[masaegu]

Originally Posted by SHAD0W

Aww Masaegu! Ain't that cute! You were a very good writer back in the day, when comparing to writers in the UK of the same age, your work stands out. Many people find it difficult to write about themselves.

Do you still collect stamps?

Thanks, laddie! It's hard to believe there were days when I had no beard, ain't it?

Unfortunately, that hobby of mine only lasted a few years. During elementary and junior high, I collected everything from stamps to miniature cars, rocks to fossils, manga books to records, etc., making my bedroom look like a World's Smallest Museum of Miscellany. I have not collected anything since about 9th grade.

Originally Posted by TerenceLau

Interesting read. More interesting because it's something about you.

Is there any tips to writing in Japanese specifically? A lot of times I find myself stuck in writing/describing technical matters, like research data/report. When I read your passage or writings of my native classmates, I'd think, it's so clean and easy to understand, how do you do that? I wanna learn it!

Well, I think this is a difficult question because Japanese is my first language and I just know what sounds natural without even thinking. My ears just tell me what is good or better.　When writing Japanese or any other language as a foreign language, one tends to translate from one's first language and this can lead to unnatural-sounding writing in the target language.

I wrote this compo when I was in 6th grade, and like any other 6th-grader in the world, I had already written hundreds of pages and read thousands in my native language since 1st grade. So it is all fair in the end. My English probably looks just as horrible as some Japanese-learner's Japanese.