Why Japanese?

I spent this past summer teaching an English camp for Japanese students with Toshin High Schools in Tokyo and Sapporo. While there, I had an amazing time experiencing the Japanese culture firsthand and meeting many incredible people. Going to Japan, I knew a fair amount about certain elements of the Japanese culture, specifically regarding food, so I very much enjoyed those parts of my experiences. However, I felt that I lacked the ability to fully appreciate everything that was happening around me. While many of the signs and instructions around urban Japan were in English, thankfully, I could not have conversations with so many of the people that I met. Some of my fellow interns on the trip could speak Japanese and, through them, I picked up on some "survival" phrases that were useful for getting around Japan. But when I returned to the states, I realized that I loved being in Japan and would love to return again and so I decided that I would set out to learn Japanese so that, when I return, I will be able to extract more from my experience there. Some of my closest friends that I made on that trip learned Japanese in college and inspired me to do the same.

I am very excited to learn Kanji because logographic characters are a concept that is not utilized in the two languages I already speak, so it will be interesting to learn how they work and all of their various meanings.

These first four weeks have been challenging but very rewarding. I did not think I would know how to say as much as I can at this point in the semester. The most difficult bit has been processing questions and preparing a response in a timely manner. I don't just want to memorize question and response patterns and I want to think through questions and my answers in order to better learn the content and, unfortunately, that means sometimes having long pauses to process my thoughts. I hope to get faster, though. I cannot wait to have full conversations at the end of the year.