What started as a language credit has become an ikigai, or “life’s purpose,” for communications major Dennis Owens. Growing up Catholic in Toledo, Ohio, and attending a high school named after a Confederate war hero, Owens says he has always felt slightly out of place.

“I look back now and it’s so obvious,” Owens says. “Once, when I was six, I went to this sushi restaurant, and as I was leaving, I told the server ‘sayonara,’ which means good-bye in Japanese. I don’t think I’d even heard anyone say that word before, it just kind of came to me.”

Sources say Owens has been asking people to call him “Dennis-San” and has purchased a replica samurai sword on ebay in preparation for his semester abroad in Kyoto. “He’s going abroad to Japan?” asked Japanese 201 classmate Alan Kawamoto. “That’s hilarious. Japan is like, super xenophobic. They’re going to fucking hate him.”