New member: Greetings all!

Hello everyone! My name is Kyoumi Masuhara. I'm 5th generation Japanese-American and enjoy taking taking care of my animals and plants. I'm nonbinary and use they/them. I just entered an online college for pharmacy tech training, but currently work in childcare!

はじめまして!私は増原亨実です。５世の日系アメリカ人です。趣味はゲームとか読むとか音楽とか。

I've been trying to learn Japanese for 12 years by myself. It's not been going too well Mostly know vocab and basic grammar still through Duolingo and various websites.

Recently, I've been trying to pick up learning more seriously and was looking for some kind of Japanese forums with more Japanese users for help. I don't know if I'm looking in the right spots for those though. I've seen this one mentioned which has a lot of English speakers though so I thought I'd give it a go in the mean time. (Would love some recommendations!)

I'd also like to look for possible family that lives in Japan still. Through some genealogy research is how I learn the little I know about my heritage. My family here wasn't very good at passing information down and does care too much to discover anything.

That's about all I can think of. Comment if you have some other questions I didn't answer

Welcome Kyoumi ! There are years and years of old posts here with lots of questions and answers that may help you. Also , the staff and members here are super helpful at explaining things you need help with. Our members are from around the world as well as in Japan. If you know the town or region your ancestors were from and the kanji spelling of any of their surnames , it might help you find info on them. Anyway , hope you enjoy your time here.

Uncle Frank said:

If you know the town or region your ancestors were from and the kanji spelling of any of their surnames , it might help you find info on them.

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Oh yeah! Hiroshima prefecture [Hiroshima-ken] was on some papers I found from immigration to Hawaii. Apparently, that is where my great great grandfather was born. His name was Masataro Masuhara, married to Sho Takeuchi. Another address was from a ward in Tokyo I think, but I have to go hunt the name down again. And last town/region name that came up was Koicho I believe. I'll check that again too.

The only kanji I have of the last name was off the grave of my great uncle, 増原 Masuhara, buried in Hawaii. From what I understand, this is a kinda popular name, especially in Hiroshima-ken. All the American sites have nothing helpful for me to find family in Japan short of going there to get the koseki, which I don't have the money for. I've tried to find a cousin or someone that might be related that could know more in Japan before, but I don't speak Japanese well enough or know how to navigate to Japanese based forums for help.
Probably wishful thinking though...

Sometimes it seems finding someone in Japan is like trying to find "John Smith" in New York.

Hello Kyoumi, and welcome to the forum.

You are right, Masuhara 増原, while not a super-common last name in general, it is common in Hiroshima prefecture.

The site above shows there are 2000 people in Japan with that last name, and at least 500 of them are in Hiroshima.

Greetings, and welcome to the forum!

Kyoumimasu said:

Recently, I've been trying to pick up learning more seriously and was looking for some kind of Japanese forums with more Japanese users for help.

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We have a few native Japanese speakers here, though perhaps not as many as we'd like.

One of them, however (Toritoribe-san) is an incredible tutor who regularly answers learners' questions with incredible patience, thoroughness, and insight (I hope he won't mind me saying so ).

Other users (including myself, though I can't claim to be a native speaker) try to help out as well, so I'm pretty confident in saying that you've come to a good place if you're looking for assistance with your studies.

Kyoumimasu said:

趣味はゲームとか読むとか音楽とか。

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And on that topic, I hope you won't mind me commenting on your Japanese sentence.

Overall, native speakers would understand what you mean just fine, but grammatically speaking, you can't just toss 読む (a verb) in there with nouns like ゲーム and 音楽. You have to nominalize the verb (i.e. turn into a noun) to make it grammatical.

(To make an analogy with English, we wouldn't say "My hobbies are video games, read, and music." but "My hobbies are video games, reading (books), and music.")

To do the same thing in Japanese, we turn 読む into a noun:
趣味はゲームとか読書とか音楽とかです。(読書 is read as どくしょ and means "reading books")

Another option would be:
趣味はゲームとか本を読むこととか音楽とかです。(adding こと to 読む makes it a noun, i.e. "the act of reading")

You could also use 音楽鑑賞 (おんがくかんしょう) if you specifically mean listening to music rather than playing it, composing it, etc.

I've also added です to the end to keep the politeness level consistent.
In addition, you could also replace the とか's with や to be a bit less casual/colloquial.
In this case, you would drop the last や, as や cannot precede です.
(とか is a bit more colloquial to begin with, and you'll hear ～とかです, though it would be fine to drop the final とか as well, too.)

Anyhow, if you have any other questions about the language or about how best to go about studying it, we'd be happy to help you in the Learning Japanese subforum.

Welcome to JREF!

Kyoumimasu said:

And last town/region name that came up was Koicho I believe.

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Your memory would be correct. Koichō 己斐町 really existed in Hiroshima city. The town name is changed now, so it's somewhere in the present Koiue 己斐上, Koiōsako 己斐大迫, Koinaka 己斐中, Koinishimachi 己斐西町, Koihigashi 己斐東 or Koihonmachi 己斐本町 in 広島市西区 Nishi ward, Hiroshima city.

(all in Japanese)