God bless those retired men and women who devote their free time at town halls teaching wide-eyed gaijin Japanese. I eagerly signed up for a class soon after arriving in Japan, but soon understood why it didn't cost anything.

My first few lessons left me walking away with my tail between my legs. Mastering the "a, i, u, e, o" pronunciation was no easy feat, not to mention remembering all those hiragana and katakana.

And when I thought I was getting on top of everything, my very elderly teacher always shook his head. Soon I realized that he simply had the shakes and my answers were correct after all.

Another old man masked his volunteerism with practicing his own English. He'd point at the picture, "This is a dolphin," then wait for my approval.

I relinquished these well-meaning octogenarians, for the self-discipline of private study. But, where to start? How do I remember the vast amounts of vocabulary?

I took the approach of attaching an English "sounds like" to everything. Like the popular, "dou itashimashite" meaning "You're welcome", sounding uncannily like "Don't touch my moustache"!

I applied this technique to scores of words, but with sexual connotations. Take for example, "naka" and "soba", which mean "inside" and "beside" respectively. For "naka", I imagined being "naked" with a beautiful woman inside the bed covers. For "soba", if she weren't drunk - if she were "sober" - she'd be beside my bed, not wanting to be in the covers with me.

Humor works well. My roommate told me this one:

At an izakaya, a gaijin with bad pronunciation says to the waiter, "Biiru o futatsu kudasai." The waiter comes back carrying a building. The gaijin shook his head saying "Iie, iie." The waiter comes back with a house.

Humor and sex is a good combination to learn Japanese, but probably not with an elderly town hall Samaritan. If you're lucky, a Japanese girlfriend or boyfriend is a great way to master the language.

Gambatte!