Minasan!
Japanese is something that I have wanted to learn my whole life. Every summer my family and I would go back to California (Bay Area) and visit all my relatives. Even though only my grandparents know Japanese I have always been interested in learning. Perhaps because whenever they took me to Buddhist church I couldn't understand what the reverend was saying because it was all in japanese! And then I would just sit there and people would laugh at his jokes that I couldn't understand, and the dharma books were all in japanese too! And sometimes older members of the church would just point at me and laugh (because I was so cute when I was young... haha just kidding) and talk to me in japanese and all I could say was "nihongo wakatemesan (sp?)" which according to my dad (because he had to use it a lot) was 'I don't understand japanese'.
I really enjoy the Japanese class, especially learning hirigana, because it is something entirely new and different for me. All my past foreign language classes were French, so spelling and writing was never a problem. However in Japanese, hirigana has proved difficult but also more interesting and somewhat simpler than the roman alphabet. (I also might like it because the writing looks prettier).
corinne
