They say you should always open with a joke, so how about this one: a music journalist with only conversational Japanese writing for The Japan Times' Bilingual Page. Try not to laugh too much, though, as I'll be sticking to what I know: music.

If you go far back enough, the reason I ended up living in Japan lies with Osaka band Shonen Knife. Back in 1997 or '98, in my native England, a copy of their breakthrough album "Let's Knife" fell into my hands. At first, the sound of these foreign girls singing Ramones-esque punk songs in broken English seemed absurd. But somehow kitsch gave way to cool, and I fell head over heels for the first time with a Japanese band. Between then and now, hundreds more followed, and a passion for the music eventually led me to Tokyo.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The point is, my first encounter with Japanese was not in a classroom but with the two-way dictionary of rock 'n' roll. I'm pretty sure the first Japanese I learned was iko (let's go), as in, "Iko, iko! Everybody, let's go!" from Shonen Knife's song "Riding on the Rocket." Much like Daniel-san waxing Mr. Miyagi's car in "The Karate Kid," I didn't realize it at the time, but that was my first Japanese lesson. Helpfully, the line contains the word followed by its translation, presented as an easily memorized singalong melody and repeated several times.