During the summer of 2005, a longtime Japanese teacher at a K-8 school in southwestern Pennsylvania unexpectedly resigned. The school, unable to recruit a new teacher for the 2005-2006 school year, chose to suspend the teaching of Japanese and to establish a committee to examine the foreign language program within the overall school curriculum. In this article, the authors present a study that examines the foreign language program at this school. Participants were 20 students from grade 4-8 who had taken Japanese classes from kindergarten through the 2004-2005 academic year. The findings showed that the program had been a somewhat positive language learning experience for these students. They easily recalled specific language learning activities from their previous study, shared their attitudes about these experiences, and claimed they missed learning Japanese. What they best retained from their classroom experience turned out to reflect the routine features of this curriculum--the use of song, target language experience through cultural activities, and unique explanations of Kanji co-created with their teacher and classmates. The findings also suggest that a sustained language learning experience is critical for students' foreign language development. (Contains 4 tables.)