I am studying Japanese because my family is Japanese and I would like to be able to speak Japanese with my family. That is a lie. My family is from Okinawa but they all speak Japanese and you cannot take Okinawan at Columbia.
I am looking forward to potentially traveling to Japan and Okinawa and being able to talk to people. I also love Miyazaki movies and I would love to be able to pay more attention to the actual picture rather than the subtitles.
What I have found difficult about this class so far is remembering all the new words. However I do prefer the spelling and grammar as (so far) it seems much more logical than English (for example, I have yet to encounter words like knight or knife with the random, unpronounced "k"). I generally have difficulty with learning languages (I am exceptionally bad at English and Spanish despite the many years I have studied those languages). I figured that if I were to take a language and struggle with it it may at least be a difficult language.
Lastly, this summer I watched the movie Godzilla versus Biollante which was one of the best movies I had ever seen.