Arielle Kahn has a confession to make: she is a Japanaphilia noob. She knows next to nothing about Pokemon, Doraemon, or Hello Kitty. She didn’t watch Power Rangers or Sailor Moon as a child. Her range of video game experience is limited to Super Mario 64 and Kirby and the Crystal Shards. She didn’t discover Miyazaki films until an embarrassingly late age. She does like the anime Cowboy Bebop a whole lot, but only knows it exists in the first place thanks to a more Japan-savvy friend. All in all, she is totally unprepared to take this class—which is precisely the reason she’s here. As a third-year linguistics major, and having just finished her fifth semester of studying the Japanese language, Arielle realizes that language and culture are inextricably intertwined, and figures that it would probably be fairly illuminating to study their intersection. Also, she is feeling left out and wants to get in on the party that is Japanafandom and see what all the fuss is about. And she wants to play more Nintendo. Oh, and eat more sushi. Always there should be more sushi.
