About

My name is Harvey. I grew up in Iowa in the United States and have been living in Japan since the summer of 2002. I work as a full-time technical translator in Osaka (my favorite city in Japan).

The story of how I got into Japanese is pretty random. My high school in Iowa offered Spanish, French, Latin, Russian, German, and Japanese. They told us that we had to study one foreign language for at least two years in order to be accepted to any respectable university. All of my seniors hated their French and Spanish classes – I had a US born friend from Thailand. Well, the friend wanted to study an Asian language, so we gave Japanese a shot together. Class was fun, and here I am. I passed JLPT level 1 in 2003, and the rest is history.

I got my first job offer in Japan at the Boston Career Forum during my Junior year.  I would recommend it to anyone about to graduate from university that is even remotely bilingual and wants a foot into the business world in Japan. After four years at that first IT job I moved on to study more Japanese at IUC in Yokohama; a kind of intense Japanese boot camp for masochists. It was brutal. After IUC, came back to Osaka to work in translation.

Hopefully this blog will be interesting to those interested in Japan, and maybe will even help some people visit Japan for work or pleasure!

Contact me if you have any questions about anything!

- Harvey