First lesson leaves me wondering...do I have the neural plasticity to learn to read/write a new langauge?

Like most Americans, and I speak one langague, and like many high schools, mine required to years of a foreign language. I opted for German, but it didn't really take. Some of it was me - I just didn't work that hard at it - and some of it was my German 2 teacher, who spent more time trying to dispell stereotypes about warm beer and Nazi's than he did teaching us the language. 

In college, I took a semester of Spanish only because I thought I might have to transfer to another shcool that had a foreign language requirement. As soon as the prospect of transfering went away, so did my interest in learning another language. It's not that I don't have respect for other cultures, it's really just more that I was lazy and preferred the path of least resistence.

Now here I am, some 20 years later, with an extreme interest in learning another language. And what I do pick? Not German, where at least there might be a few dormant neural pathways to be awakened. Nor Spanish, which is my father's first language (so I would actually have another person to practice with). No, I pick Japanese, which is not only another langauge, but entirely different set of written characters.

The reason I want to learn Japanese is because I'm a big giant nerd with an intense love of Anime. And I'm not satisfied with watching the dubbed versions of my favorite shows and films. No, I prefer to watch them in Japanese with English subtitles. At first my reasoning was that the translation would be more accurate because you didn't have to match the words with the animated talking. Then, as I did some research on Japanese grammer, I discovered that it is completely different from English.

So, I watched a few Youtube lessons, which led me to the iTalki website. After procrastinating for about a month (and numerous email reminders from iTalki), I finally decided to find a tutor and schedule an lesson. I completed it this morning, and I guess it went okay. My sensei is very patient, but takes the approach that the bet way to learn it is to speak it. I will schedule follow up lessos, but I'm very nervous. Is my brain capable of doing this? I just don't retain knowledge the way I did when I was younger.

I guess I'll find out soon enough...wish me luck.

--Q