My first languages were English and Spanish (I’m only very fluent in English now) and in high school I studied French. The French program at my high school wasn’t the best—we had three different teachers with three different teaching styles over four years—and I didn’t really learn much at all. That was when I decided I was done with romantic languages; I just wanted to try something new. And Japanese really seemed cool and stood out to me because I like the grammar/writing system: it’s so much more logical than English. Also, I’ve liked anime and manga since I was 12, and have always been curious about Japanese culture. So I taught myself hiragana and katakana, and then I took a class over the summer at a local language school. After doing all of that, I decided Japanese was more than just a hobby to me and that, along with theatre, I wanted to study it in university. ✨😄🇯🇵