Introduction (English)

Konichiwa, my name is Alex. I'm a junior at Columbia University studying history and sustainable development. I'm from San Francisco, but living in New York City for the last two years has made a sworn Manhattanite.

I've always wanted to learn Japanese, but only now have I had the opportunity to do so. I have visited Japan twice, both times as a few day stop-over en route to Taiwan. The food was amazing (so many dishes you cannot find here in the United States!), the culture is quite wonderful, and I found the people to be very accommodating.

An interesting quirk about myself is that I have an obsession with public transit systems. Every city I go to I have to try out the subway and learn the "next stop" announcement. Ask me to do a particular city's announcement and I'll probably be able to do so. One of the first phrases I learned in Japanese was: "この電車は山手線内回り、新宿、池袋、方面行きです。次は品川、品川、お出口は、右側です。This is a Yamanote Line train bound for Shinjuku and Ikebukuro. The next station is Shinagawa, the doors on the right side will open."

I have a particular interest in the relations between Taiwan and Japan. My maternal grandmother and her siblings were born in Tainan, Taiwan, which at the time was still a Japanese colony. Looking back at old pictures, you can see her family dressed in the traditional Japanese kimono. While I never met my grandmother before her passing, her immediate family all spoke Japanese fluently, and like many elder Taiwanese, have a unique sense of nostalgia for the pre-war period (partially due to the turbulent period that succeeded afterwards). It's interesting to note that even after Taiwan was handed back to the Republic of China, many of my relatives in Tainan prefer to speak Taiwanese and Japanese rather than Mandarin Chinese. My granduncle watches more Japanese television than any domestic channel. The Japanese language is still quite apparent and popular in Taiwan and many of my relatives learn both Japanese and English in school. Taipei is claimed to have the highest concentration of Japanese restaurants outside of Japan - not to forget the high concentration of Mitsukoshi and Sogo department stores. Even the names of neighborhoods have a lasting presence of the Japanese language, like 西門町 Ximending, an area of Taipei, which uses 町, a character that is rarely used in Chinese, but very common in Japan town names.

My father's side is originally from Canton, China, but most of his relatives moved to the United States long ago. Both my parents speak two different dialects and since they both grew up in the States, we use English at home.

Learning Japanese this year will be quite an adventure, and I look forward to it!