!!!!

Just returned from my scholarship test. It was rather difficult! I was kind of excited though, because the subject of one of the Japanese passages was something I had read before in TIME magazine. It was about this American man who was inducted into a special language school to learn Japanese. This was during World War 2 when the Americans decided they needed soldiers with Japanese proficiency to assist in gathering vital information. After the war ended he went to Japan to study Japanese literature, and armed with his superior command of the language, proceeded to translate The Tale of Genji, one of the Japanese classics and possibly the world's first novel! The archaic language must have been a headache to decipher and the content difficult to understand, much less to say translating it into English. I remember trying to read Toto-chan in Japanese. It was a real challenge and I never was able to finish. That's why I'm so impressed and inspired by this man. He has set me thinking about studying Japanese literature. Am I crazy?!