As a half Japanese, half America, I’ve always wanted to learn East Asian culture and linguistics. Even though I am part of Japanse, I don’t have any knowledge of Japanese linguistics or difference between japan and other countries.  Most of the material that Professor Idemaru taught us in the class was new to me. I never thought that there is such a difference in Korean, Japanese and Chinese writing systems. It was quite surprising that when professor Idemaru thought us Korean used to use Chinese. Because I knew Kanji is based on Chinese characters but I had no idea Korea used to use Chinese characters. But I still don’t know why was Korea able to remove kanji but japan wasn’t able to?

The discussion class also helped me to understand the concepts of this class deeper. The research report achieved existing knowledge and gave me a chance to interact with other students through group discussion. Since there were a lot of Asian students in our class, it was always fun to talk to them about cultural differences and the conversations always helped me to write a good research report. I realized face to face interviews/conversations can probe for more explanations of responses compare to online research.

This class was not challenging for me. But I definitely developed some reading skills. Most of all reading assignments were quite interesting and enjoyable. Of course, class lectures were helpful but I feel like reading assignments made me think a lot and it was also good preparation for the class.

Even though I am not majoring in Asian studies or anything, I feel like I gained the skill of Asian languages cultures. The class lecture and all of the readings I’ve done in this class made me think about how diverse East Asian linguistics is. If I have a chance, I will definitely continue studying East Asia culture and linguistics.