おれは かいぞく おうに なる
It's been a few years since I fell back in love with the anime One Piece. I had watched this anime dubbed in Korean back when I was in elementary school. But when I started watching it again, for no reason, I chose to watch it in original Japanese. As the episodes proceeded, I started picking up some words like かいぞく(pirate)、めし(food)、なに(what) and got interested in learning more.
Then this summer, thanks to the proximity between Japan and Korea (where I am from), my parents decided to visit Japan for our family vacation. During my visit, since I couldn't say much in Japanese, I had to depend on my sister, who spoke better, or rely on body language. Nonetheless, the trip was a blast. I loved the food (so good, sooo goooood), people were always willing to help, there was an awesome One Piece store for fans like us to go crazy, the city was filled with fashionable shops, and the onsen was heavenly. By the end of the trip, I was already looking forward to my next visit and wanted to pick up more Japanese for a smoother trip.
And the last but not least reason is related to the long history of conflicts between Japan and Korea. Growing up in Korea, I was exposed to the media criticizing Japan for publicly denying to this date many of inhumane war crimes they had done in Korea during the Japanese colonization. How they indiscriminately killed and attacked civilians. How they conducted inhumane and grotesque experiments on Koreans. How they kidnapped young girls as sex slaves for their army. I also saw in the news that Japan taught a largely sugarcoated version to their children about the colonization and Second World war. I remember wondering why Japanese people would allow their government to do such things and felt as if they were very different people from us. Therefore, after my satisfying trip in Japan, and especially after seeing how people were so nice and polite, I was surprised and shocked to imagine that the past cruelty and tragedy originated from these people. I am not calling the new generations of Japanese people war criminals or demanding them to be forever apologetic. Instead, I am saying that denying and hiding the historical facts altogether and not acknowledging what they did as something wrong is wrong. This sugarcoated, distorted view of history prevents any learning from the past and leave no better resolution for the future. And then the thought came to me that I first need to understand their point of view. I want to understand why they allow the things to be the way it is for now, and I want to be able to communicate with them in a way they can understand better, so that they can understand us better too.
Although I don't expect being able to speak the language will make all the problems between the countries disappear, I hope it can be a step forward to understanding better about each other.
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