Hey everyone,

My name’s Hayden Blummont and I’m from a relatively small city (of about 60,000 I think) in Hastings, New Zealand. I’m 19 years old and did my first year of a wine science and viticulture degree last year and HATED IT! I found that I needed to be involved with people a lot more to be satisfied so I have been thinking seriously about teaching English in Japan or Japanese in an English speaking country and needed somewhere to start.

Currently I’m looking into retail and sales (customer service) jobs just until I get a bit better at Japanese and become certain with the direction I want to go in. I’ve signed up for an ESOL course to teach English to migrants and refugees in my country so I can get a taste of what it might be like.

I have always had an interest (some would say obsession) with Japanese culture and food etc. and studied the language for a year when I was about 13 with a horribly incompetent teacher who had no prior knowledge of Japanese language or culture, so it was basically a disaster. In trying to find a teaching style I relate to and learn well from, I came across TextFugu and absolutely love it. I’ve never made so much progress learning anything so quickly!

Anyway, I’m a pretty darn open and accepting person so if ya wanna contact me for any reason, go ahead :)