So, how's your Japanese?

Never been better, thanks for asking! Could be better. Getting better! Not quite good enough. But I'm working on it, and will be for years to come. That much I know.

Before coming to London, I studied Japanese in my spare time on-and-off for about three years. I took some lessons with a few colleagues, bought a few books, listened to many hours of audio lessons and did exercises from the books.
Now, in addition to self-study, I go to class once a week (not enough, I'm going to take more classes). The lessons I'm following cost a whopping 300 Yen per four lessons. How much is 300 Yen? About £1.50, or €2.

I will try to give a very brief and simplified explanation as to what's involved in learning Japanese.
Disclaimer: Remember, I'm no expert on the subject!

Japanese uses three types of writing; hiragana, katakana and kanji. To be able to read a book or newspaper you need to master them all. Hiragana and katakana (together known as kana) are phonetic syllabaries, meaning each character has a unique sound. Katakana is generally used to write words which originate from other languages (mostly English), while Hiragana serves the same purpose for phonetically writing Japanese words. There are 48 basic characters in each syllabary.

Kanji is also known as Chinese characters, from which they originate, and the highest level Japanese Language Profiency Test (JLPT) requires you to know nearly 2000 kanji. Each character represents a word, but combined they can also form unique words. Memorising a kanji's meaning in your own language isn't that difficult, but knowing how to pronounce it? Hoo-boy.
You see, most kanji have several ways to pronounce it, depending on the context.
An (extreme) example: 下, meaning under, lower, bottom, etc.(!), can be pronounced as Ka, Ge, Shita, Moto, Shimo, Sa-, Kuda- or O-. I'm sure you'll understand how relieved I am whenever I come across a kanji with only one pronounciation!

Still, pronounciation of the Japanese sounds is relatively easy for myself, as the sounds used in Japanese can also be found in Dutch. Native English speakers tend to find the pronounciation more difficult at first, as they are not used to pronouncing a,i,u,e,o as "ah, ee, uuh, eh, oh".
So, if all goes well, and I keep studying, I should hopefully be able to at least speak the language at a decent level within a reasonable amount of time. As with learning any other language, building an expanding your vocabulary is the key. Wish me luck.

Reference from wikipedia: Kana, kanji, JLPT

In an upcoming post I will write about some cool technologies that make learning and understanding the Japanese language a little easier.