When I took up Beginner I Japanese in January, it was a spur of the moment decision. I was curious about the language and I thought it might be interesting. However, I didn’t think I would go beyond Beginner I. Who knew I’d progress to Beginner III now and find it rather addictive!

My classmates and I received our Beginner II certificates today. My sensei is the guy in the middle. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have taken Beginner II as I found his teaching methods had results. Even though he sometimes goes at ‘shinkansen’ speed and my brain can’t keep up since I need 4 seconds to digest anything in Japanese, I still find his lessons very useful and interesting.

We just learned the words denoting position of objects/people such as “next to”, “left”, “right”, “above”, “between/among”, “in the vicnity”, “under”, above” and “behind”. It’s all very confusing to me but I can understand it if I try hard enough.

I’m still weak when it comes to identifying Hiragana and Katakana characters. In fact, I had to do my verbal exercise with sensei today and he was kind of shocked that I have to refer to the chart in order to identify some of the characters. No matter, my intention wasn’t to be able to read and write but more to speak and understand the grammar. It’s a lot of fun as my class has nice classmates and everyone is very supportive and helpful to each other.