Pretty much every single school these days offers at least two langauges for the students to learn, if they choose. When the time to choose a language happened for me, I was in Grade 5 and had the choice of two langauges: Japanese or German.
Looking back now, sitting in a German lesson, I made an utterly horrible mistake.
In Grade 4, we - being my class - began learning Japanese with a teacher who didn't actually teach Japanese. Our sensei was born in Australia, but actually lived in Japan for most of his young adulthood and had recently moved back to Australia to continue teaching as a senior school science teacher. He was one of the best Japanese teachers you could get. All we did every lesson was watch anime - such as Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Yo, make origami, or occasionally learn how to introduce ourself or count to ten. I don't really remember doing much else in those classes, and it was my favouroite subject.
Then, in Grade 5, we began learning German with Herr P, and our amazing sensei finally returned to teaching just science because my school finally found an actual Japanese teacher. For the first term, I hated German because it was exceptionally boring and too similar to English, and I loved Japanese because we were still just doing origami and watching shows. By term two, our new sensei changed. She started drilling us with words we never learnt and were "supposed to learn for homework", which we never did. We were given surprise tests that everyone failed, and we never did anything fun.
Because of this drastic change in teaching, I was grateful to run away from Japanese and continue learning German.
Of course, in Grade 6 when I had chosen German and stopped learning Japanese, they got a new Japanese teacher, M Sensei, who returned to simply watching anime - which had now evolved into shows such as Naruto and Dragon Ball Z because the students were older - and making origami.
I am still stuck learning German - thankfully at a new school with an awesome teacher, Herr W - but I can't help wishing I had stuck to Japanese for longer.
Is there anyone else out there who is just like me, and ended up choosing a language other than the one you actually wanted?
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