Tetsurou

Actually, I'm Asian so I blend in very well. People are always surprised to hear that I'm not Japanese and tell me that I don't look like an American (duh). I think that fact makes it easier for other people to talk to me which is unfortunate in some ways. I don't really encounter a lot of xenophobic attitudes. People aren't really that open about those kinds of opinions. There is a lot of closed-minded that I encounter though so it's difficult to introduce them to new ideas. Yeah, it's not necessary, but if there happened to be any Japanese players who couldn't speak English (as far as I know there aren't), I would have no problem talking to them. I usually don't care what other people though, but it bothers me when other people doubt me when I've worked so hard to get this far. And thanks again everyone! It's interesting how the PokeMMO community is so geographically diverse. ^_^

I would say that my Japanese is quite good for someone who's lived here for only one year. I studied for a couple of years prior to coming. My goal is to become "fluent" during my time here but I've come to realize I have the rest of my life to become fluent. At this point, I can pretty much do anything I need to do. The other day, I called my insurance company to file a claim and later that night, discussed politics with some old men (one of whom was a politician apparently). I never claim to be fluent, but I'm only starting to realize that I'm getting there. The list of 2,000 or so kanji is sort of a rough estimate and doesn't truly represent any practical command over the language. If it were, it would be kind of like if someone took 5,000 of the statistically most commonly used words in English and said you had to know all of them to be fluent in English. (Apparently, I just looked it up and such lists exist: http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/common-words-5000.htm You can probably become fluent by most accounts without knowing quite a lot of the words at the bottom of this list.) In reality, the amount of kanji that you encounter in real life is much more than 2,000, not limited to the official list, and you find that the more rare kanji on the list are not as common as it appears. I just practice by reading newspapers; I understand the ideas of all the articles I read and most of the details if I read it hard enough. It's just learning vocab at this point and I don't worry myself with the amount of kanji I know. And yeah, I'm here through the JET Program so that's why I'm on a random small island in the middle of the ocean that no one has ever heard of. It does get lonely though. I'm the only foreigner here, so I have no choice but to level up my Japanese. いや、別に注目を求めていないけど、自己紹介する時、普通に「I'm from _____.」とか、「I live in _____.」と言わないでしょうか？この場合、私は日本に暮らしていることは否定できないものじゃないですか？ PandyBearさんのプロフィールページによると、あなたはオランダに住んでいる日本人だそうですね。それは素晴らしいです。やっぱり日本語で話すのが必要ではないですね。 このメッセージ以外、誰かに英語で話しかけられたら、もちろん互いに英語で答えて、日本語だったら同じように日本語で答えますよ。リアルでも一緒です。それでも、もし私は日本人だったら、最初に日本人同士でいつも通りに日本語で喋らないですか？じゃ、必要はなくても、なぜ今日本語で書いてるのと思っているかもしれませんね。それは、もし恐らく私の言葉を信じてなければ、私の日本語能力について疑いがあれば、ちょっと分かりやすくするため、ちゃんと日本語で伝えようかなと思っていただけですね～。　 ^_^ とにかく、PandyBearさん、KONICHIWA. ^__________^ 　これからよろしくね～ In English: No, I wasn't particularly looking for attention, but when you introduce yourself, wouldn't it be normal to say "I'm from ________." or "I live in _______."? In my case, the fact that I live in Japan isn't something that you can really deny, right? According to your profile, it seems that you're a Japanese person living in the Netherlands. That's wonderful! It seems like I don't have to write in Japanese after all. Except for this message, if someone comes and talks to me in English, of course I'll reply back in English to them in return. If it's Japanese, then I'll reply in Japanese the same way. I do the same in real life as well. Even so, if I were actually a Japanese person, wouldn't it be typical to speak first in Japanese as Japanese people usually do? Well, you might be wondering why I'm writing in Japanese now then. The reason is that just in case you don't believe what I'm saying or you have doubts about my Japanese ability, I thought I would make myself more easily understood if I spoke in Japanese instead is all. ^_^ Anyway, PandyBear, KONICHIWA. ^__________^ It's quite nice to meet you!

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm basically just messing around right now and seeing how long it'll take for me to get bored or be surprised by something enough to make me want to keep playing for a little while. I'm actually also not native Japanese, haha. I'm from the States and I teach English here. I studied Japanese for a long while and since being here, my Japanese has just gotten really, really good. Not quite fluent yet, but really getting there. Even if you know a little bit, I appreciate some effort. It's kind of cute when my students use machine translations from Japanese to English, but not... so much the other way around. ;) I regularly watch/listen to episodes of the Pokemon anime I haven't seen as I cook, clean, and do other chores to practice so maybe that got me into the Pokemon playing mood. :P Haha thanks! I'll try not to suck. ^_^ If you're wondering, my island is really isolated and really rural, quite different from most people's image of Japan. There's not much to do except go to the beach and enjoy the sunset, snorkel/scuba dive, bike around the island, watch sea turtles hatch and go to sea, and dance with the locals in festivals. nbd, ya know

lmao that's some nice Google Translate son ;)

よろしくね～　＾＾

Yeah, the only real appeal so far is the possibility of talking and interacting with the people around you but... the "conversations" (can you call them that?) being held, well, don't interest me so much. It would be cool if there was more custom content in the game. Not like content that drastically distracts the game from the spirit of the original, but stuff that supports the end game and the fact that it's an MMO. Pokemon is such a short game that the end game is the entire game. :p I'm hoping more things will come out soon. But anyway, thanks for the welcome everyone! I was thinking maybe I should think about joining a Team or something, but I'm having trouble finding one that fits.

Hi everyone. I'm a 20-something year old who lives on a small, rural island in Japan. I'm just playing this game casually in my free time, but I really like it's potential. But my experience so far with it is that it's just Fire Red with some random people walking around. So I decided I should introduce myself and see if I can meet some chill, mature people. Nice to meet you all!