Tower of Babel

The story of the Tower of Babel is familiar to any Majora's Mask fan, such as myself, and as such, I already knew what to write the moment I read the prompt. Supposedly, man became very hubristic and began building a tall tower so that they may reach God as well as the heavens so that they may prove themselves to be greater. God was... less than pleased with this, so he made them all speak a different language. Because they could no longer communicate through speech, they were unable to cooperate with each other, and production ceased on the tower (even though they could probably use hand signals and whatnot to convey meaning). The people went their separate ways, building up nations, which inevitably led to wars in place of previous cooperation and teamwork. Good job, God.

The language I am currently focusing on right now is Japanese. I began self-studying during the second semester of my freshman year as I had fallen in love with Japanese culture, and by that, I mean many aspects of the culture than just the usual anime and manga obsession many tend to develop. I even convinced my father to plan a trip to Japan, which I enjoyed immensely, so much so, that I continued my studies afterward. At first I overcame the small hurdles of hiragana and katakana before summer's end, but then the real climb began. Grammar and vocabulary are areas I still study and struggle with, but they were certainly extraordinarily daunting back when I was just starting out. My vocabulary and knowledge of grammar has improved quite a bit since then, but one gigantic mountain remained: kanji. 2,180 kanji are commonly used in Japan, and most have more than one reading. Kanji will be and is by far the biggest obstacle I have to overcome, but I hope that through my mentoring project this year (translating Japanese stories into English) as well as classes I plan to take during my college years that I can overcome this challenge and continually close in on my eventual goal of successfully living in Japan.