EXACTLY what I was looking for on my quest to becoming fluent in Japanese! I am amazed by how much progress I’ve made in the past month, compared to the rate I was going at before.

よろしくお願いします！

I’m going to assume you’re fluent in both French and Mandarin? Does learning Japanese seem easier as you’ve already learned a language before?

Good luck learning Japanese.

Hmm… from what I remember of high school psychology, people who grow up bilingual use their brains differently than people who are monolingual. So maybe there are differences in how I learn Japanese versus someone who is learning a new language for the first time, but I don’t notice them. One conscious advantage, I think, is that since I already know Traditional Chinese, it makes learning Kanji seem much less daunting. Although, learning new pronunciations/readings for them does get confusing at times!