Hello my name is Christine. I’m 33 years old, originally from Connecticut and now residing in Georgia.

I first gained an interest in Japan and Japanese as a child. I was living in Connecticut and my uncle from California came to the family gathering. He had recently taken a trip to Japan and loved it. I still remember him saying how they could pick up a single grain of rice with their chopsticks. Apparently that’s all it took for me to get instantly fascinated.

My family didn’t have money to travel anyplace that couldn’t be reached by car. So I didn’t get to see my uncle outside these gatherings. Then at one point my uncle gained a fear of flying and I haven’t seen him since. But that fascination with Japan lingered. It probably made me the oddest child, and I can’t remember anyone around me who shared my passion.

I still remember a week at high school that they decided to do international cuisine. A different country each day. When China came up, we got those wooden chopsticks you find all the time now at those restaurants. But I had never seen one other than in a book. I diligently tried to master them that day while remembering my uncle’s words. I even scrubbed them off and kept them for a while. I tried using them on various foods around the house, carefully scrubbing after every use. My family must have found it odd, me continuing to use and keep throwaway wooden chopsticks. But it was the first thing I had held that was Asian, so it was special to me.

The next memory was our small town mall got a store selling anime on VHS tapes. This was a big deal. My area was this big black hole of nothingness for those who had an interest in Japan. I couldn’t afford anything, but I loved to go in and look at it all. Unfortunately the store didn’t last.

My next big encounter was when I was attending college. There was some sort of event going on that had to deal with Japan. Next to the bookstore a small store opened selling Japanese items. Once again I was looking around in awe. I repeatedly visited it, but again didn’t have much money. The one item I could afford to get, I bet you can guess, was some real chopsticks with a design of a Chinese dragon near the top of it. Once again I was back to trying them out on foods in my dorm room, like eating cheese popcorn with them. I was without a roommate at the time so I didn’t have to worry or care about odd looks.

Sometime after that one of the teachers there decided to start teaching Japanese. It was only Japanese I and II, but I jumped at the chance. (Alas they don’t offer it anymore.) I loved learning Japanese a whole heck of a lot more than the mandatory Spanish I had to take in high school. I even learned hiragana, though now alas I have forgotten most of it. I managed to ace both classes, probably because I had such a drive and motivation in learning anything about Japan.

It’s been at least 11 years since then. I’ve made attempts to try to get back into learning Japanese, but it’s been difficult. I think a big difficulty is that I’m the only one this excited about it, and thus I didn’t have anyone else to bounce off of.

I tried to go to a language center here in Georgia to learn Japanese. That was an interesting experience. The woman asked me when I’d be going to Japan. I said I’d like to go someday, I just can’t afford to anytime soon. She asked me if I was going to go there on business. Again no. She asked if I was learning Japanese for my company. Again I answered no. I proudly told her I had a personal interest in learning Japanese. And that’s when I got the ‘okay I got the weird one’ look. >_> Due to that, the HUGE cost of the lessons, and the fact they weren’t teaching how to read Japanese for that amount of money, I decided against going there.

I currently work at a large university. I’ve been encouraged by some people to take classes there to see if I can boost my GPA. “Take something easy.” To which I answered, “Heck with that. If I’m going to pay to take a class, it’s going to be Japanese!” (I’m still the crazy girl.) Due to the fact I’m postbachelor status, and getting some financial aid, I have to wait until 3 days before classes start to try to get into the introductory Japanese class. So there’s no telling if there will be a slot left for me, or if the teacher will put in an override and let me in. I certainly hope so.

So I decided I’m going to start here and now. If it works out or not, I am returning to study Japanese again this year. I would like to relearn hiragana at the very least with what remains of this year.

So why am I studying Japanese? Other than rekindling that old passion, I want to be able to read Japanese. I have doujinshi and artbooks from the Yoroiden Samurai Troopers series. Any time I wanted info about the series I had to rely on someone else’s translation. I’m growing tired of that. I want to be able to do it myself.

So here I am, and this is my post to say hello to everyone. I’m sorry if it was a bit long.

-Christine A. Cooney