Maa nante koto nanda!!!

Translation: Oh my God!! This is what I thought when Scott and I flipped through some "speaking Japanese" books he was able to borrow from someone at work. Ok, well honestly, I was really thinking, "Oh shit, I have less than 5 months to learn this!!!!!" We'll need to be able to speak some of the language to be able to get around AND Scott said we need to know the below Katakana chart.

Katakana (kah-tah-kah-nah) is one of the three common Japanese alphabets. Katakana is made up of 48 symbols/characters that represent syllables, and is mostly used for phonetically spelling words and names imported from foreign languages, such as Takushi (Taxi). Apparently, I'll need to know some basic Kana to get myself around in Japan. Thank goodness McDonald's is pretty much a global chain, but from the image below you'll see why I'll need to know these characters. Not every store and sign/advertisement uses Japanese like French or Spanish, they use Katakana.

A Japanese class is offered at Toyota to people who are going to be in Japan long term, 1 year+, so because we're only going for 3 months Scott will receive no assistance from Toyota on helping to learn the language. (I'm not sure if any ole employee can take the class regardless of whether they're going to Japan) A guy that Scott works with was nice enough to let us borrow books from the class that is taught at Toyota. I think Scott said this guy was going to Japan for a longer stay, so that's why he's taking this class.

Maa nante koto nanda!!! I'm anxious to learn all that I can before we leave because it's been quite some time since I've had to have my nose in a book, but it's a hella challenge I'm up for. Yay!! :)