Why I study Japanese

I study Japanese because I want to be able to participate in the online community that translates Japanese visual novels (as well as read them myself the way they were written). Currently there are only a handful of people who work on translating the script, matching voices, importing soundtracks, and all the other work that goes into releasing a visual novel for the English-speaking public. People get flustered when their most anticipated video game release gets delayed a couple months, but the wait time on visual novels are often on the order of at least several years to a decade. I don't even know if the Tsukihime remake will be released in my lifetime! When (not if) I get to that level of Japanese, helping translate visual novels would be first on my list.

The first four weeks of Japanese class have been relatively simple so far, except the grammar seems random to me. It feels as if there are just certain combinations that are correct, and we are limited to those over and over. Now that's obviously because we're sticking to simple structures right now, so hopefully we'll understand why things can be structured the way they are later on. It also troubles me that I still don't know how to say things like "I like cats." However, I have been able to catch bits and pieces of dialogue in anime, which genuinely makes me excited. I look forward to re-watching/reading my favorite things!