Hello fellow Textfugu members. My name is Eric and I recently started my Japanese language learning journey here. I’m kind of a goofball, which is actually what drew me into Textfugu over all the other possible ways of learning Japanese. People here seem pretty down to Earth and – perhaps more importantly – really motivated to learn Japanese, so I hope to get to know some of you better over time. The following is a brief (by my standards, I tend to be pretty long-winded, my apologies in advance) description of why I decided to learn Japanese after graduating college recently:

1) To help aleaviate boredom and give me something to do in my free time while I look for a job (a temporary job, see #3).

2) To keep learning despite being out of school. School has been a constant in my life for the past 22 years… so it seems weird to me to not be learning something new. Plus, I genuinly like learning new things and I’ve always wanted to learn Japanese (and Chinese, but that will have to wait a while).

3) In preparation to live/work in Japan for a year or more before grad school. That sentence gave a lot away but yeah. I want to go to grad school at some point down the road, but before then (and before taking on more debt) I really want to teach English and live in Japan for a year or more, ideally with the JET program.

Aside from learning Japanese I would say that I have two other hobbys which include playing/producing music (both electronic music production and live sound recording) and cycling. So if you want to talk music I’m your guy. I don’t know that there is much to talk about when it comes to bikes… it’s more of a lifestyle thing. Oh and of course I watch waaaaaaay too much anime whoooooo! Bikes and music and cheap beer and anime and stuff and things!