Why Japanese?

It started with, of all things, Rock Band. As my efficacy at the drums improved, I considered practicing. Twenty minutes a day, say. Keep that up, and I'd be rocking on Expert all the time.

After spending the briefest of moments entertaining this clack-and-roll fantasy, reason stamped it out. What a waste of time! Twenty minutes a day, and to what end? Better fake rocking? I might as well learn an actual instrument.

Hey, wait a second...

Thus began the next stage: an ephemeral question of whether or not I should take up an instrument. I played the baritone horn in high school to little effect, so at least I can read music. I can spare twenty minutes a day, certainly. The violin? Perhaps the ocarina?



This concept went fairly quickly by the wayside. Not to worry though -- I found another way to spend this hitherto unused twenty minutes. (No, it's not exercise.)

I heard this story on NPR, and the phrasing of a certain sentence caught my ear. Jefferson read several languages. Now there's a thought. The guy probably didn't speak German all that well, but he could read it.

This baked for a while until it combined with the previous thoughts and came out of the oven something new: time to learn a language.

Now being both a videogame geek and a lingustics geek, Japanese was the only choice.