Introduction - Please Read This First!

The start of what should hopefully be an epic and successful journey...

This blog has two purposes:
1) To track my progress in learning the Japanese Language and give me something to remember the journey by
2) To hopefully become a good resource for anyone else who is either about to study the language themselves or has begun already and needs tips/inspiration/ideas.

First and foremost I want to 100% admit I am stealing this idea from http://jamaicanlearningjapanese.wordpress.com. I stumbled upon his blog after doing some searches on google and youtube about life in Japan before I headed over to work. (I'll tell you more details about that in a later post). I was planning to make a blog with my stories in Japan but I liked how he separated his into two blogs; one focusing on language and the other about the rest of his life. This separates the useful information for fellow language learners who are not interested in creeping/living vicariously though other people's personal lives.

Anyways, I found his site really helpful and inspiring. I recommend that you read it in addition to mine if you are seriously considering starting to learn the Japanese language (or any other language for that matter). I'm sure that each of our techniques will prove to have their own advantages and disadvantages and will also vary in effectiveness based on your personality and history. I make no claims that my methods are better than his (although I hope that will turn out to be the case). So read at least these two blogs before you decide how you will study the language.

As my sensei once said: "practice doesn't make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect". If you study things a wrong or inefficient way you can waste a lot of time or even learn bad habits that can be next to impossible to shake. I can't stress the importance of this enough - Do your research before you start.

I will have a separate blog talking about work, play and other aspects of life in japan made more for friends or people who know me well. I probably won't start that until the week I leave for Japan so for now this is it.