Hi Joel! Oh I used to live in Sydney for most of my childhood! Great place! (´▽`ʃƪ)♡ Now I live a bit more in the country, but I’m still in NSW. :)

Yeah, I was pretty lucky to learn Japanese at school, because they didn’t teach it there and you are not really supposed to learn it by correspondence until you’re in year 9, but I was pretty desperate and so… (;´∀`)>

It’s good, because I get to talk to my Japanese teacher on the phone once a week and I can learn it at my own time unlike a real class! Even though I really like it, like I said, I wasn’t learning too much so here I am ~ You studied Chinese? Very cool! (*ﾟﾛﾟ) Do you know any Chinese now? :o

Hahaha that’s too bad! (੭ु˙꒳ ˙)੭ु⁾⁾

Well hello there fellow newbie! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ And thank you, welcome to you too! ^.^

Hahaha thank you Justin! Hmm… About me huh?

Well as most people here I love anime and manga, but probably what really started my Japanese interest/obsession/fetish (I don’t know what to call it anymore XD ) was when I was nine and my cousin introduced me to drawing adorable chibis. (∩˃o˂∩)♡

Back then I was amazed by how cute chibis where and tried my hardest to try to draw them good and then later on I found I liked drawing in the normal manga style too. Though I can’t lie, I was downright TERRIBLE for a couple of years. ｡･ﾟﾟ･(>д<)･ﾟﾟ･｡ I tried and tried, but I guess I couldn’t really get the hang of it. I think I only really became what I call ‘okay’ at drawing manga about the same time I first tried to learn Japanese (start of this year). But seriously, I look back at my drawings I drew not too long ago and I’m so ashamed ~（￣□￣；）

Uh… I got a deviantArt if you are kind of interested about that… http://nikureach.deviantart.com (Though I haven’t been on that website for ages… shhhhh)

And yeah, my username is nikureach… I didn’t realise that niku meant meat until recently, so now I’m kind of laughing at myself. (It really was only supposed to be a play on my name… Funnily enough I think meat is one of the worst words out there ~ just because it means dead ANYTHING, really… Though it is pretty yummy I got to say ~ Oh irony, how you mock me… ヽ(￣д￣;)ノ )

ANYWAY after a while, I moved away from where I lived in Sydney to somewhere far away (about at the end of 2010) and that’s when I really started my Japanese interest/obsession/fetish. If you know me, then you’d probably know that once I get hooked onto something, I REALLY get hooked. Luckily I’m hooked on Japanese for a while now and funnily enough I never get burnt out… Though that sometimes means I get so caught up in learning Japanese or whatever else I’m interested in, that I forget to do everything else. Is it a curse or good fortune? I will never know… 「(°ヘ°)

Anyway, back then I really got hooked onto anime, which led me to get really hooked onto manga, which led me to get hooked onto karate (which I’ve been doing for a year now and I’m a green belt! Woo hoo! ^.^), which led me back to getting hooked onto drawing (and some Japanese games) and now Japanese language!

Though even though I love anime, manga, karate, manga drawing etc overall, I just love Japanese culture. I’m quite a quiet and shy person (hahaha which is quite ironic, because I’m not quiet AT ALL when I start typing… Seems like I got little to say in real life, but a lot to say on the internet… ヽ(；▽；)ノ) and ever since I’ve been doing karate, I feel that the level of discipline and respect is something I really admire (we are nothing like that in Australia! Other than other quiet people like me, there are quite a lot loud (aka kinda rude? Though over all Australians are such nice people, don’t get me wrong) people too. It was like a bucket of fresh, yummy water thrown at my face ~ A shock which I really liked ^_^).

I don’t want to generalise a whole country, because of course there would be people in Japan entirely the opposite of this, (just like how people think Australians are very loud and noisy, when really there are heaps of quiet people too), but I just love how being not loud, polite, helpful, respectful and nice is kind of normal there. I just admire them a lot basically. :)

And that’s why I want to live there for a while and become friends with some of them and learn a lot about their culture when I go on exchange over there! (/^▽^)/ Sometimes I think ’2016 is so far away! I have heaps of time!’ but other times I think ‘WAH!? HOW WILL I BE READY BY THEN?’ (((╹д╹;))) But I just guess all I can do is face the challenges head on and be positive! It will be hard for sure, but then again, I don’t want it to be an easy, pointless ride. No pain, no gain, yeah? ^.^

Oh wow I’m so so so sorry! ｡：ﾟ(｡ﾉω＼｡)ﾟ･｡ I shouldn’t have typed my whole life story! The sad thing is that I could even type more… Bad Monique! >3< Wow, it’s funny how quiet I am in real life and how chatty I am once I get a keyboard in front of me…

I’m so sorry if you found this an annoying post! Hope you all have a great day~ ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

ah I actually don’t know what to say to that! ( /)u(\ ) heheheh I wish I was cute like that, (in many ways I’m not) but thank you very much anyway! ｡(*^▽^*)ゞ ahhh I got this goofy grin now ~ Oh that’s good that I’m not the only one then!