Hi guys. I introduced myself on here a long, long time ago but wound up losing the drive to learn. If it’s alright with you all I feel it’s necessary for me to start over with this.

So hi –
I’m 21 year old self-learner of Japanese, and I came to textfugu to do just that. Unfortunately looking back on my old “reason for learning Japanese” paper, I felt my old reasons were kind of unrealistic. Well, that and I wound up having a lot of my own issues to deal with at the time. Irrelevant stories of my past aside, I wanted to share with you a memory that gave me the spark to learn Japanese again.

I recall playing a Japanese MMO a long time ago called “Bright Shadow”. If you’ve ever played a foreign MMO you’ll understand the looming sense of loneliness you feel being in a social game where you can’t communicate with anyone mixed with a small sense of curiosity for games that don’t cross the barrier. To my good fortune I wound up meeting a player who could actually speak English! It wasn’t the best English but… It was English nonetheless! After this player and I got to know each other a little better she invited me to her guild. Now none of these members spoke English like her, but she went through the trouble of translating their messages to me. After awhile though I left the game to deal with problems in my own life. I was a bit sad to see the game had shut down when I recalled this story.

Moral of the story is that I was touched by this. So touched that I wanted to share this kindness with other people by learning Japanese. Whether it’s on a Japanese MMO where I just want to communicate or an English MMO where I want to welcome any potential Japanese players — I wanted to spread this kindness that surpassed cultural boundaries. I don’t know how or where I will find this opportunity, but I know it starts with learning Japanese. I only hope that Textfugu will be a stepping stone for my new-found motivation.

So, a bit of a wordy re-introduction, but I didn’t know where else to do this. I only knew that I just had to post this somewhere — I couldn’t just write it down for myself. So I hope you’re all ok with me engraving my self promise here.

Thank you to anyone who read through this.