Before I was born my parents lived in an apartment building and next door moved in a Japanese businessman on branch office assignment named Mr. Tamura. And he’d come over and practice his English with them.

And after I was born and he rotated back he’d come out on business trips and bring me Japan-themed presents and my mom taught me some basic Japanese vocabulary, and it was the 80s and Japan was the future anyway.

So, weeb. Later the local comic shop rented anime and I got into that but that’s not the ultimate origin, swear.

Then I went to Cornell and they had a great Asian Studies department, part of the American imperial apparatus really, and I had a language requirement and there were a few tracks

The most intense was FALCON, you did nothing but study a language for a whole year, summers incl., and came out knowing all of it, in retrospect there were probably slots being reserved for Defense and State departments there.

I didn’t do that but did a version of the same program stretched out over years but it still really felt like my other classes were stuff I was doing on the side while learning Japanese, it was a section every day plus three lectures a week and 2 hours in the tape lab a night.

And those were aimed at the DLPT, I actually took the JLPT, which is the Japanese State Department’s kinda business-oriented test that there had been yet another (softer reputation) track built around, it was interesting seeing the mismatch – the listening comprehension bits had me a bit lost but the grammar section was trivial. As far as DoD linguists are concerned, I know the entire structure of the language now, I need more vocabulary (kanji incl.) and polish but could get them from immersion.

Have a cousin who seems to be kicking off a career going 18D now and part of it was learning… Mandarin? Cantonese? I think he might have already known the other one? Anyway, they’re still making new China hands, I guess.