oh, yes, i forgot… in class also, sensei explained the writing systems to the people in the class who haven’t taken japanese, and passed around two posters with the hiragana and katakana characters on them, with each character next to a picture of something starting with that character… “a is for apple”, “s is for squirrel”, that sort of thing.

on the katakana sheet, for the character

ウ

“w”

it used

ウィスキー

“whiskey”

i pointed that out to the guy sitting next to me (he didn’t know japanese and we were chatting some during the class discussion and during the break), and when i showed him he said “you’re useful!”, hehehehehe…