It was the summer of 2019, when my father urged me to take up Japanese as a language right after my XIIth board exams which were to be conducted between February and March 2020. I looked up institutions in New Delhi and looked at their brochures too. But alas! Two days before my final board exam and a month before I planned to join a language school here in New Delhi, lockdown fell upon us, and with the lockdown so did my hopes and dreams of learning Japanese. After a couple of months my fire was re-kindled and I started to learn on my own using YouTube, free books online etc. I even learnt the first 50 Kanjis on my own. This helped me to get an understanding the structure of the language but not the language itself. I couldn’t understand the cultural and historic nuances behind the everyday phrases and how each sentence/phrase can be converted into varying levels of respect and humility. I got to understand this only when my aunt introduced me to Rachna Sensei. Her way of teaching made a language like Japanese, which is notoriously known for being very intimidating and challenging, especially for us Indians, feel like a walk in the park. Don’t get me wrong, the language itself and her curriculum is very rigorous, but Sensei’s way of teaching and interaction made it feel like a breeze. Even though the classes were online, I personally never felt that online barrier as she made sure each and every class was highly interactive and everyone answered. This was usually done by telling her real-life experiences in Japan, one in particular was when she encountered a snake and didn’t possess the vocabulary to alert the neighbours or ask for help. I specifically remember one incident where I noticed a recurring Kanji in Sensei’s PPTs, it was ”愛” (Love). I inquired about it in our class WhatsApp group and she gave the explanation for the same stating she put the symbol to signify her love for Japanese. And now three and a half years later I have cleared till JLPT N3 that too on my first attempt 先生のおかげで！