My husband started learning about a year (or two) ago and has been after me to join. I told him to wait until I was finished with my master’s degree…which, as of this fall, I have completed! So, to make good on my promises to him (and to keep up my our housemate who also just started), I decided it was time to buckle down and actually start learning. Also, my husband and I would like to plan an (extended?) vacation to Japan at some point and we would both like to be fluent in the language before we go. As an avid anime fan, I would also like to watch anime and pick up on all the information that just doesn’t translate. Finally, I am a (mostly amateur) historian with a love of Japanese history and it would be nice to read Japanese texts that haven’t been filtered through the translation system.

Wow, that’s a lot of reasons to start…