I just want to say thank you for all the great advice. I’m going to look into these options this weekend when I have some free time.

I greatly enjoyed the Japanese Gardens in Portland, OR, when I was there a few years ago. I’m actually thinking about moving there; I’m very tired of Michigan winters, especially after this one. As such, I want to see a lot of various gardens throughout the country. I was planning to climb Fuji-san, but I might be going outside of climbing season. I want to experience as many prefectures as I can, though I don’t know if I’ll visit Okinawa or not, yet. I’m going to plan the trip around JAXA and the gardens, for the most part. I’m looking to stay in ryokan, hostels, and possibly couch surfing as much as I can. Oh, and I feel I should visit both the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum to pay my respects; it’s the very least I can do since it was my own country that dropped the bombs on civilians in the first place.

I have to agree, it is difficult, even early on. I can’t say much about later learning, as I’ve never quite gotten that far.

I started WaniKani a short while ago, and have been focusing on that for my radicals and kanji learning. Unfortunately, it doesn’t match well (yet!) with TextFugu. I’m trying to stick with the vocabulary and sentences with TextFugu (through Anki), though the vocab keeps tripping me up. It’s difficult when there’s no mnemonic for the words.

What would they rather I do with my time? I come from a working class family, so it’s expected that I’ll work until I retire, get married, have kids, then relax with numerous medical problems, and then pass on. Oh, and lots of TV. At least, that’s what my family seems to do. Religion is mixed in there, too. As the first member of my family to go to college, and go beyond that to a Master’s, I’m doing better than the rest when it comes to work. Still single in my 30′s, so they keep saying I’m falling behind. I they I’m expected to stop learning after college, but no one has said anything about that. Granted, I do get a lot of odd looks…

I’m learning Japanese because I want to learn Japanese. It’s partially to prove to myself that I can, partially to better understand a society very different from my own, and partially because I want to learn more about JAXA, as I’m a major fan of space exploration. I should probably mention that I enjoy learning. A lot.