Hey all, my name is Ben and currently I’m residing in Charlotte, NC. My prior experiences with Japan (both language and culture) have been at first similar to many of yours own I’d imagine. Interest in food and past culture growing into an interest of contemporary culture and how it still lives hand in hand with Japanese traditional culture. I also have been to Japan twice in my original stint in college, both times were to Hokkaido. So I’ve been to Obihiro, Sapporo, Wakkanai, Rebun Island (yes I did spend a night in the amazing youth hostel there….god I miss those guys….), and a few other places. The first trip was to study the Ainu, and the second trip was to study alternative energy sources. It’s a beautiful place and I greatly desire to go back.

Well the above describes my prior experiences, but why do I want to learn Japanese (outside of the fact that it’s a beautiful language). There are a number of reasons. First off I tried studying Spanish for quite a while in H.S. and I never really got anywhere with that language. Predominantly that was because I never really wanted to learn the language, however I always approached it from the standpoint that I was just terrible at learning languages. So I want to defeat that part of myself.

Additionally I’m currently finishing up an associates in Geospatial Technology and soon will be moving on to a BS in Geography with a concentration in GIS. I’d love to focus on East Asia in my future work and so it would really behoove me to start learning the languages if that is the case. For those who are unfamiliar with GIS essentially you take geographic/spatial data and ‘do’ stuff with it. For example you can do Cartography (make maps), spatial analysis (determine optimal locations for buildings, natural resource location, wildlife research, etc), spatial intelligence, epidemiology, etc.

So yeah I’m really looking forward to starting to learning Japanese through here :)