the saga continues

I have found Chinese to be of continuing usefulness, this time in numbers - coming up with the verbal equivalent of a number like 180,000 would have been more difficult without prior knowledge of the Chinese counting system, especially since Japanese (or at least this textbook) does not seem to use digit grouping commensurate with counting units. For instance, in Chinese numbers it would be written 18,0000 to reflect the amount denoted by the word "wan."

I think group projects will be good; I am more ambivalent about tests, but don't have enough footing in the language to estimate whether it is the best way to review the material. In the end, I don't think it will make much of a difference when and how the material is reviewed - at such a basic level, we will either use and capitalize on what we've learned once the class is over or we won't; I'm not sure what kind of difference exams will make...

in the beginning

So far, Japanese has been fun and not too difficult. I find some similarities to Chinese which make the mental adjustment easier than, say, Chinese-to-English; the respective possessives, no and de, function similarly, as does the logic of certain word combinations: daigakue/daxue, daigakusei/daxuesheng, gakusei/xuesheng.

So far, I'm finding flash cards and repetitive writing sufficient to keep up in class, and I find that the homework is not too difficult.

I'm a little apprehensive about the switch to hiragana and katakana, but I imagine persistence will pay off as it did with Chinese characters, and at least the size of both alphabets is pleasantly limited.