Howdy!
I’m Zatch (real name is zachary, but instead of shortening to zach it became zatch. Long story. boring story, so we’ll skip that)
I’m 29 years old and Live in Arizona US, but grew up in Oklahoma (I live 17 hours away from most of my friends now, but the experience of starting over has been fun).
I dream of one day getting into translation of asian languages! I’m pretty far along in Japanese, but the beauty of this is that there is no end to studying! Always more crevices and alleys to look into and walk down in a language, and Japanese has many of them!
I love anime, manga, and nintendo. While these things got me started, I’ve definitely fallen in love with studying japanese culture, religious history/spiritualism. I’d love to be able to read some of the classics in Japanese one day.
I’ve fallen in love with Kitsun platform over the last few days and am excited to be contributing decks soon! I’m glad to be a part of a growing community and look forward to getting to know the other active members here!
Welcome! Glad to have you around 
looking very forward to checking out those decks as I’m sure I’ll make use of that bookseries at some point in my studies 
Scared to death of making my first public deck! But I’m sure it’ll be fun. I’m gonna try to get the first chapter done this weekend (assuming I dont get called into work)
Ohhh, welcome!! 
If I am ask, what is it that captivates your interest?
Glad your experience with Kitsun has been positive 
Looking forward to see you around and to give a try to those decks 
I should pick up grammar again so 
Shintoism is fascinating to me. Its so splintered across Japan with various spiritual forces that interact with humans in unique ways. There’s so much about it I don’t understand yet. While Shintoism can have a lot of focus on rituals and washing, it seems like morality doesn’t really enter it. Not that Shintoism is immoral but rather that morality isn’t the focus of what the Gods are or what they do. This seems vastly opposite of a western idea of religion that practically presupposes that your religion dictates your morality. I get the sense that the gods of Shintoism are seen as forces with their own will, desires/goals that exist in an understandable way, where they come off as very human. There’s so much about I don’t know yet (because really…it’s not a unified religion…it seems more accurate to call it “a way” that varies depending on the local entities that exist in different areas beliefs. )
I also am interested how easily Buddhism and Shintoism coexist and how Buddhism not only traveled to Japan but achieved huge popularity. Definitely read up on Buddhism much more than Shintoism, but then again it’s also easier to nail down what exactly Buddhism is as opposed to Shintoism. One of the things Im also interested in is how these two affect Japanese people’s every day lives. It’s really cool to just listen to how people are affected (and sometimes attempt to be deliberately unaffected) by a belief system. I think how the festivals related to both religions in Japan coexisting is also really interesting. Ive read a few articles about how many people in Japan actually participate in religious activity but I’d love to go there and study from people how much the religions of Japan affect day to day life.
I blabbed …soooorrryyy
I’m told most of the Buddhism in Japan focuses mainly on the Lotus Sutra. Pretty interesting, but that is the extent of my knowledge on the subject. 
I studied some of that when I was in college, but I don’t know too much about the Lotus Sutra. Time for hours of googling
Ohh, I really like this idea! In some way, it leads you to follow general good morals, while still giving you freedom of thought!
Thank you for sharing and sorry for not reading this sooner 