Hi everyone.
I’d like to introduce myself.
My name’s David, and I work for a small IT company in rural Japan as a software developer.
I’ve just started the new level 1 course, and it’s definitely challenging, even though I finished the old level 1 course a couple of years ago. At that time, I intended to do levels 2 and 3 as well, but life got in the way, and I just lost my forward momentum.
Now I have a bit more time on my hands, so I’ve decided to have another go at learning Welsh.
I’ve just finished challenge 4 of level 1, and I’m trying to do one challenge per day, time permitting.
Please wish me luck!
Shwmae David, a chroeso nôl i SSiWelsh, ac ein fforwm newydd!
Which course are you following - North or South?
Gav
Hi David, and a very warm welcome back 
How long have you been out in Japan?
Good luck - one lesson per day is a fair old pace, but if you can stick to it (and don’t worry about repeating them) you’ll do great things 
Hi Gav.
I’m doing the northern course, mostly because that’s the part of Wales I’ve visited the most often. Also, my maternal grandmother was apparently from North Wales, although I never knew her.
Hi Aran.
I’ve been in Japan for almost 16 years, so I probably feel more at home here than in the UK.
I agree that one lesson per day is a bit ambitious, but I still remember some of the course 1 material from when I did it a couple of years ago, so I’m hoping that that should help.
So far, I’ve had to repeat lesson 4, but today it’s time for lesson 5.
Thanks to everyone for their replies.
Best wishes,
David
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We’ll have to give you a shout when we’re ready to try and put together a Japanese course (and the Welsh course through the medium of Japanese 
).
What made you feel you needed to repeat 4?
“Say Something in Japanese” sounds like fun, but we’d probably have to change the course format a bit because Japanese is structurally very different from English or Welsh. Still, it’d be worth a go.
I felt I had to repeat lesson 4 because I wasn’t producing the right sentences towards the end of the lesson, particularly the ones using “bod.” I think I might have got a handle on them now, though.
By the way, I noticed towards the end of lesson 6 that you used the words for “year” and “often” without introducing them earlier in the course. Is this to keep us on our toes?
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While Japanese is structured very differently, I could still see it working (based on what little Japanese I currently speak). Lesson 1, for example, would still be about being able to say “I’m going to speak Japanese” and “I’m trying to speak Japanese” and “I’m going to try to speak Japanese”. Sure, a few minor adjustments would be needed (I mean, you couldn’t just port it over wholesale for any language) - I’m not sure if you can use いって to refer to the future, and there are multiple ways of saying “and” and “but”, for example, but given that SSI focuses primarily on informal, conversational language use, I suspect that a fair chunk of the complexity of the formal language could just as easily remain ignored until much later.
And yes, it was almost certainly to keep us on our toes ;).
True. After all, Pimsleur’s Japanese courses teach entirely through listening and repeating, and they work pretty well. However, their pace is somewhat slower than SSI, and they barely touch upon relative clauses until the final few lessons.
Also, most conversations (in my workplace, at least) take place using neutral polite language, and we hardly ever use the various honorifics unless we’re talking with a client.
Well @aran then Japanese has to have priority. My son tried to learn some too (from gaming reasons mostly though) and he even self taught Kanji to be able to write however I believe SSI way would just be suitable for him despite he’s also very desperate to be able to write.
You could never know how eager are future game developers to know and being able to use Japanese. 
Leave Slovene for some other time when there would not be any other languages to teach as no one wants to use it anyway and besides, relating to @hectorgrey’s post the phrases mentioned above can be quite complicated in Slovene. Even those 3 sentences are varying from gender to gender (we have neutral too) and from if it’s word about singularity, duality or minority.
Japanese all the way then!
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The only Japanese I know is fighting terminology and to count to 10. I learned that from studying Shotokan Karate for many years, but I couldn’t really say if it were true Japanese terminology though.
As for writing, I genuinely would have no idea how!
I’ve done a few courses Japanese waaaay back and it’s a pretty easy language, except in writing. 
It shouldn’t be difficult to make a SSiJapanese course even though the structure of the language is different from English.
If one is thinking of aiming languages at people who are thinking in terms of long-term economic / business benefits, then perhaps Chinese (presumably Mandarin) should be considered.
Not easy though (or so I would imagine).
On the face of it, languages with such writing systems which are so different from English should lend themselves to the SSi approach, since there is obviously little temptation to start reading and writing too soon. (Well, unless one is simply captivated by the beauty of the scripts, I suppose).
I can remember having a brief love affair with Japanese culture, due to doing Judo in my teenage years, and looking longingly at the script and typical Japanese art work, etc, so I would understand some of the attraction.
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I’d also be really interested in SSiJ - I have a Japanese sister-in-law (whose English is excellent - but it would still be good to be able to try at least a little Japanese for her). I also have a son studying physics who’s very keen to get work in the gaming industry when he finishes his degree - so another possible customer there!
Mandarin is actually fairly simple - the largest source of complexity comes from the tones, but you can get used to those fairly quickly.
I agree that Mandarin might lend itself more readily to the SSi approach, as it doesn’t present too many grammatical difficulties for a learner who’s first language is English. However, I think it might be fun to consider SSiJ as a new project, depending on everyone’s time and interest.
Um, well, I still say Japanese all the way!
Year/often - technically, we call that a ‘balls-up’…
Repeating lesson 4 - that sounds to me as though you got tempted into an unnecessary repeat - every session should have a decent number of ‘errors’, and there’s good research which shows that errors in this kind of context have genuine educational value.
I’ve said elsewhere that we’re aiming to start work on 20 new courses before the end of the year (
) - we may well fall short, but we’re certainly not in a Slovene OR Japanese situation 
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Yah, I’d expect that. Slovene is way harder and what’s more to my concern, it’s easily (by terminology of naming the language) being comfused with Slovak language but they’re quite different. We both call ourselves “Slovenci” and if you search in Google translate it’s only one single letter difference between the names. Slovenščina (Slovene) VS Slovenčina (Slovak). And to be honest, this confusion always upsets me very much. (no offence, but that’s how it is)
However Slovene is quite harder from Slovak to learn with duality, considdering genders (each and every verb is said differently toward gender used) etc, etc … so my suggestion: Slovene should be the last one language if ever even made SSi way no matter how eager I’d want to see it come to life one day. We just have to take grammar into consideration, wanting it or not, in order to learn Slovene correctly so that you wouldn’t sound way strange (and even if colloquial) wrong. .