Hi everyone!

I just signed up for TextFugu for two reasons. Number 1, I’m moving to Japan in two months. Number 2, I saw a retweet by @tofugu that Textfugu was on 50% off. So I grabbed it!

I lived in Tsukuba for three months in 2010 on an internship. I absolutely fell in love with Japan and became instantly obsessed. I knew that I absolutely had to get back, long term. I applied for a job that was related to my internship, and waited months to hear back…finally on January 1st they emailed me to say I got it! I will start in April, but training begins in late March, so I am planning to leave in early March so I can have a couple of weeks to get acclimated without having any responsibilities to anyone. I will be living in Tokyo, hopefully in an Oak House building, if they have rooms in the one I want when I go.

I muddled through three months in Japan without knowing Japanese at all. I could read katakana but that was pretty much it. Now I have learned about 1/3 of the hiragana but I’m still pretty bad with it. And the only kanji I can recognize consistently are 猫 and 大学…I love cats and my internship was at a university, so there you go! So far, Google Translate has been my friend – I communicate online by putting English into Japanese, then back into English, and if it comes out wrong, I start over until I get what I’m looking for. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t – my friends on Mixi seem to know what I mean most of the time. But I’m looking forward to working with Textfugu to help me improve my ability to communicate in Japan, both before and after I get there.

Japanese things I can say right now, in romaji: chotto matte kudasai, itadakimasu, ikura desu ka, toire wa doko desu ka, o-mizu onegaishimasu.

ありがとうございます！