Undergraduate in economics with a minor in Spanish. I maxed out the Spanish courses at my university by my junior year and wanted to continue learning a language but the Brazilian Portuguese class was full. My backup was to take the Chinese class but that was also full. There was one slot left in Japanese 101 so I jumped in on that.

Long story short - I fell in love with Japanese very quickly and found RTK when googling for Japanese learning strategies. A few months later, the Japanese consulate general came by my Japanese class and gave a presentation on the JET program. It sounded very interesting so I casually threw together an application in case I couldn't find a job in banking when I graduated. Low and behold the market went straight to hell around the time I graduated (Lehman shock) and my two job offers were taken off the table and I ended up going to Japan on the JET program.

The JET program sent me to Ehime in Shikoku where I learned Japanese up to a fairly high level. I stayed there for three years, learned a lot of Japanese, and generally had lots of fun. JET is a good experience and I highly recommend it.

Now I'm at an MBA program studying international business with a focus on Japan. I'm trying to not go insane from my crazy workload of 12 credits a semester of business and 9 credits a semester of intensive business Japanese.

Last edited by kitakitsune (2011 November 23, 6:14 pm)

Studied Languages in College, then BA Hons in Linguistics in University. Some Masters courses in Linguistics as well.

Taught French and English as second languages for a while.

Translator for over 10 years. Still tutoring for fun.

Been gaining experience in simultaneous conference interpretation for a few months now.

Started studying Japanese 3 years ago (12th language).

Undergrad computing & networking. Not sure how exactly I'm going to make this send me to Japan yet, possibly JET program. Planning a 2-4 week trip to Japan this summer regardless, have a friend over there that may be moving to England for a while soon so hopefully then I can boost my Japanese skills

Last edited by lardycake (2011 November 25, 2:57 am)

AlexandreC wrote:

Started studying Japanese 3 years ago (12th language).

Out of curiosity, what are the first 11?

Zgarbas wrote:

AlexandreC wrote:

Started studying Japanese 3 years ago (12th language).

Out of curiosity, what are the first 11?

French, English, Norwegian, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Yiddish, ASL and Mandarin.

mutley wrote:

Initially medical, but that then changed to chemistry and then specifically environmental chemistry in my masters course.

That was then followed by the JET programme for a few years, where my main focus has been learning Japanese and travelling.

Next step I guess is finding a job where I can combine my two areas of study (scientific and Japanese).

Science translation with a knowledge of chemistry. You could get into science translation if your Japanese reading/translating skills are good.

IceCream wrote:

^^how about Linguistics Tykkylumi? It fits together quite well with the more analytic aspects of philosophy, and is pretty interesting too...

I did think about this, but I'm not sure! I did ask some students who are taking Linguistics with Philosophy at my university if it would be a good subject to switch to, but they said that it's rubbish
Though everyone who I speak to seems to love Communication and Society if they take it, so I guess other people's opinions don't really count for that much...

Edit: I did sort of think about taking History, but I haven't studied it since before GCSEs so I would probably be jumping far too into the deep end. Oh well. I will carry on with what I'm doing for now I guess.

Last edited by Tykkylumi (2011 November 29, 4:11 pm)

I'm Spanish, and I've studied Industrial Engineer with a minor in Electronics and Automation (plus some programming). Probably the most important decision for me was to learn English , it has enriched my life a lot since I can look for almost anything in the internet, or technical books , etcetera, plus communicate with lots of people thanks to both Spanish and English.

English obviously helps me tremendously for my career, Japanese I would not think so (unless I'm terribly lucky and I'm recruited at some Japanese multinational company). But I love Japanese culture, and I think it will be at least as useful as English in my personal life. Plus, it's a lot of fun learning another language! I'm sick of learning technical things that I won't use ever.

Studying Information Systems. I always loved technology and realized I wasn't that good at programming, so IS kind of fit into that weirdly... I'm going the information technology management route in my major. The major didn't really translate into any interest for Japanese but I've always been interested in Japanese culture so I started learning for my own goals.

I have a BFA in Acting.  Japanese for me started out as a hobby (getting into anime and what-not), but now I'm starting to fancy the idea of comparing American and Japanese approaches to performing theatre or methods of Acting.

Wow.  Noticing all these other majors, I think I'm the odd man out...:p

Last edited by Merocor (2011 December 06, 10:18 pm)

Biology, specializing in Medical Biology. I really have no direct professional interest in Japanese, other than that I will most likely take the JLPT test when I feel I am ready for it. It will make for an interesting footnote on my resume atleast.