This is the first post in my blog for the Japanese 101 class I am taking this semester at Princeton. I am very excited to be taking this class, and can already tell that I will learn a lot this semester!

There are many reasons why I want to study Japanese. As a Ph.D. student in classical Chinese literature focusing on ancient Chinese poetry, Japanese will be an indispensable research language. So many great Japanese scholars have produced important insights in my field, and it is frustrating not to have direct access to these publications in the original language. Learning Japanese will help me develop as a scholar in my field and will greatly improve my research.

Apart from this, I am also interested in Japan's own literature and history. I have already read some Japanese novels from different periods such as Genji monogatari and work by Murakami Hakuri, and have also been exposed to the poetry of Sōseki Natsume. Studying Japanese will allow me to learn more about Japanese literature, especially those works which have not yet been translated into English or Chinese.

As part of my graduate studies I will most likely spend time studying Japanese somewhere in Japan, either this summer or the next. I have never visited Japan before, but having lived in China for two years I know how exciting and rewarding spending an extended period of time in a foreign country can be, and I cannot wait to go there. I will be working hard over the course of this year to get a solid grounding in basic Japanese so that I can survive when I am in Japan - an exciting prospect but also a daunting one!

So far I have very much enjoyed Japanese 101, especially learning a little bit about the different Japanese writing systems. I've found memorizing the various phrases we have been taught so far a little tricky, but I'm sure with practice I'll be able to improve a lot in a relatively short space of time.

ではまた!

LW