Note: This interview was originally recorded in 2010 as part of a collection of expert interviews included with my Japanese learning guide Master Japanese: How to Learn Japanese through Anywhere Immersion. This version includes excerpts from the complete interview, which is available as part of the Master Japanese Digital Package available JapaneseMastery.com.

Khatzumoto is the man behind the popular Japanese learner blog All Japanese All the Time (or AJATT for short). While attending university in the United States, he figured out a way to immerse himself in Japanese language and culture nearly 24 hours a day. In an extremely short amount of time, he managed to reach an impressive level of fluency despite not living where the language was spoken and even without many of the learning tools and resources now readily available (he began his journey in 2004). In his words:

"I learned Japanese in 18 months by having fun. In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a gigantic Japanese corporation in Tokyo."

Though Khatzumoto is no longer active in the language blogosphere, his approach remains a big inspiration for my own methods and philosophies. He showed that it's truly possible to reach a high level of fluency anywhere in the world; that learning a language is more about doing the right things than happening to live in the right place. His example forced me to rethink some of the "facts" I had been taught while studying Linguistics in university, and showed me the many ways I had been wasting my time and effort learning about Japanese instead of immersing myself in Japanese. Wherever you are now, thank you for everything, Khatz!

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