15 years of Situational Functional Japanese

Back in my second semester at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, I remember studying from the Situational Functional Japanese books we used in Japanese 201.

Now, fifteen years later and deployed in Afghanistan, I find myself studying the same book and looking at the same notes I made when I was 21 years-old. I suppose it's a testament to both my poor studying habits and my pack-rat ways that I've put as much effort into moving these things around over the years as I ever did while I was in the class.

It's also interesting to look back at what a rotten student I was. There's a lot of blank spaces in here.

Japanese 102 started with the last two chapters from Volume I, but I refused to buy a book I would only use for a month. (I only have that book now because I got it years later from a second-hand bookshop.) And I only bought a dictionary two months into that class. In addition, I never bought the cassettes to do the oral drills because I thought they were too expensive. (Everything was imported from Japan, and yen was still close to its 1995 peak.)

Looking back on my stubbornness and relative poverty, I'm embarrassed -- it's no wonder I didn't do better in college.

Interestingly, despite all the changes in my life since then, I'm back to the same books with the same motivation: I hope to live and work in Japan within the next couple years. Ideally, I'd like to go there was part of the Olmsted Scholars Program, but I'd certainly accept getting stationed there, too.

If nothing else, I'd like the same vindication for my three years of Japanese classes as I got from my three years in Korea -- a decent DLPT score.