Post 1: First week

おはよう　ございます。 This is my first real post! A week of class has now passed, and we've covered quite a bit so far. Today is the first quiz of the course. It will address most of the ひらがな and some expressions that we've learned. It's a bit tough memorizing all of the ひらがな in a short time, but it is also very exciting to be able to read and write Japanese expressions in Japanese (although no katakana or kanji yet).

This is probably as good a place as any to explain why I decided to study Japanese. My interest in Japanese began with a friendship from elementary school. One of my best friends, whom I met in fourth grade, is Japanese. He grew up in Japan and moved to the US a few years before we met. As our friendship grew, so did my interest in his culture and his language. I only pursued this interest once, however, when in ninth grade I took  a beginner's Japanese course at a local community college.

Unfortunately, I didn't stick with the language once the course ended. Until this course, I hadn't attempted learning Japanese again even once. I regretted this frequently. But this summer, I found out that my friend is going to spend this year studying at a university in Japan. We talked about me visiting him (somewhat jokingly), and that got me thinking about Japanese again. I looked into the program at Princeton and realized that I really could start over with my study of the language. Even better, I saw that there was a chance for me to spend time in Japan the following summer. Maybe I would even get a chance to visit my friend - and speak to him in his language!

There are certainly other reasons for my interest in learning Japanese that I plan to address in later posts, but this friendship was the spark for my interest, and I'm glad I still have it.

This post is pretty long, so I'm going to stop here. But I'm looking forward to getting into the grammar and vocabulary of Japanese in the next few weeks! I'll be sure to post about it.