After spending the last two years of the drudgery of high school doing very little, my motivation for studying was quite low and I had no immediate plans to attend college. I would attend someday, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I got a job working for my father, which offered me ZERO opportunity.

I was interested in cars, but found that recent designs were terribly boring. I thought I should study engineering so I could create some better designs. After studying a slight bit on my own, and looking into some schools, I began to think that even if I did work as an engineer, some boss would make the final decision and would have control of what actually gets produced. So I thought if I really want to get something done and make changes, I need to study business. So when a friend of mine told me she was going to enroll in college, I went a long and enrolled as well, and started studying a business program

It turned out to be a community college, and I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I asked them what I need to apply and get into the school. The woman simply replied "a high school diploma", so there wasn't any application or rejection process.

I began taking a variety of business classes. I had an economics teacher who would often go on about problems with politics. This was really new to me, because I had VERY little knowledge of politics at the time and hadn't formed any political opinions. I remember one day a classmate complained about him talking about politics during class and bad mouthing Bush, and I believe I replied "but he is telling us the truth", since what he was saying made sense to me, and wasn't one to sit quietly when I thought some injustice was taking place.

But the class that had the most influence on me was Business 101. I remember the first paper I wrote for that class was returned to me with all kinds of unkind red marks on it, and at the top was a note saying "You don't even know how to spell 'Business'??". Later in that class, my efforts must have vastly improved (I am sure I was determined never to get another poorly graded paper) because I remember the teacher talking one day saying to the students, you need to learn to write properly like Smith and Zanshin (me).

Anyhow, we studied on chapter on business management, which included a section on Japanese business management. I was impressed by the concepts and I felt they matched the method I was trying to use in my job as a "manager" in the supermarket. I thought I wanted to learn more about this culture which had these interesting ideas. I wanted to see the language, so I went to Boston Public Library and went to the sparse Japanese section, which only contained a few books. Looking at the language, I thought it had a nice look to it and I wanted to know how they could read those letters. I was determined to learn Japanese language as well as learn as much as I could about the culture.

I found a program on TV called "Let's Learn Japanese (Japanese Language Learning) and "Japanese Business Today" ( or something like that - a Japanese news program in English) It was from that news program I learned my first Japanese phrase.

I watched "Let's Learn Japanese" religiously, and even bought the book and studied hiragana 'til I had all the characters memorized as well as a small number of vocabulary terms.

In one of my classes at the community college, the teacher was giving an example of something or other and said a phrase in Japanese and Chinese. I couldn't figure out how he could know those phrases, so I asked him and he said that he spoke Japanese and Chinese. I found that hard to believe, so I asked him if he could tell me what I was saying and quickly said "ichi ni san shi go", which he correctly told me were just the numbers. Later he told me there was a teacher teaching Japanese to high school students through closed circuit TV in our college and I later went to her and asked her if she would mind if I sat in on her classes. She said that was fine.

I wanted to learn more, both the language and the culture, so I decided I need to find a college where I could satisfy my thirst for knowledge about Japan.