Abstract
Foreigners living in Japan have risen to account for 1.4% of the population. In recent years, researchers have seen an
increasingly large and diverse number of Japanese language learners. While foreign exchange students learn Japanese
in a particular institution, the majority of foreigners who are spouses of Japanese citizens or inhabitants in some other
capacity often learn Japanese through local government language programs or acquire Japanese naturally in everyday
life. Some research has been done on how foreigners use Japanese in their personal networks, but this has typically
been done solely from the point of view of language instructors. Therefore, to further explore this issue from the
learner's point of view, this study focused on the experiences of a Korean woman married to a Japanese man and
analyzed the relationships between her networks and her identity. The data suggest that there exists social inequality
between her and her husband, and although she often feels uneasy at home, she can be herself and even make jokes
with others through her use of Japanese in other personal networks outside the home. It was concluded that, for her,
using a second language is a way of securing a place in the communities with which she aspires to participate, and it is
a way of expressing her "self" through interaction with others.
