Konnichiwa Kaga-sensai
All the best in your retirement. Thank you for all you have given to Carleton students over the many many years. You may not remember me but I took Japanese with you in 1989-1990. I had such a hard time with the spoken part of the language (writing was fine). I remember one time – I think it was before the Japanese 4 exam – I got sick. I think we were both expecting me to really struggle with the oral part of the final because my spoken comprehension was so bad. But somehow being sick made me almost limp and unable to stress out about things and then I actually did ok-ish. I remember us both being surprised. I only made it to Japan once (in 2002) but it was an amazing trip and I was able to visit family friends in Tokyo and take a bus to Kyoto and see lots of sites and museums and eat lot and lots of truly amazing food. Life takes unexpected turns. Instead of doing more in Japan as I expected, I did graduate research (geology) in Nepal, met and married a Nepali man, and have now been to Nepal 15 times. My Nepali isn’t great but I struggle along. I’m sure memorizing all that kanji in Japanese helped prepare me for learning the Nepali alphabet and language. Life is surprising, eh?
All the best and I hope that you are able to do lots of traveling once this crazy pandemic time is over
–Beth Pratt