おはよおございます

I'm taking Japanese because it is my hope to one day read Haruki Murakami in Japanese. He is one of my favorite writers and I feel that reading his work in its intended language would be amazing and a completely different experience. I know that I would need to study Japanese for many years to achieve this goal but it is one of driving ideas that has led me to sign up. Last year, I shopped Japanese and loved it but felt too overwhelmed by my whole schedule to continue taking it. Though it probably would have been too much work with the rest of my course load, I did still feel sad that I hadn't been able to continue and so this year I've made the time in my schedule. Comparative Literature is my major so I hope to study Japanese in comparison with French (the other language I'm learning for Comp Lit). When I spoke to the Comparative Literature Department about whether these two languages would cohere well, they said that contrasting these two cultures and their writings would be rich and interesting and they suggested continuing this path.

What I found most exciting this week was writing Hiragana. Though my hand writing is not beautiful and the strokes do not come naturally to me, I love looking at the final product. It's so much more exciting to write than roman characters.  The most difficult thing for me so far has been memorization of what the phrases mean. This kind of memorization is typically very hard for me, so I create my own mnemonic devices, which I will get started on soon. I've loved these first couple of classes!
Thanks for reading!

じゃあ、また