Japanese Language Class

So I finished my adult education class for "Beginning" Japanese language and realized I am going to have to go back to school for a real course, one with 2 to 3 days a week rather than 2 hours once a week.
I write "Beginning" in quotes because that was a joke. We went from "hi" "hello" to counting to 1 trillion...huh? Why do I need to know what 1 trillion is in Japanese? Maybe when I am super famished after walking a million miles through town one day I'll just stroll on into a Sushi joint and ask for 1 trillion unagi rolls or something like that - yea, sure that'll happen.
Yummy!!!!!!

I did learn proper sentence structure which will help me to decipher the subject of each sentence; of course I still have to learn elementary vocabulary.

Which is why I bought this:

But what I did not need to learn was "is that your sister's boyfriend's friend's red car over there by that postoffice?" I don't say these things in English!

To top this whole mess off, the required book is written in Hiragana. Why would a beginning class that assumes a student has no knowledge of the Japanese language require a book written in one of the Japanese alphabets, why?.....

This is as much Japanese language as I knew when I started:

even this confused me the first time I saw it...did it mean run to the bathroom or run out the door. Lucky for me, in the the airport both the bathroom and emergency exit were in the same place.

A fellow student told me the book is available in English, so I purchased that one also- not that it was much easier to follow. Of course this student was smart enough to drop after the thrid class and hopefully get some of her money returned.

I have a lot to learn and according to my teacher my lack of learning is because I take too many notes. Who knew that taking too many notes contributes to lack of learning.

Despite all this I am going to try again, I really want to go to the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, which we couldn't go to on our trip to Japan because the tour is conducted in Japanese!
I also will be better prepared to ask what the heck this squishy wriggling thingy is on my plate - although I think there is slight comfort in not knowing what the heck the thing is so as not to insult the chef and just eat it!