Well I went and tried to get into the Japanese class at Shasta College Tuesday but it was full to overflowing. The class size is set at 25, and not only did all but one show up for the first day but over twenty five people were on the waiting list. The teacher took as many people from the wait list as she had seats for (about 12 or so) and there were still people standing at the back of the room so I left as I wasn’t even on the wait list so there was no chance of me getting in.

So I am just going to have to teach myself. Tuesday I got some flashcards, for both Kana and Kanji, and have been going over them while on my breaks at work and a night before bed. Its coming back to me fairly quickly, I am only miss 2 or 3 out of the first 61 Kana cards. I should have most of them down pat by next week at this rate. Then it time to start working of vocabulary, that is one nice about the cards each also has 5 vocabulary words that use the Kana on the card so I should get a lot of use out of them.

The Japanese written language is properly one on the things that trip up most people trying to learn the language. Japanese has three forms of writing two Kana (the flowing Hiragana and the angler Katakana) and Kanji. So how does that work you ask. Well Kana are what i call sound shapes, each symbol represents a sound (thats why there are no spelling bees in Japan everything is spell exactly as it sounds.) So for each sound in the Japanese language you have two ways of writing it, one Hiragana and one Katakana. Hiragana is mainly used for simple word, parts of speech and verbal endings. Katakana is where it can be a bit confusing as it is used for non Chinese loan words ( that is words taken from a foreign language like English) It is also used for italics, emphasis in exclamations, and onomatopoeic words. So when every you see Katakana you have to figure out from context which way they are using it. The then there is the biggie Kanji.

Kanji are Chinese characters each represents and idea or concept ie man, big, heaven. The kicker is that there is about 6000 characters and each one can have at least two different ways of reading it. There is the Kun-yomi or Japanese reading base on the concept that the character represents. Then there is the On-yomi base of the approximate Chinese reading at the time of importation, the complex part is that some characters were importunated more then once at different time and from different parts of China.

So, I now have about 16 months to get ready for the JPLT. Because I am not having to spend money to take the class and pay for the gas to get there I am looking for some good self study books to help get me ready. I need to start listening to my tape course and and find some other way to keep myself motivated. Hopefully if thing work out I will be able to skip the Level 4 test and go straight to Level 3. I found out that the tests are cumulative so anything that is on Level 4 can show up on Level 3 test skipping one test is an option. Well wish me luck, I will keep updating as I find new thing to help me on my path to learning Japanese.

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