Questions for Greg about Japan|Off-topic Stuff|Forum|SNES HUB

Oh my! This is my first time looking in the off-topic forum. I usually encounter people’s bitching about politics and religion. That makes me sick.

Well so where shall I start? I first became truly interested in Japan around 1990, when I was a freshman in high school. I had to do a book report on a book that was translated into English from another language. The librarian suggested that I read The Samurai by Shusaku Endo. I also had to do a report on the country the book was from, so I studied the history and culture. I became particularly fascinated with Nobunaga and how he unified Japan. Before then, in junior high school, I was very into World War II, and I did a report on Pearl Harbor for my history class. I think that was a precursor to my interest in Japan. And of course, around the same time, I discovered anime. Nowadays, people discover Japan because they’re anime fans, but for me it was the other way around, for the most part.

I have a homepage that may be of interest, http://stevethefish.net. You’ve already seen the Super Famicom page, but there’s another page on there called Greg’s Life. I started it in 1995. You can read in more detail what I wrote above here: http://stevethefish.net/life/life006.htm

So for the Japanese language learning part, I started teaching myself a little with a DOS program I downloaded from a BBS using either Archie or Gopher (I’m dating myself here). I took my first serious class in ’97. Since then, it’s been mainly self-study, but I took a few classes when I lived in Himeji in 2000 and 2001. My bosses think that I am the most fluent of all the other English teachers in town here, but I say that I just probably have the best pronunciation. I am not at all fluent, but I am able to understand some Japanese adventure games as long as the language isn’t too complex. I’ve recently decided to help this one guy’s ambition to translate an Urusei Yatsura adventure game for the Sega CD into English. My boss was a bit surprised and disappointed that I signed up for only the JLPT level 5 last year (Japanese Language Proficiency Test), but I wanted to start out from the bottom and work my way up. I just passed level 4 in December, but now I really need to start studying to pass level 3. A friend of mine is studying for the level 2, but he doesn’t speak as naturally as I do. I wrote about learning Japanese at both the beginning level and intermediate level here: http://stevethefish.net/life/life041.htm. Reading kanji is easier than trying to remember it. However, take heart in knowing that even Japanese people have a difficult time sometimes remembering how to write many kanji. I forget how many thousands of kanji are required knowledge to consider oneself literate, but at least it’s far fewer than Chinese kanji to be considered literate in Chinese.

So anyway, the Greg’s Life page is mostly about Japan and miscellaneous nerd crap. Occasionally it’s about my philosophies and me getting into arguments with trolls, racists, morons, religious fanatics, etc, but you can read a lot about my travels in Japan, my experiences living and teaching in Japan, reviews of books I’ve read about Japan, and stuff like that.

Be warned though; I’ve heard from several people who say that once they start reading on there, they can’t stop.