Wow, you are the first Canadian I've seen that's used 'freshman' and 'sophmore' - that or Canada is rapidly changing. I started Japanese study at the end of secondary school and did just fine. My grades were never great - never had any firsts or anything, but I did okay. It was my 4th language at the time, but now my 2nd best... as I've not used the others since then.
Languages are just like anything - you learn them and then you move on, or your move with them and they move with you. Any language you learn will benefit you, so don't worry. First year Japanese (secondary or university) is very easy, so if you want a good grade, take it. Spend a week learning hiragana and katakana and you are set - the rest is child's play. Same with the first 150 or so kanji. After that, you will move into actual language and have to really work on studying or you won't do well.
Beginning is very very easy in Japanese. The middle is very hard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
beamthegreat 
Hi! As stated in the title, Im am thinking of taking a Japanese in my high school class, but I need your opinion/advices. The main reason I am hesitant to learn another language is mainly because I am worried that it will affect my grade. I know studying another language involves a lot of effort to memorize new vocabs, which will be very time consuming for me. As a result, I am afraid that studying japanese will affect my already-low grade. The second reason is because I will become a sophomore next year and I will have to learn my third language with a lot of freshman next year since I never took japanese class before.
How do you think I should deal with these problems and do you think I should learn japanese? Any opinion/comments/advices are welcome.