Language class

Friday marked my first day of Japanese language class at the local YWCA. Previously, I have been using Rosetta Stone and an e-learning course offered by Mitsui, but I am excited to get some classroom training. The homework and grade at the end will keep me on task and accountable for my progress. If I do well, I can continue with an intermediate session.

There are 12 students in the class (max capacity), and I am the only American and the only English speaker. Home countries of the other students include: 3 from China, 2 from Korea, 1 from Thailand, 1 from Brazil, 1 from Germany, 2 from Turkey, and 1 from another country that I couldn't understand and is not in our textbook! Since we are such a diverse class, only Japanese will be spoken; all other languages are prohibited!!

We meet two mornings per week for 3 hours each day, and oddly enough, our teacher is different depending on the day of the week!

My first class went well. Some students are more advanced than me, and others are less advanced than me! I do need to quickly learn my Japanese characters, though. Everyone else seemed to have them memorized!! There are 3 different alphabets (characters) used in Japan, but this class will focus on mainly Hiragana. I have included a picture of most of the alphabet below. I will also need to learn G, Z, D, B, and P, but they share some of the characters.

Here is part of my first completed homework assignment. I made pink boxes around the answers that I wrote. My characters look so fancy already! Now I just have to turn it in and find out how I did on it!

Here's the flashcards I made to help learn the Hiragana characters this weekend. (Luckily it's a 3-day weekend!) Yes, they are on lion notecards that I bought from the 100 yen store!!