I'm Learning Japanese and I'm Excited About It

It's been two weeks since I started learning Japanese. I'm not really that focused too much since I do a lot of household work and I'm taking care of my little brother since I don't have work yet and my mother is working for the family. However, there are a lot of things that I had been gaining ever since I started learning the language.

My passion for learning Japanese started when I started watching a lot of Japanese Horror (J-horror) movies. I find a lot of movies in their culture to be amazing and unpredictable, unlike most western movies I watched. Although I loved a lot of horror movies from the western side since there are times that some writers are really good at writing a good plot and making a good twist, either at the end or at the beginning without actually looking like a twist.

I looked up a lot of teachings and learnings online and most of them suggested starting with the Hiragana alphabet. It was a little bit difficult at first since even though the website I'm currently learning within suggested that beginners should start familiarizing the letters and how to pronounce them first before learning how to write them, I decided to start writing them as well. Since the Asian alphabet is, obviously, totally different from the western side, in the Philippines, we follow the "American" letters so the way we write words is based on the letter "ABC". So learning another language that doesn't use those ABCs, is really hard for me.

Their ABC is not A-E-I-O-U, instead, it's A-I-U-E-O.

One thing that I noticed when I learned Hiragana is that the way they spell words is different from what I knew when it comes to wording. For example, the word "kon'nichiwa", or hello in Japanese, is not spelled as one-by-one letters of k-o-n-'-n-i and so on. Instead, that word is spelled as ko-n-ni-chi-wa, in which each of the separations has a corresponding way of writing it. When I finished learning the Kana which is the first part of the Hiragana, I got really excited about exploring words and how to write them. As of now, I can properly but slowly write Japanese words, only with those that I can write. It means that I can write Moshi Moshi, which means I speak, I speak, since I already learned the letters involved in the words.

I remember when I was in 8th Grade, one of my teachers said that one of the benefits of learning another language is that it reduces the risks of Alzheimer's when you get old. I forgot the scientific process of how that happens but that statement is the one I currently carry every time I learn the language. Even if I wasn't really learning the language, I carry that statement ever since then. I remember, he said that to us during the times when he was teaching us Spanish lessons. It wasn't really his class but since there are free time during his class hours and we were excited to learn Spanish at that time, it was okay for us when he teaches. He taught us just the basic ones and I completely forgot most of them. I think it's because when you learn something, you have to be able to maintain that knowledge, otherwise, it will not get stuck in your mind.

So as I learned Japanese, I always go back to the beginning. For the reason that when I stick with the quizzes on the website in learning the alphabet, when I went back to writing, I completely forgot most of them.