Since Japanese is unrelated to English, learning it is a big job. You will want to learn the three writing systems: hiragana (ひらがな), katakana (カタカナ), and kanji (漢字), the characters imported from China. Japanese has imported thousands of words from English; many of them have been adapted and will at first be unfamiliar (e.g. terebi comes from "television"), but you'll soon begin to recognize them.

There is good news, though! You don't have to worry about whether nouns are masculine or feminine. Pronunciation is not too difficult: there are only five vowels, all of which sound familiar to English speakers, and almost all of the consonants are similar to English sounds. Unlike in Chinese, you don't need to worry too much about tones.

Studying in one of our small group classes, you can easily make a lot of progress. Our enthusiastic and patient Japanese teachers will guide you through this fascinating language, while also teaching you about Japanese culture and traditions.