Here we go.

We'll start with a confession. We have become embarrassingly obsessed with Norway. Related to my work, in a few years, we will travel there as a family and stay for a year. Being language instructors, we decided to walk-the-talk and learn the language of the country we'll be staying in. Recognizing that motivation is the primary make-or-break variable for success in learning a language, we set about arranging out lives in a way to better convince our brains that Norway is: 


a) a real place, and 
b) that is is a good idea to remember words and grammar for things that we already have two or three perfectly good sets of words and grammars to describe, and 
c) there are many things to love about Norway.

The idea being that--on top of a base of tons of Norwegian language study--when our brains are convinced of all of the above, our language learning will reach a higher level and we'll enjoy ourselves doing it.

Since we both have had a deep interest in Norway and Scandinavian countries, these things are naturally falling into place. The level of our obsession is a little more than I expected, though. This blog will follow us through the process of preparing ourselves for our trip to Norway and making ourselves fluent in the language on the way. It will include how we are going about learning the language, materials, experiences, etc., and ways that we surround ourselves with Norwegian things.

Now, we are in Japan and that means that there are very few Norwegian things.  We have put in a great deal of time finding them. We figure that we'll share them here and if there is anyone out there with similar interests who benefits from that, or wants to share things with us, great. We would especially like to be informed if anyone detects signs of Norwegian life in Osaka.