On the first day of class, I was one of the few people who openly copped to having even the slightest familiarity with Japanese.

We sat in the classroom, tables arranged in a U shape, regarding each other and the books and papers in front of us. The teacher breezed in and then took a seat facing us She introduced herself and then after a quick self-biographical sketch to break the ice, asked if anyone else had ever taken Japanese before. Only a few of us admitted to it, the rest looking like their sergeant just asked for volunteers for a suicide mission. 

Other than myself there was J., who had already taken the beginning conversation class in the same program, and whose eagerness to answer questions in class was quickly tempered by the not-too-obvious differences between conversational and written Japanese. Three incorrect answers and he suddenly lost his urge to shoot his hand up and answer every question. For my part, I made an ambiguous, partially affirmatory gurgling noise deep in my throat that admitted to nothing, but which could be interpreted as being slightly familiar to an unspecified extent with the language. 

It was obvious that more than half the class had indeed studied the language before, in public school. Many accents were already practiced and many students seem to be picking up an entirely new alphabet awfully fast. I could pick out which students were from San Francisco--where the public schools have a language requirement--and I knew that Asian students gravitate to the Asian languages. 

I remember how the game was played--if it’s been a really long time, admit to nothing, because the alternative is to risk being inserted into the system above your comprehension level. Teachers always think you know more than you really do know. This is what happened to me in high school--my high school teacher thought I knew more Japanese than I really did, and she expected more from me. Which she had certain grounds to--after all, she had also been my third grade teacher in the same public school program. But she overestimated what I knew, and I spent an entire year of her saying and thinking, “come on, you know this,” when I honestly did not. I spent a year in high school wishing she had frozen to death on the slopes of Mount Whitney. 

Only a handful of people seemed to be genuinely starting from square one the way my wife was. Some people pronounced Japanese words the way the way they might be pronounced in Chinese, which, considering they speak English with Chinese accents, is not all that surprising. One student in particular was completely baffled not only by the character system, but the fact that characters stood for syllables, not individual words. We silently rooted for her, especially when she struggled with the pronunciation, but she disappeared after the first class. It’s possible she’s taking the class on a Wednesday or Saturday instead. Or maybe she’s not. 

The teacher asked for a show of hands of people who had been to Japan. On this, my hand also rose up straight and proud. Hell yes. There were about four of us. 

The teacher herself is quite good. She’s native Japanese, from Chiba province--wherever that is. Her English is accented, but quite intelligible. Oddly enough, sometimes she speaks English and it sounds like she has no accent at all, in these unguarded moments that last a second or so. It’s quite bizarre. Endlessly enthusiastic, at times it seems she’s adopted the persona of a talk show host. She would be very good at it--she’s engaging and keeps the class moving along at a steady clip. 

Our classmates are very eager to learn, friendly, and encouraging. Why they’re here is an interesting question, one I wish the teacher had asked. Why are any of us here paying to learn such a difficult foreign language? I’ve already identified the guy with the Japanese girlfriend at home. He’s never said it, but it’s obvious and he finally alluded to it last night. Otaku and anime nerds? Her..and maybe him, although he might be a serial killer instead. Class polyglot? Over there.

There’s a low pressure attitude in adult classes I’m only now picking up on. I have to keep in mind that the class is strictly voluntary, and that unlike college, everyone has to have a reason to be here. People provide their own motivation. People are treated like adults, and there’s less pressure to learn. You won’t be chided in front of the rest of class for not doing your homework, but you’re an adult, so you did it anyway.

Thanks to my previous attempts to learn Japanese I only have to dust off what I used to know to get me through the first two classes. I pick up the first twenty hiragana characters easily--after all, I knew them back and forth more than 20 years ago. Writing them was like using a muscle I had not moved for decades--the first results were quite painful and embarrassing, but the more I worked at it the more the old skill came back--as well as the bad penmanship habits. The rediscovery and resumption of old habits, as though I had been doing them all along, is a bit eerie. 

More valuable than old memories though, previous attempts have laid a groundwork for the current learning experience that is really useful. Japanese doesn’t sound alien and exotic--it sounds like a language I should know. Familiarity--I don’t look at hiragana and think, “Isn’t that one odd? It looks like a goldfish!” The cadence of the language, vowel/consonant/vowel/consonant/, as well as the accents are all coming back. Much like a construction site that was torched and then abandoned after the foundation was laid, it’s easier to build upon all of this than nothing at all. 

Week 5 and the difficulty is definitely ramping up. It  is getting harder, no question. And as it gets harder I have to make a decision: am I truly serious about this or not? This weekend I contemplate learning to count to the thousands. Not that hard. But deeper down the rabbit hole I go, and as I watch the TV news feeds from Japan, I notice that world opening up just a tiny bit.