I chose to study Japanese mostly to understand the culture more, and speak with my friends in Japan. The fact that it has three writing systems is interesting as well. After the first four weeks of class, I have noticed that I can understand and write the language better than I can speak and read it. The sentence structures themselves are not complex, but stringing together a sentence with the other words is somewhat challenging to do at a fast pace. I am excited to learn more sentence structures and vocabulary so I can converse about different subjects other than jobs, time, introductions, etc. I hope to learn a lot this year!