GOMENASAI.

Thurs. 2:27 PM

My first day of class was today. It was Japanese 1A and Beginning Fiction. Beginning fiction was cool, and I like the reading list, despite the fact that I've read a good portion of the short stories for the class already (but hey, at least I have an excuse to read Flannery O'Conner's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" again). I really wish they included the Haruki Murakami story in the giant textbook though. But I really want to talk about the Japanese class foremost.

I'm taking an introduction the Japanese language, and yes, it is filled with wapanese people who digest Japanese culture through anime, manga, and pocky. But they seem nice so far, so I don't really mind. The teacher-excuse me, sensei (I groan on the inside when call her that)- is absolutely adorable. A native-born Japanese, she moved to Australia, and then moved to California to teach at UCI. She stands at 5 ft and is somewhere between her 40s-50s, and talks in a frenzied, cheery tone, filled with staccatos of English and Japanese, hellos and haijimashites. She's cute, in a motherly way. It's really cool to be in her class.

Why Japanese though... hmm. I'm looking into translation work, or teaching English abroad, but really it just seems pretty interesting because if I master it, I can read Haruki Murakami books before they're translated into English, and maybe help bootleg manga and anime. I'm still highly embarrassed when I practice it though. I make it a point to finish one project before I start another; I mean, I haven't even scratched the surface of the English language, and now I'm studying Japanese? Irresponsible. But anyway, so far the year has gotten off to a great start, even if I do have to drag my butt up at 7 AM everyday.