Continuing down Hirigana Highway

First post in a week or so, I know. Hard to support a ritual when you're not where the ritual is supposed to take place. (I'll need to figure something out for thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, cause there's no way in the nine hells that I'm gonna be taking that long of a break from this, with the trip looming ever closer!) I've had a very busy week or so with several major assignments that were due, and not one, not two, but three major tests. Long story short, I've been letting the excuses win, and I need to get back to the path and continue trudging along. Without further adieu, I shall dive back into the sea of characters that I must learn.

To sum up the last lesson, there are 5 basic vowel characters, a, i, u, e, and o. I drew them out in my notebook. I'll need to find a way to type them if I want to keep you guys up to date with what they look like too.

Onward!

Today we move on to more complex kana (characters) as far as pronunciation goes, combining a consonant and a vowel.
Most fall under a basic pattern, of:
a
ka
sa
ta
na

but every once in a while there is an exception: for instance in stead of:
i
ki
si
ti
ni

it actually goes:
i
ki
shi
chi
ni

With si and ti replaced with shi and chi.
The other biggest one to remember is tsu instead of tu.

Otherwise the notable exceptions are that the Y(vowel) column only has 3 kana: ya, yu, yo,
and the W(vowel) column only has two kana: Wa and Wo. Wo is pronounces strangely, almost completely dropping the w and pronouncing it more like "oh".

R(vowel) is weird, because it is pronounced not like Arrr, but more a blend of the Arr noise and the ELL noise (R) and (L) so to the untrained ear they will sound more like:
la
li
lu
le
lo

than:
ra
ri
ru
re
ro

HOWEVER! It is a mix of the two, about 75% R and 25% L sound. It's tricky to get, and I'm gonna need to go back and practice it tomorrow night too. Note: This is why the Japanese have such a tricky time pronouncing their Rs and Ls, and deciding which goes where; because in their language the two letters are one, and as such there is no difference between them.

And with that, I am going to call it a night. Let this muscle memory sink in before I overload it with other things. I'll completely review all of this tomorrow.