Yeah, we were taught Hiragana and Katakana the first week and a half, albeit I missed most of that stuff because I had to go back home for personal reasons, it was the easiest part.

I noticed a big difference between my first and second year. Besides different sensei thus teaching styles, the first year was really to hammer down the basics since we are expected to understand sensei as she instructs in Japanese. So I did find that sometimes it was a bit slow or repetitive during my first year but in part it was due so that we had a solid foundation for the coming years.