I didn’t know what to expect of a language evening class. The only thing I had to base my opinion of learning languages on was from school where the overbearing feeling is embarrassment - you have to say things in a silly accent infront of your peers, if you get it wrong you sound stupid, if you get it right you sound like a swot. 

As it turned out it started off embarrassing, or rather I felt self-conscious. The teacher put a lot of emphasis on “who knows some Japanese words”, “who’s watched Japanese TV”. Unsurprisingly there were a number of manga/anime addicts and it turned out they knew more Japanese than they were letting on. I think the teacher was too rigidly trying to follow a lesson plan she’d picked beforehand though, and when she’d relaxed and stopped trying to fit too many things in it started becoming more fun. 

Lesson one was about counting to 10, basic greetings, how to ask and answer “what is your name?”. We learned about the three different kinds of Japanese characters, and when they’re used (seemingly all three, interchangeably a lot of the time). She asked us if we wanted to learn about how to write in Japanese since it wasn’t actually part of the syllabus and we all said yes, should be interesting!

I came away from the lesson feeling like I wasn’t likely to have learned very much by the end of the eight weeks, I thought the progress during two hours had been slow and I hadn’t taken in as much as I’d wanted to. During this week however, I’ve copied my notes across into the right notebook (OCD FTW) and tried copying out some of the characters to make the sounds - having a phonetic language is actually really interesting. Andy and I have played some word (actually more like number) games, and watched some Japanese TV… and wow. I’m amazed how much I’ve taken in without actually realising it. It feels like a language to be learnt now, as opposed to something mysterious, just sounds that blur together. 

I’m properly excited for Tuesday evening, really looking forward to learning some more building blocks so I can start constructing my own sentences instead of parroting phrases - not sure that’s likely to be something we’ll learn soon, but anything more than having the same boring “nice to meet you” conversation over and over again will be a plus ;-)

I’m sure I’ll update here again when I’ve learned some more. For now, Sayonara :-D