Awww, give Canada a chance! I really have a lot to live up to being an American, we are hated, tolerated, or liked based on our government and foreign affairs. However, even though I admire many things about other countries, and want to teach my children overseas, I will always be loyal to America. I mainly want to travel and want my children to travel, to be better educated with global affairs. I want to improve America through learning about it's position in relation to other countries. A country's image is really important.

So, basically, you shouldn't drop Canada just for Japan. Even though I love Japan, there's bad stuff too: like hentai, 'date' games, and a conservative marriage system. I'm not bashing Japan or America, every country has faults and awesomeness. I want to travel to Canada too, it's very interesting to me, and I think you should be proud of your citizenship.

It's very sad that, of all the things wrong with Japan, you pick pornography twice.

It's also surprising you follow it up by a complaint that Japan can be too conservative after you complained they can be too liberal. :)

You could have listed racism, government corruption, murders by children, strongly patriarchal society, less personal freedom, or any number of things. Instead—porn twice.

(Obviously all countries, including the US, have their own problems.)

I am a proud Canadian. I stand up straight and tall and look up every morning when they play the anthem (I think this is the last year I'll hear it though).

Of course no where is perfect, but I can try and find a place that is closest to my definition of perfect.

Dude, they were examples, and I believe porn is so wrong to deserve it twice. I'm half-Japanese, and I'm not hating, I'm proving a point that even Japan (and I love Japan) has it's dark side too. Chillax, America is also lazy, ignorant, and has the highest ratio of mentally-disabled people and highest ratio of obese people.

edit: and when did I say Japan was liberal??

When you mentioned porn twice. :)

Ai for being Canadian!

Aside from that - I advice against taking language classes in university - especially if you don't have any background.

1) They go rather quickly - if you get left behind, you're done for.

2) There are going to be people in your class that are pretty much fluent in Japanese - if they bell-curve grades, you don't want to be shot down by someone taking it as a joke course (GPA+ course)

3) It doesn't teach to practical Japanese - it's all formalized.

You are giving categorically the worst advice I have ever seen on JF, including the people who do incorrect translations.

1. if you get left behind in a university language class, you probably have no ability to learn the language anyway—they do not move too fast; if anything, they do not push students enough. I spent four years in one of the best Japanese undergrad programs in the US (including one year in Japan) and still did not graduate fluent.

2. So you should value your GPA over actually learning something? Got it. If I had listened to such advice, I'd have graduated with a 4.0 and have worse Japanese than I have now rather than a 3.8 and an upper-advanced level of Japanese knowledge.

3. If you don't take classes, your self-study will be so informal as to be almost worthless. I suppose if you polled the people here, you'd find the best speakers all studied Japanese at university (or were born in Japan). The least skilled are the ones who have read a few websites or watched some anime on their own.

Prickly, are we?

Beats me how they do language studies down there, but I've seen a ton of people drop out or do pretty badly up here.

Great to hear that you can pick up Japanese well. However, some people really do value their GPA over their proficiency in a language - but that depends on your major and specialist degrees.

As for "self-study", I don't recall saying such. I'm merely expressing the advantage of taking classes outside of university, or other such - places where you can learn without much pressure. It's awesome if you can take such a course over the summer at your local cultural center.

I have to agree with Kyle, here. I know almost no non-Japanese who is skilled at Japanese who didn't study at a university.

That's fine and all. I'm just stating a possibility - it's different everywhere you go. What I've said reflects how my university is - in terms of language studies.

Just a word of caution.

How many people out of a class of three hundred continue their studies in language? For us, it's about half the class - a bit less, give or take.

I wonder how big our class is...?