I didn't plan to write review initially, but one day I just came across Kawanishi Sensei profile on bruinwalk and realized that the reviews for J1 are totally not helpful. So, I will tell from perspective of student who had no prior Japanese knowledge (like 0 knowledge) and who in addition has dyslexia. Personally, I loved the class. I am on level 3 now and still with Kawanishi Sensei. But I will try to give comprehensive review, so you know what to expect. First, J1 has a lot of work to do, but it is nothing compared to J2 and J3. You have 2 homeworks every week, and each takes like half an hour to do, but it gets harder with time. You strar learning hiragana and katakana on first day, and expect to know them by the end of second week because week 3 you start kanji (chinese characters). You are expected to know all kanji from lesson (~40 kanji) every week and a half or so. There are bunch of quizes, such as vocab, lesson content (grammar), sentance recotations, compositions, etc. You end up having a test every week (in J3 you have 3 tests every week on avarage). Week ten is intense especially because you'll have 3-4 tests and maybe your final speaking test. There is no midterm, but there are two part final: speaking and listening/reading/grammar. So, yeah, it is going to take a lot of your time, but this constant testing literally forces you to work and study every day. This works great for language learning. For first time in my life I felt like I really learned language. I can chat a bit with my Japanese friends. So, it works! Now, Kawanishi Sensei will push you. She will use as little English is possible, but she is very understanding and nice. She will joke around and explain culture behind language. She is available to ask questions almost 24/7. She answers emails super fast and accomodates all needs. Like I had a final conflict, and she arranged special time for me to take J2 final. So, I highly recommend this class with Kawanishi Sensei to actually learn language, but it is bad class for passing your language requirement easily.

P.S. - discussions are crucuial for grade and understanding, so switch immidiatly if you don't like your TA.

The reviews here are pretty right, so this'll be short.
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I sincerely enjoyed Kawanishi's class. She is a top-tier professor--responds to email REALLY fast, very organized, very clear with lectures, engaging, very kind, etc. She would be so sorry for the tiniest mistakes she made (she once accidentally ended a Zoom meeting), but you can tell and see that she's trying her hardest during these difficult times and it's very endearing. 5/5!!

Kawanishi sensei is such a wonderful person and I'm so glad to have taken her class. I found the workload to be pretty tough at first, but that was because I wasn't keeping up with the material and was generally making my life harder. To do well, I recommend memorizing each unit's vocab ASAP. If you want to get the hang of grammar concepts, the problems at the end of each lesson are pretty helpful for that too. It was a little hard for me to follow her during lecture, so I also recommend reading the grammar points for a given chapter before class.

Here is a breakdown for this class as for Fall 2020 (subject to change upon next offering):

Class Attendance/Participation: 5%
Homework: 20%
Take-Home Compositions: 8%
Reading Logs for Extensive Reading: 5%
Vocab/Kanji Quizzes (VKQ): 10%
Lesson Quizzes (LQ): 12%
Midterm Oral Test: 10%
Final Exams: 30%

Thoughts about the material:

Homework: Multiple choice/fill in the blank/rearrange sentence questions on CCLE and can try as many times as you want before the due date and counts only your highest score. We got 4 of these a week due daily and were quick and easy so long as you knew the vocab and grammatical structure.

VKQ's/LQ's: VKQ's were multiple choice and tested on vocab/kanji recognition and lasted 10 minutes. LQ's were handwritten quizzes where you would have to write sentences according to what the question was asking you and lasted 20 minutes. Both were given after lecture and both were weekly, i.e. VKQ on Tuesday and LQ on Thursday.

Reading Logs and Take-Home Compositions: For reading logs, Kawanishi-sensei wanted us to read two passages on a free Japanese short story site each week and give our impressions of it in English. These are fairly quick to do depending on what type of passages you chose to read. As for take-home compositions, these were essentially short essays you would write according to the directions given. We had one first draft followed by a revised draft where we had to change some of what we originally wrote into Kanji we were expected to know how to write. This was for each composition. Overall short and simple and was good practice for handwriting.

Midterm and Final: Midterm was purely oral where we had to answer questions in Japanese. Final had both an oral and written portion, both reminiscent of the midterm and quizzes. Both did not have things you have not seen before and Kawanishi-sensei gives extensive practice beforehand which appear exactly on those tests.

Overall thoughts on the course:

This class is really good. Kawanishi-sensei makes everything straightforward and simple to understand as well as gives extensive resources for her students. Her office hours are also worth going to as even if you don't have any questions, you can just practice conversing in Japanese with her. All of the graded materials are straightforward, she doesn't try to curveball you or hit you with something you definitely cannot solve. Furthermore, everything you need is based off of the Genki I textbook (chapters 1-6) in case you don't like her as a professor. The only criticisms I have is that the workload can be heavy at times and you'll start to always feel a week behind since last week's material is being quizzed the following week, but on that week she'll be going over new material, even though you'll be studying for the quizzes, etc. However, the professor did her job well, which is all I can ask for in a school rife with professors who simply go through the motions, clock out, care more about their research than their actual students and pass the rest of the work to their TA's (looking at you South Campus). Overall, great professor in my book and looking forward to taking J2 and J3 with her.

As someone who had no prior knowledge of Japanese before this class, I feel as though I can give a good review. Personally I loved this class with Professor Kawanishi. She is super helpful with everything and is always willing t explain things. I am in J2 with her as well and am enjoying it thus far. With all Japanese courses at UCLA there is a fast pace. She starts of a little slow at first. Within the first week you should know hiragana and katakana. They are not really that hard and one thing she preaches is to really learn the words and then everything will come with it. In discussions, you will mostly just do practices with the person next to you from the book. I recommend having a friend in the class that you can practice with. If not then go to office hours. Both Prof Kawanishi and your TA will be willing to practice with you and help in any way. Really helped on getting a handle on particles. The class is really fun and the quizzes in class are easy and the final was like a quiz on steroids along with some conversation tests.

100% recommend :)

Don't take this class with her if you don't have any prior knowledge of Japanese. Many people in this class were actually from Japanese families, and I'm sure it wasn't too hard for them. Kawanishi does not do a good job of "leveling the playing field" for those who are coming in with some prior knowledge and those who aren't. There's also a lot of work - I expected that much - but the work didn't seem to help me actually do well in the class. I wanted to learn Japanese but this class made me change my mind. If you just need your language requirement completed and you have no prior exposure to Japanese, honestly, I'd pick something else unless you're willing to make this class your #1 priority.