So my college Japanese course (8 classes and 10 hours of practicing in the tape lab every week, scaled down from a full-year immersion program for scholars, diplomats and spies) actually focused on vocabulary significantly less than many others, instead it focused on teaching the structure of the language with the idea that we could pick things up from immersion

The funny thing is I suspect this is actually happening with the Yakuza (/龍が如く) series, which as I’ve said is “Being Japanese: the AAA Franchise”. In a world where everyone is casually speaking Japanese all the time, I find myself able to follow along to a degree, and it certainly helps that there are subtitles to check against

Also last April when I had a mental breakdown and went crazy and turned bi, Kazuma Kiryu was the principal expression of masculinity I had to impress upon, which strikes me as quite fortuitous and healthy.

I had River City Ransom as a kid, would be weird to go back and tell that kid that genre would be his major source of self-improvement next plague year