Moving to a foreign country

Wow, I'm not sure if that is awesome or insane.

But "because the culture of Japan is awesome" is a good reason to move there. My uncle lived there for 5 years and loved it, but eventually had to come back to the US because his company was bought out and he lost his position. He did say a lot of people bashed the US though, although he was in international sales and worked with people from a number of East Asian nations.

Lets take the middle ground and say it's ambitious.

With the difficulty of finding a job here alone finding another one in a foreign country. Hell, I might as well seriously try the marines and get a written statement to send me to a base in Japan. At least then on my time off duty I can go into Japan and do whatever.

as long as you pay half of the bill.

let's see you try and failed HARD.i'm not trying to demotivate you or something,but i'm telling you,it's impossible to learn japanese in 2 month,no matter how genius or motivated you are.

i've seen many tried to master it in a year,and still failed badly at level 1 Noryoku-Shiken(the godfather of all japanese language exam) required to enter a college or apply for a permanent job.

let's face the reality,dude,it's hard enough to read kanji,let alone writing it.

but hey,if you succeded,try mandarin next.

I wasn't being literal (my bad). Just saying I can learn difficult things slightly faster than the general norm but, only if I'm really interested in learning them otherwise.

Edit: have you seen my handwriting? Even I can't read that chicken scratch. Writing won't matter because nobody will ever be able to read it. When I sign my name it's like I had a stroke while doing it.

Edit2: Going back and rereading the mentioned statement I look like an arrogant prick. I hope I don't give off that vibe to everyone.

... you do sound like an arrogant prick sometimes, but we can forgive that. I'm sure we've all sound arrogant on these forums at one point or another, just some more than others.

mnx is correct. There are at least 3 different sets of the Japanese alphabet that you'll have to learn: kanji, katakana, and hiragana. Then you'll have to increase your vocabulary, learn the grammar which is ass-backwards from the romance/latin-based languages, and learn to speak, read, and listen fluently. You can't compare Japaneses to say French or Spanish or even German because at some point they're all interrelated but the Asian languages are not but to themselves.

Well, it is rather hard to know when your doing something wrong until someone tells you. I'll try to work on not looking like an arrogant prick as much.

The biggest problem I can foresee knowing my own abilities is listening. Sometimes even in English unless every syllable is enunciated then I can misunderstand the word someone says and hear some completely different than what was originally said.

The next thing would be writing it. I could probably read it easily enough but, writing it would be another story. My normal handwriting looks like chicken scratch while the chicken has an epileptic seizure so trying to write anything with so many "brush strokes" will be a huge task.

Speaking it. I'm sure I can learn to speak it. I'll probably butcher the sound of the language (like an American speaking french. You just "know" it's not their primary language) but, gotta remain optimistic about your endeavors.

Nah, I don't think your handwriting or pronounciation would be a problem. It's just that the Asian languages by nature are hard to learn. You take English and the simplicity of it is that it's only based on 26 letters. It's really efficient compared to most languages out there, and while English has the subject in front of the sentence, Japanese tends to put the subject in the back of the sentence, which makes it harder to grasp.

Mastering the language is a must if anyone was to live for a long period of time in Japan and to find and work at a job, and you'll have to give up your previous nation's citizenry in order to live in Japan. Apparently they don't allow dual citizenship.

That sucks. It would be awesome to have dual citizenship. The logical route would be to join a military branch that had a base in Japan. Since it's so far from an combat zone it'd be a softer job. I would be living in Japan (technically on American soil). Then again there would be a problem of once I'm done with my time in the military I would be shipped home unless I found a way to manipulate the system to allow me to leave the American military and become a Japanese citizen. I have always wanted to live in Japan since I was eight so this isn't a spur of the moment decision.

Lesson Learned: The pastures always seem greener elsewhere... until we get there. :eng101:

With regards to the specifics of moving to Japan, I am unable to provide any advice, since I have neither visited the country nor read in-depth its system of governance. However, with it comes to migration, I would think one has to get his/her priorities right, in terms of the "privileges" given to the citizens of a nation, such as level of freedom, security, etc.

From what I have seen and experienced, most local citizens tend to hold foreigners in distaste, especially during bad times, where everyone is competing for the same job.

I figured people always held foreigners in distaste since they are "outsiders". You are correct though the grass is always greener until you get there.

You'll be able to understand most things after a month.
You'll have a horrible accent when you talk.
You get laughed at.

Pretty average things. It just happens.
Or you can get a guy who can speak japanese, talk english all the time, and when some (stranger)japanese guy tries to talk shit, Simultaneously stand up and get the guy who can speak japanese to translate.

"Hi"
-"He wants to kill you"
"How about a drink on me?"
-'He said he wants to rip out your guts and drink it"
"Or lunch?"
-"He said he'll get his friends with guns"

Japanese people tend to ignore/stay away from foreigners anyway, so you won't really have a problem.

As long as they don't throw me out of Akihabara or arrest/deport me for ogling their women.