The lecturers and tutors are really encouraging. The materials were interesting and you get a taste of how education different the teaching style is like compared to other subjects!

Fun subject but tutors are a mixed bag and class sizes are so big that you won't get personalised attention or feedback, which isn't great for language learning.

Wow, what a fun subject! I have always wanted to learn japanese so I could go to japan, I have watched anime and been infatuated with japanese culture most of my life and I wasn't able to continue the subject past year 8 in high school. Coming to the class with zero vocabulary and only half of one of the alphabets, I was quickly swept up in a wave of learning and memorising and practicing and I'm so glad I chose to give this a shot. The workload each week is manageable if you use your time wisely, and you will be constantly discovering new and useful ways to use the parts of the language that are provided for you. The textbook and workbook are fantastic and elegant learning tools with in-depth exercises and grammar notes. There is theoretically no need to take notes for this subject, all you need to do is learn the vocab and practice with it in the books and class. The projects throughout the semester, especially the oral ones, were pretty tough. I definitely should have practiced speaking more than just in class, and I regret that, but I'll work on it for jap 2. The other assignments and the exams are all written, and these were a blast. The first one has your hands shaking all over the place while you try to write out a self introduction within a 2 minute stop watch timer, but by the next one your hands are fine and you get to enjoy the challenge of remembering the strokes as you translate. Finally, the kanji is so fun to write and learn! I really enjoyed going from zero-kanji knowledge to being able to write down the 60 or so needed for this semester, all in a matter of a few weeks. I thoroughly recommend this subject to anyone who has a strong interest in starting the japanese language. Hope you find it as inspiring as I did.

Great subject for beginners in Japanese. The lectures were quite dry and not required. The lecturer often diverges from the topics and goes overtime, rushing the essential grammar points in the last 5-10 minutes. Unless you want to learn about the Japanese customs, traditions, myths and history, I would not recommend attending the lectures and just listening to recordings and skipping over the nonessential parts. The seminars were the highlight of the subject for me. The teachers were friendly and very helpful, although the classes were very large and the classrooms uncomfortably small. Mostly a self-learning subject, only requires reading the textbook, learning the vocabulary, and completing exercises in the textbook and workbook. Solutions are provided. The lecture notes do not contain new content and only integrate the material, however no english counterpart is provided in the lecture notes or explained by the lecturer (It often becomes time consuming to translate foreign vocabulary). The writing assessments were decent, as long as you keep up with the content. The oral assessments were pair and solo, respectively. And it is difficult to receive decent marks (even though it is a beginner's subject). Again, it is a great subject for beginners, but could be significantly improved.