Greetings --

My name is Chris but my friends call me Mookie. I just moved to Minnesota about six months ago. Previous to that, I lived in Upstate NY (Rochester - home of Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Xerox) where I grew up and went to college. Why did I move? Well, I got married and my wife has a nice job working for the State Government in Saint Paul.

Back in 1987, as a young 6 year-old, my family spent a year living in China. This experience really impacted me greatly and cultivated a rich love and interest in Asian culture. Since then, I've traveled, studied and lived abroad in both Europe (mostly Germany) and Africa (mostly Ghana). Some day I hope to visit Japan! While I was at the University of Ghana, I made many friends with Japanese students who were there studying English & teaching. I'd love to go and visit them some day.

Two of my other interests are NES collecting (Famicom) and Professional Wrestling (Puroresu) both which have rich traditions and heritage rooted in Japan. I really speak Japanese, but I've learned bits and pieces over the years from various places such as reading James Clavell's "Shogun" (one of my favorite books) and using auto-translation tools to look at results of my favorite wrestler - Survival Tobita (?). (my webpage about that: lhttp://www27.brinkster.com/mookieghana/wrestling/st.htm )

I look forward to joining this forum and hopefully making some new friends. I hope to someday join mixi and regain contact with some of the Japanese friends I made back in West Africa in 2001!

-Mookie, host of Indeed Wrestling Weekly podcast (http://www.indeedwrestling.com)

Nice introduction. Glad to have you on the forum. Enjoy
Sparky

Um...wow. Such a great first post! I hope we don't bore you to tears on here!

As for the NES collecting good luck with that. I have a very large catalogue of games myself about 300+ but I had to get rid because of my girlfriend. There just wasn't the space in the house!

And I hope you get to Japan!

WOOOHOOO! A FELLOW MINNESOTAN!!!! Come, my ally, we must put a stop to the Californian hordes assembling on this site! We must gather allies! Quick! To the hockey rink!

Nice to meeeeeeeeeeeet U