(My) Old Timey Nihongo!

When I was in high school I started taking Japanese lessons from a really awesome woman who worked for Languages by Nicole. At first, my class was really small, just one other student and myself. It was like having a private lesson! We learned all the basics, you know, all the kana, basic kanji, basic phrases, and even some stuff you don't get to know until you've learned a lot of　Japanese. Random stuff like:　市役所, ふつかよい and　なるほど which became one of my favorite phrases. We used this awesome book called "Japanese for Everyone" which had a running storyline in its dialogues about Michael and Barbara Webb, a married couple who move to Japan because Michael needs to be there because of his job. Michael tries to sneak a ham through Japanese customs, meets the boss, has office parties, goes to the municipal office to register as a foreigner, flirts with the pretty office girls, and poor Barbara is stuck having to buy some 80 dollar iron and deal with impossible houseguests who are trying to press their stamp collections on her (ok, well not really, but there is a scene where someone comes over to show her their stamp collection). Oh, the intrigue in Japanese textbook dialogues! Not as memorable as Mary and Takeshi from the Genki series, but nevertheless entertaining. In any case, it was always a really good time and these lessons gave me a really good foundation for my continued language learning in the present day.
I came across a group of old photos from my Japanese class today while I was going through some files in the 'my photos' folder. We are all dressed in yukata because one of my fellow students had the opportunity to go to Japan and, while they were there, had studied tea ceremony, and decided to share with the rest of us on this particular occasion. So cool!! Blast from the past!!