Japan 111R First Class

I was so excited ! Since its my first time officially learning the language through an institute (UW in this case). I got to class about 30 mins early >w<

The teacher is a pretty old lady, shes fluent in Japanese (as expected). No weird accent when speaking english either. Great news. I can't stand those Japanese accents when speaking english =(. It sounds too weird to me.

Anyway, to my dismay, this course seem to be more for the busy people, because the book is called Learning Japanese for Busy People. Boo. Meaning, it'll probably be more like teaching you phrases and things, instead of getting to the bones of Japanese.

Well, if thats the case, I expect to ace this course. Since I've already done a few CD lectures in the past. On and off. Been at it for a long time too... on and off.

What we covered in the first week.
- Talked about the Hiragana characters
- all 46 of them
- including the "ba" and "pa" alternatives of "ha", and the "da", "za", "ga", etc also
- small "ya", "yu", "yo"
- double vowel (aa, ii, oo, etc)
- double consonant (ikko, etc)
- How to write Hiragana
- the 4 ways to end stroke (stop, hump, sweeping, loop)
- We did several short skits where we had to speak Japanese
(I aced it of course, other people, not so much, Talking to yourself helps (hahaha) )

Homework included
- Writing hiragana for each of the characters 8 times (a,i,o,u,e -> n)
- Writing hiragana from roomaji words

Needless to say, this week was easy.