By Elias Lovos

My Prior Interest in Japan and Japanese Before the Program

Before attending Globalize DC’s Japanese Plus program, my main interests in Japan and the language were anime and the possibility of living in Japan with some knowledge in Japanese. At the beginning my goals were to develop a routine to learning Japanese because I wasn’t as motivated to do it entirely by myself because I didn’t know where to start. I felt anxious because it was my first time committing to a language outside of school using my own time, contemplating if I should actually go through with this or not. But I eventually settled in and built friendships that settled that anxious feeling I had.

Moment #1: Our Hybrid Zoom Classes

The zoom classes were filled with empty screens but also students who participated on camera at times. We had them during Wednesdays and it was beneficial to me because it helped me develop habits and techniques to studying Japanese in the comfort of my own home. It was also convenient because it meant that I didn’t have to go outside of the house on Wednesdays, which at the time I didn’t do a lot of. It was a pleasant period of time in our learning journey but also a very inconsistent one as well, since we failed to turn our cameras on most of the times.

Moment #2: Onigiri Action

The experience I had when making rice balls was a pleasant one, I really did enjoy it as you could see from the smile on my face. Onigiri is a very common food you see in Japan in multiple stores and is also convenient, I assume, because of the price. It’s generally filled with different types of food in it as well, being topped with seaweed over it or covered all over to make a fine seaweed taste. Onigiri Action taught me the proper way to make an onigiri and I will forever appreciate it.

Moment #3: First Couple of Days Learning Hiragana

The times I spent learning hiragana in class were filled with countless questions and laughter. Now that I think about it, it is easy to learn the characters and their meanings but very hard to remember them and implement them into conversation and expressions. These experiences benefited my learning because it gave me an opportunity to talk to everyone in the class and that would later on make it easier to talk to them as time went by, further helping me hone the language.

Moment #4: Exchanges with Japanese Students

The multiple exchanges we had with different groups of Japanese students are moments I will never forget. These experiences tested a lot of us and our skills in understanding and speaking Japanese; moreover, it also connected all of us with the Japanese students as we exchanged social media profiles and gifts. The different activities like certain topics on a piece of paper really helped us start somewhere to continue conversing with the students. These interactions usually showed me how underleveled I was at speaking, but I kept pushing forward.

Moment #5: Discovering Different Historical Moments and History About Japan

Not only did we expand our knowledge with learning Japanese, we also learned about the history of Japan with the US and explored different monuments tied to Japan. Different history like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the monuments of a gift from an Emperor to the US. I was excited to learn this content in more specific events because I only knew so much about it and started growing curious.

A Final Word.

If the pre program me saw the progress I made over the two years I spent with Japanese Plus, I would’ve thought that I was a completely different person. Committing to the class was something I had doubts on at the beginning of the year but the constant reminder of wanting to live in Japan kept pushing me to strive for it every day. A piece of advice I’d like to give to students beginning their journey in learning Japanese is to never look back at your past self who made the decision to sign you up for the class; sometimes you have to listen to yourself and follow through with the decision you made in the past because if you participate in the class for multiple years then your past self was onto something about your future self and simply wanted you to strive for something you love. My plans for the upcoming years involving Japanese are to obviously go to Japan but to also continue my studies of the language at home. I don’t want 2 years of learning to go to waste but there’s also obstacles I will eventually tackle as well.