Hi everyone, I’m Jee. I’m 33 years old and hoping against all odds that my brain still has some capacity for learning!

I’m here to give this a shot because I’ve been coming across pictures of life in Japan on kotaku.com, and they’ve made me sentimental about my trip to Japan last year. I visited Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara and Hakone without knowing much about the language other than some kana (which wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped), and I felt that although the experience was amazing, it could have been even more mind-blowingly amazing if I’d been more comfortable with Japanese. I want to go back some day, armed with the knowledge of the language and ready to strike up conversation or at least able to read restaurant menus! (Although in the big cities, most had menus in English available–Japanese folks are so accommodating!)

I wouldn’t have even remotely thought of this task as being possible if not for encountering the guides to hiragana and katakana on tofugu.com, which I thought were amazingly effective. I’m also hoping that my elementary/native knowledge of Korean will help.

Good luck to everyone else with similar aspirations!