アリサ(Arisa) Fails

I'll go more into detail later about specifics...I just want to give you a rough idea what I've gotten into for now.

So I'm taking this Japanese Language and Society class. It's basically a linguistics class I guess. The course description said you didn't need to know Japanese. So cool. I'll take it...sounds interesting!

After the first few days of class, I've realized that you kinda need to know Japanese....or at least be an anime freak to get you by. Actually, you just needed to know stuff about Japan prior to this class and you would be fine.

I went into this class with basically no knowledge of Japan. This is all I know:
Ninjas! They speak Japanese! It's this island that was once isolated but now it's not so much! Pokemon! Anime! Axis power! Atomic bomb! Pearl Harbor! Tokyo! Mt. Fuji! Gwen Stefani likes Japan! Gardens! Sumo!

So yeah I basically know lots of words.

In the past 3 days I have roughly learned how to tell the difference between Katakana, Kanji and Hirogana. Don't know what those are? I didn't either 3 days ago. What I wrote a rough translation of my name in(that I figured out all by myself thank you)is katakana. Kanji is the really hard Chinese character type deals. Hirogana is...*mumbles* curvy...phonetic *mumubles*.

I also have learned basic Japanese grammar which I promptly forgot because we went over it really fast. Pretty much everyone else in the class has taken Japanese and so...we don't go over such simple things as that. It was like "remember this? okay moving on!". So..hopefully I won't need to know that so much?

My homework is filled with Japanese words and concepts that I don't understand. I have no background in Japanese culture. I've never read manga. I haven't really watched anime. I wasn't ever obsessed about Japan that I had to know everything about it.

I thought this class would ease me into Japan and Japanese things. Nope. Part of the problem is they meshed the class that required no experience in Japanese with the class that has had experience in Japanese. I'm not sure why.

No, I'm not going to drop the class. What I have been understanding has been interesting. I took this class for a reason. It's not ridiculously impossible...yet.

~AM