Well, Im two weeks into my Japanese 1 class that im taking this summer. Its a 5credit course condensed into 6weeks, so it moves at a very accelerated pace.
Ive learnt to write and read hiragana and katakana, which are each comparable to our alaphabet in English. We started Kanji a few days ago, AND MAN can it be confusing. Since a symbol can mean multiple syllables, I cant see how one would quickly read through it. But Im sure it'll just take some getting used to. Typing in Jap is quite convenient though; dont have to rake my brain over how the symbols look.

Class is quite fun if you studied adequately the previous night. Its a small class (~20), and the professor is constantly calling on you. Im signed up for JPN 2, for the second half of summer, but Ive heard its slightly harder. Im not sure if I can keep up this amount of studying......
Some of the motivation for taking picking up the langauge is b/c of my excessive hobby of anime, yet I dont have the time to watch it while learning it. Kind of ironic.