I went to Japan in the middle of 1997 and missed the entire internet boom -- I had no particular career in mind and just wanted to be somewhere else, and Japan paid the most for people with nothing but 4 year college linguistic skills. I had never studied Japanese before that and had no plans to. Like Dyske said, the rush to learn Japanese in the 80′s stank of opportunism, and I was actually repulsed by the majority of people I met who were studying Japanese and decided against doing so myself, though I had the big edge of being fluent in Chinese and never having to memorize any kanji.
I kind of learned some halfassed Japanese in Japan organically from the people around me and am pursuing the study again now that I’m in a job that would pay for my lessons. Problem is I have a hard time finding practice.
A Random Comment from June 19, 2002
Hey I would love to be in that position.
I went to Japan in the middle of 1997 and missed the entire internet boom -- I had no particular career in mind and just wanted to be somewhere else, and Japan paid the most for people with nothing but 4 year college linguistic skills. I had never studied Japanese before that and had no plans to. Like Dyske said, the rush to learn Japanese in the 80′s stank of opportunism, and I was actually repulsed by the majority of people I met who were studying Japanese and decided against doing so myself, though I had the big edge of being fluent in Chinese and never having to memorize any kanji.
I kind of learned some halfassed Japanese in Japan organically from the people around me and am pursuing the study again now that I’m in a job that would pay for my lessons. Problem is I have a hard time finding practice.