Why I am excited to study Japanese

Before coming to college, I never had the opportunity to study Japanese, but have always had a keen interest in the country and language. I've been interested in Japan because I find its history and culture fascinating. The Sengoku Jidai and Meiji Restoration are some of my favorite eras in history to learn about, and are parts of the reason I am interested in doing a history major. I find the influential figures in Japanese history, such as the three unifiers (Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu), Hattori Hanzo, Miura Anjin, and Sakamoto Ryoma, to be some of the most compelling and admirable people to have lived across every civilization I have learned about. I want to be able to read texts about them and by them in the languages they were originally written in, not a translation that may have translated incorrectly or strangely. I have been to Japan once, particularly Osaka, Tokyo, and Kyoto, and I would like to go back and possibly even study abroad there, with better knowledge of how to communicate with people I meet. These are the core reasons I am so excited to study Japanese, despite the difficulty that things like learning Hiragana have presented so far.