“I’m more accepting of my own weirdness these days. That wasn’t the case when I was younger.

“When I was a kid, no one talked about watching anime. No one talked about the video games I liked. No one talked about reading manga or reading Japanese comics. I just felt like, ‘Oh, I’m so weird. Why don’t I have very many friends who like this stuff? OK, I’ll just read it by myself.’

“When I was in elementary school, I remember waking up at 5 a.m. to watch ‘Sailor Moon.’ In junior high, I really got into the video games, comics, manga, stuff like that. But I was pretty shy about it.

“Nowadays, thankfully, it’s more mainstream to have that type of hobby. It’s OK to like that kind of stuff, so that’s cool. And that stuff is paying my rent now, too. I guess I’m feeling more at peace with the weirdness.”

— Jennifer Challenger

Jennifer is a translator at a company that deals with anime. She translates shows from Japanese to English, and she answers questions about translations or untranslated text and speech. She also helps with pronunciation and culture questions for shows the company works on.

Related:

• ‘They were going to have to pay me to go to college’
• Early interest in Japanese leads to teaching abroad
• Daughter ready to step up to help with Alzheimer’s

The post Anime, manga lover at peace with her ‘weirdness’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I always wanted to learn languages, ever since I was a kid. This is embarrassing, but I used to pretend I could speak Spanish. I’d watch Telemundo and be like, ‘Oh, I understand.’ I just really liked the sound of it. Maybe it was because my parents both spoke a different language. They speak French Patois because they’re from the West Indies, Dominica.

“Then I started to develop this interest in Japanese. Originally, I liked the video games. Then I became interested in the cartoons, the anime and manga. But what I think really made me decide to commit was listening to the music. I had a lot of favorite Japanese musical artists, and I wanted to be able to understand what they were singing. So I studied Japanese at UT, including a year abroad in Japan.”

She moved to Japan following graduation, and taught English to junior high students and adult women.

“Working with the women one-on-one was pretty cool, but teaching the junior high kids took a lot of getting used to. Honestly, I didn’t like teaching. I care about helping people reach their goals, but I just didn’t think I was a very good teacher.

“I was a shy, kind of nervous person. So it was hard for me to go up to someone and ask questions, especially if I didn’t know the person. But I made myself do it. I just forced myself. There’s that thing that says the more you do something, the more you get used to it, and the less scary or difficult it becomes. So I made it a habit every day to find some kid who I’d never talked to before and go talk to him.

“When I first got to the school I was thinking, ‘Why am I here? I don’t even like kids that much.’ But by the end of my second year I was like, ‘My babies. I’m going to miss my babies.’”

— Jennifer Challenger

Related:

• ‘They were going to have to pay me to go to college’
• Anime, manga lover at peace with her ‘weirdness’
• Daughter ready to step up to help with Alzheimer’s

The post Early interest in Japanese leads to teaching abroad appeared first on The Baytown Project.