Hey everyone! My name is Ken and I’ve been working on learning japanese for about a month now, and I’d have to say its going pretty well.

I’m a Canadian in Vancouver BC, but I come from Ontario, where the summers are way too hot, and the winters are too cold.

There are a couple of reasons why I want to pick up on learning Japanese…

1. Because of my best friend, he got me really interested in the Japanese culture, well, before he converted to having Korean at the top of his list.

2. I never learned a second language. But I think this could be a good thing because Canadian students have a prerequisite to learning French, but I was exempted from it for crappy reasons. But then again, they don’t speak proper French in Quebec like they do in France.

3. I have many friends that are asian in general. Some are Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.

4. I have this thing where I think it is rather unfair to foreigners to our country to be forced to speak english. Many english speakers that go to Japan (and/or live there) still expect the Japanese to speak to them in english, because they never bother to learn the Japanese language. But I could be wrong.

I’ve also found a way to inspire myself and keep myself going in learning Japanese. My friend told me about this language meetup called “language cast”, where just about anyone goes to this caffe on a Monday at a certain time, and just hang out and chat in whatever language you want to learn or teach. I myself can’t hold a conversation in Japanese just yet, but it pushes me to want to learn it. I’ve made a lot of friends at this thing.

Thats all for now ^_^

I used to have 3 friends (who are all sisters) and they were all really interested in Japan and learning Japanese – I was close friends with the youngest sister but after a while she ‘converted’ to Korean and has stuck with Korean for the past 2 years.
I totally agree with you on how us English people expect foreigners to speak our language yet when we go to a foreign country we also expect the locals to speak English. Some of us are just (unfortunately) quite ignorant of other languages and culture.

The ‘language cast’ thing seems interesting and I’m happy you have something like that near you.

Good luck learning Japanese!

By the way, I’m french and have a friend from Quebec, when we speak , sometimes we don’t understand each other. Although we are using French!! :0

Anyway keep yourself motivated!! :)

Welcome, welcome~

Good luck learning Japanese!