Please allow myself to introduce...myself.

I'm twenty-seven years old (yeah, I can scarcely believe it myself) and I hail from the lovely land of Buffalo, New York. If you'd like to visit, I can tell you what wide swaths of the city to avoid at all costs (that's not a joke.)
In 2004 I applied to the University of Colorado - Boulder as a music major (composition). I failed the audition. So, I switched my major to Japanese and enrolled in the College of Arts & Sciences. Since I had studied Japanese independently here and there, I was able to progress fairly rapidly, and since I took almost all the classes I needed to graduate within 3 years, I was invited to apply for the combined B.A./M.A. program in Japanese. However, I also needed to improve my Japanese language skills, particularly my lacking speaking ability. I had originally planned on studying at the University of Tsukuba during my junior year, but during the signup period during my sophomore year, the University of Colorado canceled their exchange program with Tsukuba.
So, I ended up attending the one-year CIEE program at Sophia University in Tokyo. Though expensive (equal to the out-of-state tuition I was paying at CU) I had the opportunity to live not in one, but two separate homestays, as well as to live independently during the two-month winter break.
Once I came back, I found that the economy was in very bad shape, and that on top of that I didn't have the financial resources to house myself during my final year of school. Furthermore, due to a strange quirk in the way my financial aid was set up, I had to remain a full-time undergraduate student...while taking graduate courses. Therefore I found myself taking four graduate courses each semester during my final year.
However, I was able to pass all my courses and secure my M.A. in Japanese. I had only applied to one PhD program (at the University of Toronto) though, and unfortunately I was not accepted. Looking back, I believe that my research interests were too esoteric to be of interest to their Japanese Language and Literature professors.
So now, my goal is to once again return to Japan, to improve my Japanese, and to learn more about Japanese culture. In return, I hope to be of use to Japanese society by teaching English, and, ideally, by presenting my viewpoint to the Japanese people I meet in a non-confrontational way, helping to bring the world closer together. Or maybe I'll just be the weird guy (again...)