Hi, I’m new here. My name’s Matthew, I’m sixteen years old, and I’m from Lithuania, but I’ve been living in Ireland for the last eight or so years. (My real name is Mantas, which doesn’t translate, but a similar name – Matas, translates to Matthew, so Matthew it is for the sake of simplicity. (which I just ruined with this confusing explanation.))

I had a slight interest in Japan, its language and culture for a long time, but last autumn I began to watch anime, read manga, ‘n’ all that jazz, which made me more interested in the general culture of Japan and other Asian countries. It also sparked my interest for Japanese. I don’t know why exactly, but I really like the language, whether it’s how it sounds, or even how it’s written (Yes, kanji. There’s some love out there, even for you).

Sometime, perhaps last April or March, I started looking into learning Japanese, but it was one of my big exam years, I only learned how to read hiragana, and a few other tiny things, as I had too much study as it was. Fast-forward to a month or so ago, and I found Textfugu through a magical, elusive relic called Google. I quickly devoured the first season because I already knew hiragana, and I improved my pronunciation of the sounds. I really liked the layout, humour and all that of Textfugu, so once the first season was plundered of its knowledge, I went ahead and bought the lifetime membership via my father’s Paypal (With consent, of course) (Credit to Koichi for replying to my question about the sign-up process faster than I can come up with any more terrible jokes in this ludicrously-long introduction).

So far, I’m nearing the end of season 3, and I’m planning to do a big review of everything I’ve learned so far, so I don’t suddenly forget it all (but probably won’t, thanks Anki).

Thanks for reading this wall of text I spewed out, nice to meet you all.

tl;dr : Hi.