Hello! My name is Ira Reese-Thornton (he/him), and I’m a senior with a double major in the Japanese language and East Asian Studies. I transferred from Portland Community College last year. When I was six years old, a Japanese transfer student came to our class and we spent half the year learning the language to help her feel comfortable. From there, I’ve been interested in many things related to Japan. I hope to do something involving Japanese and writing for a career, either as a translator or technical writer or something similar (not really sure at the moment). I’m taking the class partially for a pre-requisite for my major and as a general interest — I’ve never taken a linguistics course before, so this is a new and interesting experience.

As far as hobbies go, I enjoy doing creative things like drawing (trying to get into digital art) and writing. I also enjoy playing video games. I live with my grandparents, have a cat and three rabbits, and used to play piano for several years.

よろしくお願いします。