はじめまして！
フィおなです。タいわんからきました。Columbia だいがくin the city of New Yorkのいちねんさいです。じゅはさいです。
ドおぞよろしく。

Salutations classmates, teachers, and scholars around the world!
The above post was my rather short and lame attempt at a self-introduction in Japanese. As the semester goes on, however, I hope I'd be able to write pages of ancient literature analyses and critiques on international affairs and politics in Japanese. I kid you not - those are the first sentences I have ever written in Japanese. So I guess, not too lame right? Yes I am quite proud of myself.

Now you know I am Fiona, an undergrad student of Columbia University, from Taiwan, and 18 years old. I am studying Japanese at this amazing and complex university, but you might ask with such intent curiosity - why do you want to study Japanese (when you are Taiwanese)? Well firstly, I'm Asian, so to understand my own continent better and the manifestations of the Japanese empire on East Asia in the 20th century, learning the Japanese language and its culture is essential and pivotal. And, you know, after spending almost a decade laboring at the hands of my ruthless Chinese language teachers - traditional Chinese too - at my bilingual school in Taiwan, learning Japanese is not to say easier, but more enjoyable because I already understand Kanjii. 

The second reason I want to learn Japanese is my origins and background - I was actually whisked away from Taiwan at the barely human age of eight months to move with my family to Tokyo. Thus, the most paramount years of my life (one to three) was spent in this metropolitan city. I went to preschool and kindergarten there and learned Japanese along with my mother tongue, Chinese.

After 4 years, our family moved again to Vancouver, then to Chicago, then to Beijing. These six years were amazing, but I shall not elaborate as to blind you with irrelevant intellectual ramblings about the culture and history of these cities. After Beijing, we moved to Hiroshima - I spent most of my elementary years there. And it was there that I discovered just how fascinating and deep the Japanese culture, history, and people were. I attended Hiroshima International School, so I did not have the chance to study the language, but I did immerse myself into the lives of Japanese people. I discovered how sophisticated, kind-hearted, and down-to-earth everyone was.

The city of Hiroshima, especially, left a particularly permanent impression in my mind. They are the city that struggled to rebuild after the calamitous atomic bomb was dropped on them on August 6th, 1945. After decades of hard work and camaraderie, they successfully rebuilt a beautiful city based on the values of peace, love, and harmony. These are the qualities of human existence that they especially understand and value above all else. Living in this kind of environment was quite an experience. This analysis on the city of Hiroshima does not directly relate to why I want to learn the Japanese language, but other than living in the parameters of the country, the numero uno way to understand a culture is to dive deep into the learning of the language. This is why I am here in this fantabulous class learning Japanese!

Doozo yoroshiku!
Fiona Liao