Let me first start off for apologizing for bumping an old topic, but I felt the need to reply as I'm interested in this thread, and Japanese in general.
I have a friend at Uni who is doing Japanese as her major, she's really enjoying it, all around the house she has little notes of Japanese words, for example on the fridge, table, phone and doors.
I am
envious of your friend! That's what I dreamed of doing in college, however the local University I went to didn't offer it as a major or minor, so I had to make do signing up for 'International Business'. Well it's a moot point now as I dropped out after a semester. I'm kicking myself now!! (Short moral of story: Stay in school!!)
Anyways, I've studied Japanese for 3 years in highschool...Very unfortunate that I was in a class for two of those years where the group of students had no interest in learning and spent the majority of the time draggin their feet. I was bumped up a level since I aced first year and I also wanted to be in band at the time and the structure of courses I wanted to take didn't allow me to take second year japanese so I was put into third year. I learned very little during that time due to the teacher being very lazy and the students really taking it for a ride to get easy credits. It really frustrated me since that was the one class I wanted desperately to excel in.
I took a semester of Japanese in College. I took the 2nd course, because of my previous classes in highschool and I already memorized both hiragana and katakana and had a real basic understanding of kanji. Let me just say that the professor was totemo kibishii and I was this time really pushed hard and struggled through that semester. I still pulled off good marks, however I never did look at my final transcripts...(long story)
I still would classify myself as "Still with very much to learn", and I would say that with the most humble of attitudes. I very jokingly will say to someone I can label the contents of your fridge, but I struggle to hold a conversation. I think that pretty much sums up my knowledge. *grins*