Then I went to the Fazekas Mihály Secondary School just to find people like Gyula, being a lot more educated, smarter, and in all sense a lot more refined than the countryside bum I was. It was a place where I could (and had to) learn what I had forgotten to learn before: modesty. Also, in spite of being a class specialized on Maths, it was a wonderful bunch of multi-talented people. I owe these folks a lot.
Another school I can thank a lot to is the Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut where I spent twice five weeks, first as a student in their summer school in 1987 (it was a George Soros Foundation scholarship), and then as a teaching intern in the summer of 1990. I fear Choate may have a somewhat bad reputation for being a prep school (and I heard some rumors about drugs, too) but as far as I am able to judge, it's always the people who make a place good or bad. So even if there may be/may have been some assholes among the students, the school and the teachers I met were just wonderful (especially for somebody who has just come from behind the iron curtain).
All through high-school I wanted to be a teacher, but due to the fact that teachers in Hungary are somewhat less paid than shop-assistants, some five days before filling out the forms, I made up my mind and went to the Technical University of Budapest, to study Informatics. I never regretted this decision except that I found the University to be totally boring (in the first year the best part was the meals) so I started bothering the lectures of the Japanese Section of another (the Eötvös Loránd) university (Faculty of Liberal Arts), being this one of the two places in Hungary at the time where one could study Japanese for free. What I didn't take into account was that a university is not a language course: I had to study Japanese literature, linguistics, history, reading of ancient Chinese texts and some other highly thrilling subjects. Anyway, I ended up double-majoring, going to two totally different universities at the same time. This I would describe as being funny and brutal at the same time; writing two graduation theses within three months is also something I'll never forget.
Then I became an editor of Computerworld at IDG Hungary for almost two years and I am still contributing articles every now and then. This place is just too short to list all the merits of all the wonderful people I met there and had the chance to work together with; let me only mention that I am proud to have been working with and having become a friend of a person who under the name Károly Norman is an excellent (but unfortunately, not very well-known) contemporary writer in Hungary. As much as my time (and he) allows I'll try to share some of his short stories both in Hungarian and in English.
In April 1995 I got the scholarship of the Japanese Ministry of Education. As all other research students, I had to study Japanese language for half a year, in my case at the Yokohama National University. This is one of the finest national universities in Yokohama, and, in fact, in whole Japan. I moved to Matsumoto in October, 1995 where I spent another half a year as a research student. Being a research student, I didn't have much to do; I spent a lot of time on polishing my program Kanji Tutor, proofreading its database and teaching English.
Since April 1996, I have started my two years' master's program at Shinshu University. As for my research program, I proudly announced that I'd like to make a Japanese-Hungarian machine translation system. Of course, it's easy to say and almost impossible to do; anyway, I'd like to end up with at least some sort of Japanese-Hungarian dictionary file and some Japanese morphological parser. I am also recruiting other people to help me in creating a dictionary; you can read more about the HDICT project, if you wish.
I practice kendo here at Shinshuu University; I also wanted to play basketball, too, but it's hopeless here in Japan. (The average number of people gathering together for a two-hour session is around 50.) Having bought a Panasonic mountain bike (no kidding), I'd like to bike around Japan in the summer. I also like music; now I am in love with a cheap keyboard of Yamaha (PSR-520) and looking for a cheap guitar. Those interested in the lyrics of Hungarian songs, folk songs, etc., let me recommend the site of Kornél Umann.