Minna no Nihongo

I took a Japanese class back in September 2007, to try to keep myself in the books after graduating from university. It was a beginners' class, and the best fun ever, so relaxed and with a bunch of fantastic people. My tutor Eiko was lovely and was always excellent at going at our pace and answering our silly questions. I met some great people on this course! Eiko decided to stop teaching at the end of our class in June 2008 as she was expecting a son and so I decided not to take the next year of the course. I actually really regretted not taking the course and ended up joining again the following year with Tom in tow. Eiko was back, however because of the demands of so much teaching, our class (year two) was integrated with the advanced class (year three) most of whom had actually lived in Japan for months at a time. I found the class very difficult, and although I managed to bag myself a nationally recognised qualification in business Japanese, I decided to quit again.
I've been missing it of course, so I ordered the book the class was being taught from. It's entirely in Japanese, in Japanese characters too (kanji, hiragana and katakana) so it's nothing easy! We actually started from something like the 12th chapter in the class because the advanced class had already started from the start. I'm starting from the very start, taking it slow so that I don't get too frustrated with learning like I did with the advanced class.