Taking a sociocultural perspective, this study addresses the interface between language learners and novel communities of practice. The study combines the social learning theory of communities of practice with social constructivist treatments of nation-states as imagined communities in order to consider "imagined national communities of practice". The qualitative discourse analysis investigates the case of two learners of Japanese. It documents their efforts in discourse to co-construct locally a Japanese imagined national community of practice and to ratify one another's legitimate peripheral positioning within it. Learners drew on symbolic resources acquired from community participation to contribute to their collaborative activity and referred to a rural/urban distinction in order to reconcile competing perspectives without denying one another's legitimate positioning vis-a-vis the national community. The study closes with critical considerations of the potential social barriers to full language learner integration in nationalist communities novel to them. (Contains 2 excerpts.)