Ohayo gozaimasu!

エリサSan here!

Yesterday I attended my first Japanese language class and I am so excited to learn this new language. You really have to start from the beginning because in Japanese the signs have nothing to do with our a,b,c,d,e's and so on....

 

When one classmate asked how many languages I can speak, I was surprised to realise that japanese is my 6th language which I am learning, when counting finnish in. Maybe I'll make it during my lifetime to be able to speak in 10 languages. When I choose wisely, I am able to speak with over half of the world with their own mother language?!

As starters here are some basic information about Japan / 日本国: 

Estimated population for 2011: 127,960,000

Capital: Tokio with over 12.000.000 habitants

Official language: none

National language: Japanese

National foundation day: 11th of February 660BC

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan)

Here some photos of the course material we have learned or what we are going to learn(and I picture taken somewhere in Japan):

It's all about Katakana and Hiragana: the 1st one is for the foreigners who are learning japanase and the latter one is the traditional way of writing japanese. We are learning first the Katakana and it is unbelievable how similar the words are to english, once you know how to say them correctly ;)

And our teacher also told us that the Finnish people are the Japanese people of Europe. Unfortunately I do not think this will help my learning process. I just need to practice the signs everywhere I can, yesterday I was drawing the sign in the air on the bus and in the train on my way home :)

But if one wants to learn, you just need to keep on repeating, repeating and repeating!