Had my first Japanese class this afternoon which was great fun but fairly challenging. There were only about 12/15 people in our group which was good and made pronouncing things out loud a lot less embarrassing! Interestingly about 50% of people in the group were Chinese foreign students but they all spoke very good English so it wasn’t a problem talking to them. We learned a lot of basic stuff like greetings and introducing yourself which was fairly easy but it’s once you start constructing sentences out of it all that it becomes a bit of a headache! Luckily our sensei (teacher) was very good and explained things at a pace I could keep up with.
For homework we’ve been set a Hiragana chart to complete which basically means learning how to write the squiggly characters (one of a set of three different symbolic systems). The task in itself isn’t very hard but remembering what they all mean is going to be a nightmare! That said I’m definitely looking forward to next weeks lesson – it beats the drudgery of some of my other lectures!
If you want to learn a few words of Japanese yourself a good place to start would be here.
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