Why I chose to study Japanese

First learning about Japan through anime (like a lot of people out there, I guess), I got interested in the culture and language of the country. Growing up in Colombia, I didn't have many chances to enroll in a Japanese language class. Many years later, after I moved to the United States for my PhD, I got too busy with and didn't dare to add learning a new language to my weekly load. Nevertheless, after some years in grad school, I decided to indulge myself and finally devote a considerable part of my time to study Japanese.

I find very enjoyable the challenge of learning a language with a different writing system (than English or Spanish). The first time I learned about the structure of question sentences in Japanese I had a funny though: I wondered if people who speak the language are good listeners, given that most of the time there is a need to wait for the other party to finish their sentences in order to know how if a statement or a question is being made.

In my spare time I like to learn Kanji and watch some TV shows and movies in Japanese with Japanese subtitles, even though I cannot understand most of it, it is really exiting when some sentences make sense and I'm able to follow at least part of the conversation.