She is spending this academic year in Italy where she is taking courses on Dante’s Commedia, Italian theater, and medieval art history at the University of Bologna. Hanae is a native speaker of English and Japanese, and is fluent in Italian. At Wellesley she served as a part of Japan Club’s eBoard to promote and strengthen the community of students interested in Japanese culture. This past summer, she spent two months in Japan to reconnect with her family’s roots and explore Japanese culture more in depth. While in Japan, she worked as a waitress in a cafe in Tokyo, using her language skills to facilitate communication between Japanese employees and foreign customers. Hanae’s main academic interest is Physics. She worked as a tutor for the Physics help-room, and in the summer of 2014, she researched diamond crystals as efficient alternatives to store data. Next summer she would like to combine her knowledge of Japanese and Italian language and culture with her passion for Physics by conducting research on the accessibility to scientific education for women in Japan and Italy.
