ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to adopt a narrative inquiry approach to analyse the language learning history of a multilingual Japanese first language speaker, Naoko, and, to a lesser extent, that of her daughter, Mari. Naoko's autobiography is a multilayered retrospective account as she tries to summarise the most salient factors and the critical events that turned her into the language learner she had become. Naoko had an entire academic year and potentially an entire country – interestingly, a confluence of time and space – in which to live her English dream. The lens of affordances and constraints proves very useful in discussing how place and space feature in Naoko's trajectory as an autonomous learner of English. The military base became a positive social and learning place and an affordance for Naoko's language learning autonomy. As Naoko embarked on adulthood and a life of language learning, that was a challenge that she would face.
