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Greetings, I finally mustered up the nerve to try and see if I can experiment with my social skills (Misuse and lack thereof).

I haven't had much practice with real people as I live in a community that is rural which means most social visits are few and far inbetween so I doubt if I'll be able to survive a visit to my brother who is currently residing down in California next January.

Lived most of my life not understanding why other people behave the way they do while I act the way I am which was stressful until some radical family problems led to a counselor visiting a few times in the aftermath of tragedy. The counselor had a suspicion that I have aspergers, and after researching it with much intensity a year back, I can agree with her unofficial diagnosis (Unless I have something else that I'm unaware of).

My interests are varied and quite useless in a discussion type environment include:

Drawing (My skills are nothing to talk about but it was probably my most intense activity from when I was young).

Engaging in roleplaying story telling (The epitome of my immature behavior, this is also how I mentally tease and stab at people. I get my participants involved with an object and/or character that leads towards an unending goal that inevitably gets insane the further along it goes).

Electronic Games (Nothing much to say here except that I have an extra interest in playing imports from Japan).

Literature (Used to read quite a few books that fit into themes involving character issues similar to how I feel about myself, lost interest in paper literature as I have now became dependant on text based literary works).

Philosophical/Religious discussion (Not any good at communicating about these topics but I do have an interest in reading what other people discuss about it).

Scanslation (My most recent hobby involving scanning, translating, and editting manga [aka comics] into English).

I decided to experiment with various levels of communication here as I do not think it prudent to experiment on people that have an unguessable tolerance level, I believe my ability to exceed most people's tolerance is far beyond what they deserve.

I'm unsure of how to describe myself physically/personality-wise so I'll probably leave this introduction as it is. Thanks for bearing with my run-on grammatically incorrect writing-style. n_n;

Welcome to WrongPlanet, Taruby. Stick around, and you'll find plenty to talk about

Hello!
How did you learn Japanese?

What aspects of the language are you most interested in?

I'm still learning it. This has been going on for about 3 years. I've taken a serious effort in grammar, vocabulary, etc this year. The previous two years were mostly spent on the writing systems of Kanji (600-700 memorized at the moment), Hiragana, and Katakana.

The process has been mostly self taught by reading many documents/resources over the internet. Since there is noone for me to practice on orally, I expend most of my efforts on the reading materials making an effort to memorize anything that gives me trouble.

My training process begins by first typing up a Japanese script of the books into a .txt file. I then go over this raw script with my basic knowledge and see how well I can do. Finally I go over it again carefully to spot out any errors I had trouble on in the first pass through by researching all of the elements involved. So far, I did about 640 pages using this method.

All in all, my learning process is basically to read as much as I can find with a purpose backing it up.

I'd like to be able to understand manga and Japanese movies in their original language, and to speak Japanese as well, because I intend to visit Japan in the future, when I'm settled in life.

Hmm, I'll be assuming you need to start from the ground up.

I feel that the first thing to learn is Hiragana and Katakana.

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/index.html
(This page has explanations on the pronouncation, stroke orders, etc on all of the kana.)

http://www.kicl.info/
(This is like a flash card disguised as a game for kana, kanji, vocab with a couple other languages like german).

http://lrnj.com/
(This has a really nice learning algorithm as a flash card game for kana, kanji, and a small amount of vocab disguised as some 8-bit Dragon Warrior parody).

What I would recommend is first learning the kanas on a piece of note paper until you feel confident enough to try and visually respond to them using the flashcards. It would be a good idea to go through some manga's sound effects so you focus yourself with the strokes rather than the overall shape.

After you get the kana, you can make a decision on what you want to focus on the most next, be it kanji, vocabulary, or grammar.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/
(This is a really in depth guide to the grammar starting from the beginning).

http://www.jgram.org/index.php
(This is like a wikipedia where users can input grammar rules and examples of use, I find this extremely useful).

http://www.nihongoresources.com/
(A really nice database for Kanji stroke orders, grammar, and a several other interesting things).

Unfortunately, I do not have any extensive pages that explain the oral aspect of Japanese in great detail, I believe that kind of thing is best learned in a classroom or while in the country itself.

Thanks for the links and advice!

what is/are your favourite manga?

Angel Densetsu
(The story of a highschooler that has the face of a devil but the heart of a saint).

Chrno Crusade
(Set in New York city during the 1920s involving angels, demons, and exorcists).

LevelE
(A two volume story involving aliens on earth).

The Laughing Vampire
(A story about awful people who live in an awful world that do awful things and those effected by the circumstances).

Watashi no Ookami-san
(A parody of Ragnorak online involving a level 0 hero and a demon lord that is bored of twirling wine in a glass).

Halmeln no Violin Hiki
(A classical music inspired story involving the adventures of the great hero Hamel who weilds an oversized violin and how he proves that he is just as much of an antagonist as the villains).

Which titles/series do you prefer?

Greetings, I hope your experiment goes well

Woot more people should role play even if it is a out let for sadio -masochistic tendances. What do you GM and where do you find players in a rural setting?

Hello. I'm glad you joined. We are a very open group of people here.

I do this with mostly family members, although I haven't done much of it the past few years. Basically it works best in one on one sessions so whoever is moderating decision input from the player can quickly construct excuses on the consequences of a player's decisions.

It's a verbal interface rather than a pen and paper one. Usually the only pre-plotting involved is a scenario at the start or an idea of a result that you manipulate the player to get into. Although a pen and paper interface would have saved quite a few arguments concerning concealed possesions brought out at key moments.

The world was a hollow construct at first with more details added on by influences like pets, objects, or some other characters from media with personalities horridly oversimplified or twisted to suit the purpose of the story.
An example would be a song with some lyrics pertaining to wild animals, a mountain, and something desirable at the top of it. I then change it to where a hermit lives up on a mountain in a cabin filled with the object of each person's desire. A community lodge of individuals exist at the base of the mountain who coordinate scheduled mad rushes up the to the cabin to steal their objects of desire while the hermit slaughters them off with the wild animals. I then use this as a setting for the player to see if they can use clever decision skills to get through it to get what they want.

Sometimes, if a session of decisions turns out entertaining enough, I'll try to put it down in either written form or that of a crudely drawn comic.

Hello Tarubi!
Among the manga you mentionned, I only know Chrno Crusade. I watched the anime and enjoyed it.

I like reading Osamu Tesuka's manga, plus Kenshin, GTO, Gunnm, and watch Myasaki's annimes, Full Metal Alchemist, and Hellsing.

Hello Taruby - welcome from another new face.

I like comics too but of the European variety (Yugoslavia produces the best, Britain has more of a political cartoon tradition and I collect those kind of books as well although most are published in newspapers for topical consumption and are rarely issued as books). I write my own...every so often I contribute illustrations to magazines etc but often I just produce them for myself and to explore my own inner world.

Your linguistic skills sound fascinating. I presume you get the pronunciation from films? I enjoy listening to films in different languages, I speak Polish and a bit of Russian and Czech. Never tried Japanese...the only non-Indo-European languages I've tried are Estonian and Hungarian, but I couldn't make myself understood as the intonation is so different...but I've had a go at Lithuanian and Latvian, and recently did a cartoon strip based on Orff's Carmina Burana, so I had to explore Latin a bit to make some of the words fit my context (though I gave up when it came to Old German, I was never able to master modern German at school).

BTW what's the difference between manga and anime?

Manga are books, and animes are animated pictures.

Thought so.