I started my Japanese lessons today, which was great fun! I’d never really spoken proper Japanese with anyone, and it was really nice to have a general chat with someone. My teacher is quite nice and she said that she’s been teaching for 3 years now. She used to work for the government before and she said that they’d work until midnight every day! Amazing to see that from a government! But I guess that would be a typical Japanese company, with the heirarchy etc.
Anyways, we practiced introductions, how to say hello and goodbye to people and what you should say when coming or going from the office. We spoke about people and their professions and where they came from. Then we went through numbers, dates and times.
The teacher Shimomura-san said it was pretty good and said I could probably skip the first 5 or so chapters in the book! I was pretty chuffed with that.
It was also one of the first times that I read sentences etc. in only hiragana or katakana. It was very interesting and rewarding when I could put together the words and sentences.
The book I have looks to be really good. Minna no Nihongo I and I spoke about wanting to try to get my Japanese proficiency test 4, as a goal. I need to learn about 100 Kanji for that. Should be a good goal.