First day of work in my new “office”.  Kaoru made lunch, and then went to work.

I started planning what I was going to be doing.  But was very distracted with trying to learn the Hiragana.  Found some programs on the web.  Kaoru had also shown me the pens they use for writing (which greatly helped understand why the characters look the way they do) so I practices a lot of the writing too.  By the time Kaoru came home from work I was fairly confident with the first 15 characters.

I also had a Japanese class today (that I had booked yesterday).  My first “Beginner” class (after I had done the Introductory lessons – which I hadn’t completed yet).  The teacher typed some of the notes in Hiragana rather than English / Roman characters, which was probably the turning point for me, to start cramming and learn the Hiragana quickly.

After dinner, I learnt another 5 characters.  Learning how to pronounce them properly is certainly a lot easier when you have somebody with you all the time, and she has been a great help to accelerate my learning.  Before bed I could do the first 20 characters with only getting 2 wrong on my first attempt.  So I was pretty happy with that effort, having not really learnt another language before.