I am studying Japanese mainly because I've always been a fan of Japanese manga and anime, and now I actually want to learn the language instead of just listening to voice actors speak and reading English subtitles every day. But on a larger scale, I've always wanted to be fluent (as in reading and writing in additional to speaking) in another language other than English and I've always seemed to be curious about America's relationship with Japan in history. The latter is not so much a reason to learn Japanese as it is a general attraction to Japan's culture and history. Another reason, which is really a consequence of the aforementioned reasons, is that I want to go to Japan some day--Tokyo specifically--because it seems to bear an unusually alluring resemblance to New York City. They say that New York City, Tokyo and London are three of the most, if not the most, global cities in the world, so to live--even if just for a short time--in another city halfway across the world (okay, more like a third) that is not much unlike your home-city (because "hometown" would not exactly fit the great entity that is New York) is strangely titillating.

Anyways, difficulties in the first four weeks of class were minimal. I would have liked more examples of sentences, maybe some (simple) stories that would show the variety and flexibility in the sentence structure. But I think more example sentences would be most helpful. The PowerPoint presentations do help, but the slides are mainly for instructional purposes and not for studying with.