So far

Beginning research by typing in a keyword as general as “Japan” is probably not the greatest decision if you’re attempting to get started on a paper, especially one that requires fourteen sources. However, without any idea of what kind of scholarly journal articles there are out on the subject, I thought that a really general JSTOR search would help me find something specific to focus on. Ignoring results on “The brown frog of genus Rana from Honshu” and “The width of shore platforms in Britain, Canada, and Japan,” there were some interesting-looking hits on topics like smoking prevalence, gender and value orientations, and trends in old-age functioning and disability in Japan. For my first annotated source, I chose to look at an article titled “Gender and Value Orientations—What’s the Difference!? The Case of Japan and the United States.” Finding this article reminded me that I wanted to compare Japan and America, and the topic was of interest to me and seemed fairly easy to understand. Reading through the article, though the focus of the survey was on values, and associating men and women with public and private spheres respectively, I found it easy to connect the ideas to what I personally experienced and saw in my time abroad. Going off of that, hopefully I will be able to find more sources that are stimulating in such a way. 

Prior to Wednesday’s writing class, I mostly disliked research. As a fairly disorganized person, for me research brings up memories of finding nothing on a subject and half-heartedly attempting to make irrelevant articles seem like they belonged on the works cited page. Sure, I can conduct a JSTOR search as well as the average college student, but research always seemed like just another thing you had to do for a paper, maybe not quite as bad as actually writing it but a pain nonetheless. As a Kinesiology major, I was used to finding articles that I didn’t have access to, which was especially disheartening if that article was very pertinent to what I was writing a lab report on. After all this frustration and confusion, it’s becoming clearer to me that research can actually be carried out in a relatively painless way. By using tools like Zotero, citing becomes much easier. Choosing subcategories in your topic and picking certain keywords can also help to refine a search. Learning techniques like this will make the research process more efficient and enjoyable. 
So as of now, I’m at the beginning of research for this paper, and have a long way to go. The direction this paper is going to go remains pretty uncertain, but I think the sources I find will help guide it along, help me to find the niche I want to investigate more deeply. As I embark on this research journey, the next step is to read more articles, and see which ones will help me write my next paper. I’m not sure how I’ll determine this yet, but I’m sure it’ll get figured out along the way.