Learning Japanese: Part 1 / ?

I suppose this entry series will be more of a progress tracker, so I can look back at any point during my studies and kind of see how far I've come and where I've come from.

When I was younger, I liked the series Ranma 1/2 a lot. I watched most of it in English, and we bought the movie after watching the series. One day, Mom went to take a nap-- normal, she worked night-shift-- and I popped in the Ranma 1/2 movie. I was watching it like usual until there came a scene that was a little too quiet. I grabbed the remote control and attempted to increase the volume. Accidentally, I hit a button, and the movie switched to Japanese. I couldn't understand a word the characters were saying, but they sounded much different than they usually did. I couldn't figure out how to change it back to English, and was often scolded for tampering with electronics and tampering with settings, so I gave up and watched it in Japanese with English subtitles.

At the end of 5th grade, our teacher made us do one last homework assignment, which really wasn't an assignment at all. It was a paper titled "How I see myself in 8 years". Most people put down things like "football player" or "singer/dancer/movie actor/stripper". I was very specific: "I want to translate things like games and movies into English from Japanese."

Grandma was really supportive of me learning the language. I told her many times I wanted to go to Japan. I didn't realise just how significant it was back then, but she even started a bank account titled, "The Japan Fund" and told me she would put some money aside so I can go when I'm older. She told me to write on it in Japanese, so I just wrote "Nihon" on the front. Every weekend, we'd go to the bank and I'd flop the checkbook on the banker's counter so she could put money in it. Grandma would excitedly tell me to look at how much was in it after the money was deposited, but I didn't really understand money back then.

I was ten or elven when Grandma emptied out the spare bedroom next to mine (previously used to store all 10,390,813,890,138 of my toys) and told me we could make it into "The Japanese Room". She would go to rummage sales and find things that looked remotely Japanese and put them in the room. Tatami mats, wall scrolls written in Chinese (not her fault she couldn't differentiate Japanese from Chinese), a kimono, bamboo plant, wall fan, geisha statues, paper lanterns... She really let me go wild in decorating that room. It was a thrill everytime we found a new item for it. Grandma died when I was 13, and when she died, I sat in that room for a long time. It is now being used as a storage room, and somewhere under the mass that sits on top of it, it still exists.

Now, I've started again. A few weeks ago, I saw Wolverine with some friends, and there were some parts in which the supporting characters would speak Japanese, but the movie didn't subtitle it in English. My friends said, "What the heck are they saying?" and so I started to translate for them.I downloaded a game I've had my eye on for a few months now, and I'm translating that, too. It's hard to understand what is going on, and that is why I play the game. It's a visual novel, so being able to read, listen, and comprehend the material well enough to make a decision is vital to playing the game. After a few bad endings, I've been able to navigate through the story without getting my character killed or failing objectives. I feel really bad for the main character-- his life literally depends on me understanding Japanese. And for that, I'm deeply sorry. 6( ^_^;)