Japanese 3 or Crazy Kanji Studying….Starting Tomorrow

I am SO nervous.  I start my third semester of Japanese tomorrow and I am so worried about all of the kanji I am going to have to learn.  If you don’t know what kanji is, it is all of those crazy chinese characters that Japanese people use IN ADDITION TO their two alphabets of 42 characters (that’s right, 84 characters of sounds PLUS thousands of chinese characters!)…I swear this is going to drive me crazy.  Supposedly, I am going to be able to read a newspaper by the end of this class.  It seems like such a tall order since I can barely get the meanings in easy manga (ie. Yotsuba and Chi’s Sweet Home) without asking the Psychotaku for help.  ARGH!!! 

Well, I guess I can just try my best (ganbatte yo!).  I just hope that the first month isn’t too crazy since I have my Professional Geologist exam to study for this month as well.  WHY did I have to get accepted this year!!??  I mean, I am happy that I finally got accepted but why couldn’t it have been last year, when I was re-taking Japanese 1 (it had been three years since I had last taken it).  ARGH.  This is getting pretty scary.  I never thought I would get this far in Japanese.  I thought it would just be a fleeting hobby….but no.  I am going to Japan in March, DEFINITELY. 

So I am saving up and I need as much knowledge of the language as humanly possible before I go.  I really don’t want to have the Psychotaku translating for me everywhere.  That would ruin my trip and make me feel like I wouldn’t be able to get by in one of my favorite cultures.  That would just be awful.  He is so lucky that I am from England and he only needs to understand accents when we go to visit my homeland. SO LUCKY!!! 

Well, wish me luck in this crazy endeavor…full time work (including long days of field work) is not conducive for learning a language…I just need to get past October 2nd (my PG exam) and maybe I will have time to study all of the kanji that is sure to be thrown my way.  I already have my first two semesters of kanji flash cards ready, I just need to get a full command of most of them before tomorrow…think I can do it?!!!

Ganbatte ne!!!