Why Japanese?

Because I tried with the following program and failed:


Seriously though, I've always been interested in Japanese (and East Asian) culture as far back as I can remember. Being of Chinese descent and living in a predominantly Korean town my entire life, it seems as if learning Japanese would be the next logical step. I've tried my hand at both Chinese and Korean language classes, so taking this class kind of completes the linguistic hat trick. (Well, it does if you disregard the fact that English is my first language and the years I spent in high school Spanish class. )

As for what I'm looking forward to in this class, I'm particularly hopeful that we'll be able to construct more complex and useful sentences than in Elementary A; at least something a little bit more insightful than: "Mt. Fuji is a high mountain." (p. 58 of the yellow grammar book) I'm also looking forward to learning to read (and perhaps write) some Kanji, considering nothing is actually written in only Hiragana/Katakana.

That being said, I'm completely expecting this semester to be much more difficult than the Spring. From my past attempts at learning Chinese, I'm well aware of how difficult memorizing logographic characters can be. In addition to the new challenge that Kanji presents, simple grammatical rules from last semester still don't feel natural (I'm still not sure when to use に or で sometimes). Hopefully, as the class progresses and we get more practice in, it will all flow more naturally. Hopefully.

Good luck to us all. Here's to good semester!