My sympathies, I'm in the same boat. Florida schools are SO frustrating. For example: There are two local colleges near me, and the highschool let's you dual enroll in the one, but the other one (which offers Japanese) is the one I want to go to. They won't let me unless I decide to graduate early, which I COULD do but I would really like to stay all for years. Yes, I took my third year of Spanish, but only because another school was offering a Japanese Exchange student Program, I was close to being accepted, but they canceled the trip because of SARS and the Iraqi War. Yes, the school system IS frustrating. I should know.

There's also a local church that offers Japanese coursed, but I found out later that you can only be enrolled if your parents were Japanese.

It's not that the Japanese language is obscure, it's that people think that it's obscure, and so don't think many people would like to learn the Japanese language. On the contrary, I bet that half of the students of my school would jump at the chance of learning ANY language besides French or Spanish.