Name: Tom, or Tommy. I have no preference.
Age: 26, going on 27 this month
Place of birth: United States, Illinois
Furthest location travelled: With family; Florida beach, by myself; A few towns over.
Places you want to go: Japan, Ireland, England, China, and Hawaii. Japan is numero uno, of course.
Spoken languages: English, but I'm adopting more and more Japanese words.
Written Languages: English
Languages in the process of learning: Japanese
Hobbies: Japan, Art, Movies
Occupation: Fast food cook
Education: High school, but I'm working up the courage, saving money, and planning for college
Favorite Movies: Too many to name, but right now I suppose it's the one I just finished; The Harimaya Bridge.
Favorite Bands: Lemon Demon, Daft Punk,
Favorite Video Games: The Legend of Zelda, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill
Ultimate Goal: To figure that one out, as I'd be happy achieving anything. I suppose, learning Japanese is my bigget goal at the moment as well as working up enough courage for more face-to-face social situations. I suppose going off to Japan by myself while vacationing is a dream I have. I've had thoughts about potentially moving there for a year just to get the experience of living abroad, but there's a lot to build up to that point. One of my old goals that I used to dream of doing is being a comic book artist here in the states, but I have trouble with anatomy and staying motivated with art so that's a retired dream for now.
After an ear infection, I sadly just kind of forgot about this place because it made me get lazy, as well as Japanese, but over the past few months I've been building back up to learning the language again. I haven't made as much progress as I've wanted to, but I'm still surprised by how much just listening to the language itself helps. I really need to start learning grammar, kanji, and building vocabulary.
However, I'm quite proud to find myself not finding Japanese to sound like gibberish anymore. I don't mean any offence by that. I love the language, but when I first started really learning it and listening, it was so alien but now I can pick up a lot of the beginnings and endings of speech, such as 何, です, ます, and ありません, etc. I can recognize almost all of sounds in Japanese just by sound alone. Right now, I'm having trouble pronouncing the Japanese R's, and I'm still working up the courage to try video chats with native speakers, and fellow learners online but I feel confident that this is something I can do once I get past all my fears.
I've also started playing a lot more games in Japanese. I even bought an import of Final Fantasy 13, since the PS3 is region free. I also discovered one of my favorite games on PC, Alan Wake is fully localized with Japanese, right down to replacing floating English words at the end with kanji!
(studied french & german in school)
