tsuenwan

When I went to Korea for the first time to visit my friend she was supposed to pick me up at the airport, but she cancelled on me last minute because she got a new job! And so her aunt agreed to pick me up but I first had to phone her when I arrived at the airport... I called her aunt... who spoke only Korean.  :confused:

I already stress over having to answer the phone in my own language, I think that phone call took a couple of years off of my life just from the anxiety.  :bored:

I'm from Hong Kong and the local sentiment towards Japan is so strong - Japanese restaurants are everywhere, and so is the music, fashion style... since I've always been around the culture for so long and I have a few Japanese friends I've been really motivated to learn the language well.

Wa! Thanks a lot for this list, it's really handy.

I've always been really interested in the Kansai region and the dialect is so fascinating, I've always felt like they have a different culture, in a way, from the rest of Japan. Their sense of humor is hilarious!

Haruki Murakami was one of my first encounters with Japanese literature way back in the day and I'm still a big fan of his work.

I really love his short stories, I really recommend "The Elephant Vanishes: Stories" which is a collection of 15 of his shorter stories.

I've also recently purchased Underground and I'm really looking forward to start reading his books in Japanese.

I've tried the same method as well and I can really vouch for it! One of my weaknesses is not being able to read kana quickly, and since there is so much dialogue in the game you're forced to read a ton and it's helped me out a lot.

I do recommend RPGs as OP says, but also be careful about the content in the game if you're starting out because otherwise the vocab you learn can be pretty irrelevant to start out with! I mean, I have Animal Crossing and by now I feel like I could work at a city hall in Japan!  :tongue:

For me it's been memorizing the Japanese words for every kanji. As someone who can write/read Chinese my mind automatically reads kanji in its Chinese pronunciation and having to relearn them in Japanese has been such a hassle for my mind! I can't seem to memorize the words and I end up reading a Japanese sentence in both languages as I read the hiragana/katakana in Japanese (as it should be) but the kanji in Chinese. It makes me feel so dumb, haha.

Hello!

I'm originally from Hong Kong, currently studying in the UK and I'd like to improve my Korean and Japanese with you guys! I used to be pretty fluent in Japanese long ago but after dropping the subject at school I stopped speaking it and now I'm back to square one, sadly.  :cry:

My Korean is at something of a conversational level and my goal is to progressively sound more natural and less textbook-ish.

Nice to meet you all and I hope we can progress together in our linguistic journeys!