I'm an artist and musician living just outside of New York City. I have studied Japanese on and off since 1998 and have been there once in the late summer of that year. I lived in Germany as a child and attended a German public school for grades 1-3. I look forward to interacting with people here. The community seems very friendly and I treasure that.

A while ago I wrote a song in Japanese, and I really enjoyed that experience, but it was also very hard (and maybe it's not so good in my ability to write Japanese lyrics). Part of my motivation to increase my Japanese language ability is to be able to write more songs in Japanese. Somehow, when I struggle with the language itself, other difficulties in writing disappear, and I write things I could never write in English.

My philosophy of correcting other people's English is to change as few words as possible so the sentence makes sense and isn't awkward. In my experience, even the most confusing sentence written by a non-native speaker, can be made clear with very minor alterations, so that is what I try to do.

Please forgive me if I ever come across cold or clinical in my corrections. That is not my intention, but it is how I am perceived sometimes. I focus very hard when trying to help and sometimes forget to also be friendly.

Thank you in advance for reading and correcting my poorly written entries. I will work hard to get better over time.