Hi everyone! So I am currently a month into studying Japanese and I'd like to share the reasons why I chose to learn Japanese and what I found to be exciting/challenging about this language. I am currently a junior at Barnard College and Barnard requires us to fulfill a language requirement. I did not want to continue learning Spanish nor did I want to take advanced-level Chinese as a native Chinese speaker, so I thought Japanese would be a good choice. This past summer I had an opportunity interning at Daiwa Capital Markets, which is a Japanese firm, and had the chance to meet so many amazing people and got to know more about Japanese culture. I realized that learning Japanese could help me understand this culture at a deeper level so I chose to learn Japanese. So far, I'd say the hardest part of learning Japanese is having to memorize the vocabularies and grammars. And the most exciting part is that I realize I could now understand some Japanese words when I heard the...