By Theo Greiff

Perhaps the greatest shift in my thinking that occurred while taking this class was the realization that there are others who share my passions to the same extent that I do. I have been looking to take Japanese since my 7th grade year and, throughout the process of pitching the language to my school, somewhere along the line I decided that Japanese was simply not a language many people in DC were interested in. This view was then further enforced last summer when I went to Concordia Language Villages for two weeks for a Japanese immersion program. While there, though I met many people from all across the nation, I never met any other Washingtonians, which served to support my misconception that my passions were not shared by those around me. It was with this mindset that I started Japanese Plus.

However, throughout the year as I met more and more people through the Japanese Plus program, I realized my previous views were wrong. The first challenge to this view came from my classmates themselves, who represented clear evidence that my passions were shared and, as the year went on, even more challenges began to pop up. Throughout the year, many visitors came to our class both from the US and Japan and provided further challenges. In particular, I remember Simon who is a simple middle school teacher that I would expect to have no relation to Japan, and yet he knew the language fluently. These challenges continued to demonstrate themselves throughout the year, but I believe the moment that truly changed my views was when I went to the Sakura Matsuri and witnessed just how many people felt connected to Japan. As I walked around the festival, I saw so many people in cosplay or anime T-shirts or other expressions of their passions and, while manning our booth, I saw even more people write down or draw out precisely what connected them with Japan. This experience, coupled with the many other experiences I had through this program, showed me that my passions were shared by far more than I had thought and that I may have more in common with a random passerby than I may initially believe.