Having studied Spanish all through high school, I was able to go through college without studying any languages. For my two semesters of a non-western culture requirement, I decided to do Japanese.

I have a weak memory, and really had to work hard to be successful. All the people who took it because they liked Anime quickly disappeared or were ridiculed by myself and my roommate who was also taking the course.

The only connections to the western languages that I found were modern technical words in Katakana and the Japanese word for bread is pan, which is also the same in Spanish.

I'd love to go there and learn more, but alas it's been almost ten years and I work entirely too much...