You ' re going to find people here with a variety of opinions on this subject . No matter what , 13 hours a week of class time is not sufficient on its own to learn Japanese at a reasonable rate . You ' re going to have to supplement it with some practice and selfstudy on your own . Now a lot of this is going to depend on what sort of class is being offered . If it ' s a small class with a native speaker especially one trained to teach , it can be incredibly valuable to have access to that native speaker for improving some of the trickier things to learn on your own , like proper pronunciation . A large lecture with a poorly trained nonnative speaker ? I ' d probably pass unless you really need someone else to provide structure for your studies .