I was introduced to Manga and Anime by my friends a few years back and have become quite interested in the Japanese culture and lifestyle ever since.
Just recently though, one of those friends mentioned that he wanted to start learning Japanese. I decided that I wanted to do the same and that we could turn it into a friendly challenge.
He unfortunately doesn’t have as much free time as I do, but we are still trying to practice together as often as we can. Thus far, I have a pretty good understanding of Hiragana and Katakana and have decided to start on Kanji (a lot of internet resources mentioned that TextFugu is a great learning tool so I bought it).

My main goal is to lean Japanese so that I can stay in Japan (with my friend who I’m practising with) for a short period of time and be able to have a conversation with the local populace. Reading the raw Japanese manga (without the english translation) would be an added bonus!