Hi ukeath! Thanks for the welcome.

What I said about anime/manga wasn’t a criticism of people who do have interests in those things, I just wanted to differentiate as the contemporary art/photography scene in Japan is quite different, and I didn’t want to confuse the two (I don’t know a great deal about manga!).

I know where you are coming from with the lack of fellow-Japanese learners/speakers. At least there’s always places like this to help us out.

I’m glad I wasn’t the only person having trouble then! It seems so obvious now… sigh.