First Post

So I forgot this was due until I was about to go to bed. Oops. I guess sleep will have to wait for a while longer.

For any who don't know, I'm Patrick O'Malley, currently 3rd year UVA student majoring in Aerospace Engineering. I've never used a blog before, so I think I'll just type what comes to mind for a while.

I suppose an appropriate enough topic to ramble on about would be why I'm taking a Japanese class as opposed to something a little easier. Although "saner" might be the better word to use there. Japan has always been a culture that's interested me since I got a Super Nintendo. Over the years, this developed as I had more brief exposures to this land of mystery. Some of this came from my friend's Japanese father, what little I could understand through his ridiculously thick accent anyway. Others came from things like watching anime after school in 5th grade or becoming a Pokemon Master when I was 12. And no, I haven't played any of the Pokemon since then. Anyway, this interest in the culture grew and never quite faded. I used to be into manga/anime quite a bit, but not so much anymore, although every now and then something will catch my interest. As an aside, I'm also into Bemani, which is a line of music games by Konami, but not too many people know what it is, much less share an interest in it aside from the popularity of DDR. Back on topic, I do want to visit Japan for an as of yet undecided length of time and I'd imagine that being able to speak the language could be of use. If I had Japanese as a language choice in Middle School, I would have taken it then for sure. Instead, I ended up taking 6 years of Spanish and gaining what I believe to be a reasonable proficiency with it. It was still worthwhile, though; I do want to visit Spain some day, hopefully before my Spanish completely atrophies.

As for the the class itself, I'm pretty happy with the pacing and content of the class so far. If I didn't find the language interesting and it was something that I didn't genuinely want to learn, though, I probably would have dropped it a few days in. At the rate we're currently going, I feel like I'm learning a good amount of new things every day without getting overwhelmed. The repetition and practice with dialogue can be a little trying when I'm not sure what Sato-sensee is getting at, but that's not really avoidable. One thing I learned from Spanish is that the repetition and practice is necessary to reach any degree of fluency. Those are my only thoughts for now. I'll be going to bed now so I can survive tomorrow and make it to the weekend. Been a long five days.