I am a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, and a former participant in the KIT IJST (Kanazawa Institute of Technology Intensive Program in Japanese for Science and Technology) program in summer 2007, and am currently a student at the Yamasa Aichi Center for Japanese Studies in Okazaki, Japan. My major at RIT was bioinformatics with a minor in Japanese. I’ve had a strong interest in Japanese language and culture for the past few years, which I will not deny was originally motivated by products of Japanese pop culture, namely anime.

I am currently studying Japanese for a year at Yamasa, starting October 2009.

 This site exists to document my experience from my time at KIT and at Yamasa, and to provide potentially useful information to future potential participants in both programs.

   I plan to eventually transition into adding additional resources more generally related to Japan, which may include reviews of books or study resources, and hopefully as time goes on, information from future trips.