I started learning Japanese since the year 2000. I attended a 3-months Japanese class with Bunka and thereafter took a few years break as I was studying in the National University of Singapore. In November 2005, I resumed my Japanese class and have been learning Japanese language since then. My journey through Japanese are below:
Year:
2000 - 3 months course wiht Bunka Language school
2005 - 2008: 1 year course with Bunka Language school (till Advanced Level)
2006 - 2008: Japanese classes in Koriyama/Komaki
2009 - JLPT2 course with Ikoma
2010 - 2013: Advanced level course to Further advanced level course with Ikoma
2014: Interest courses with Ikoma (twice a month)
Even though I was overseas between the years of 2006 till 2008, I tried to attend formal lessons when I was base overseas in Japan or self-studied when I was in China. In the short periods when I was back to Singapore, I would attend classes with Bunka. I achieved my JLPT3 certification in end-2007. The real Japanese intensity come in 2009 when I signed up for the JLPT2 course with Ikoma, which culminated with the JLPT2 certification.
Every Tuesday - Ikoma Advanced Japanese Class (October 27, 2009)
Below is an image of the intensity of the JLPT2 exams prep class at Ikoma with Kanai-sensei.
December 2009
During one of the class, the teacher gave each of us a bag. There are two choices, but most of us selected the japanese-chinese-english bag. We know all these three languages!
Every Tuesday - Ikoma Advanced Japanese Class (May 22, 2010)
I continued my Japanese class with Advanced 2 (December 2009) and Advanced 3 class. When I first joined the Advanced 2 class, I was amazed by the girls-boys ratio. It's 12 : 1 and I'm the only guy. Guess girls are really better at languages.
As my work had been pretty busy lately and I was hopping to get my driving license within that few months, I decided to stop my Japanese classes for a while. Will be missing everyone from the class. As compared to my MBA classmates, I find the students in the Japanese course to be more fun-loving and relax (because there is substantially more girls and it is a conversation course without any exams or assignments with tight deadline).
My regular classmates are Chin-san (Singapore's pioneering manga artist), Samantha-san, Ryelinn-san, Kelly-san, Min Chu-san and Toh-san. Very often a good buddy from the Saturday class will join in and he's Thames-san. And our teacher is Yamane-sensei.
I took a one year break between mid-2010 till mid-2011 as I started on my MBA course. The reason why I resumed in mid-2011 is because I started working in another Japanese company which requires even greater Japanese language utilization.
My next sensei was Yamada-sensei (Jitensha class) on Monday/Tuesday evenings below.
I changed from weekday evenings to Saturday morning as I need to travel during weekdays. My final sensei was Fujiwara-sensei where I followed her the entire Further Advanced course. The original Donbo class is in the top photo below. As I could not join in that Saturday, I got my final Ikoma certificate at another class, also with Fujiwara-sensei.
