a friend of mine went to japan once. shes teaching (as well as our friends) a little of what she knew.

I also have a jap-eng dictionary! That and the 3-CD course but it didnt help.

一年勉強する！

少し読めるでも、話せない。　余りしません　＾＾；

I plan on going to Japan next year, so hopefully I can make the jump to pseudo-fluency by then.

ああ、誰かがやっと日本語で打った！

Gilradさん初めまして。勉強をがんばってね！

I wanna be you..

At my high-school you can learn either French or some really odd language (i'm guessing they had Japanese. I HATE French beacuse it is very annoying but
"dans le fin, Je chois Francais."

Question for the Japanese Majors....

Hopefully everyone knows that the kanji in my signature is Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!! (Go! Fight! Cheer Squad!!), but is that the real kanji? I looked up Go in my jap-eng dictionary but nither "Osu" nor the kanji show up.... Am i missing something here?

Ok here goes a translation from wikipedia-jp on the origin of the word osu. There are two separate meanings - one which was used as a greeting between upper and lower students in some insitutes in japan. Both meanings are very deep in history and not used (with the kanji seen in the Ouendan title) in recent years. The second meaning has more relevance to what you would be interested in though:

一説では、佐賀・鍋島藩においては山本常朝の「葉隠」が武士道の基本とされ、藩校において厳しく躾が為されていた、若い青年武士たちは互いに励まし合う意味で、往来などで出会った際、押忍！と声を掛け合ったと言われている。応援団や武道家が使う押忍はこちらのほうの意味であり、友達同士でオスというのは前記のように「おはよう」などが縮まったものであると考えられる。

Theory has it that in some wards in Japan (can't be bothered translating place names, irrelevant) where the samurai was born, clans used very servere discipline on their members. It is said that the young members used to shout "OSU!" when seeing/meeting each other in the chaos, trying to cheer each other up. It is thought that the "osu!" that cheer groups/martial artists use was born from this meaning, moreso than the previously mentioned "osu" as a simple greeting (which is used in a more plain context of saying "hello").

Even in today's japanese culture, osu is used as a greeting (regularly heard as "ossu!" between friends) and is actually quite popular amongst the youth. But as you probably gathered from the translation above, this has a very different meaning to what is used by ouendan - and is never seen using the　"押忍" kanji, but simply in hiragana or katakana "オッス！".

The greeting:
「おはようございます」
ohayou gozaimasu (good morning)

「おはよーっす」→
ohayo-ssu

「おわーす」→
owa-su

「おす」
osu

The origin of the kanji is as follows (in its original martial arts/ouendan-ish form):

「押して忍ぶ」（自我を抑え我慢する）
(押して)oshite (忍ぶ)shinobu (to push and withstand) - having the meaning of "swallowing one's ego and bearing with it"

Leads us to the final 「押忍」.

Hopefully I'm not too far off with this translation .

Isn't it Ichi, Ni, San, Yon (Well, thats what my CD says, haven't used it in years tho), Go, Roku, Hachi, Nana, Kyuu, and Ju

the way I remember up to 5 is "itchy knee" "sun" She go"
Really stupid

shi/yon (4) and shichi/nana (7) are both interchangable and correct.

I think I'm gonna learn ... 私の車は赤い。 = My car is red. XD

hahahaha me too

I just learned enough Japanese to play Kingdom Hearts Final Mix/FM+ I also kind of remember how to say stuff like "Sorry, but I don't understand Japanese".

yeah, i'm doing gcse japanese at the mo,i'm on my second year of it. お元気ですか。

Osu! おかしいゲームはある、しかし私はそれをすることができない。