Still confused about "wa" - can someone please help me?

Hello,

I began Rocket Japanese yesterday and I'm on 1.2 (tea time).  I know it's early on but I'm trying to get my head wrapped around "wa" used in the first two lessons.  From what I've read in the forum, it seems:

1.  You use it to indicate the subject/topic of the sentence (e.g. namae wa). 
2.  You use it to indicate a question with a rising tone (e.g. anata wa).

But then, I'm confused why it is used with konnichi-wa and konban-wa.   Is it to indicate that the day or night is the topic?  When I researched it online, the topic became too complicated for me to understand!  Any simplistic explanation would be so much appreciated :-)

I don't know if I'm trying to get too technical too early on and it will be explained later.  

Maybe Rachel can answer your question? (⌒.－)＝★

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=Xwo_E8DQq5I

 

Oh!  Well, that helped.  Now I look at the phrase very differently and 'wa' makes more sense with how I'm trying to understand it. 

Thank you  @}}>-----

In the greetings they are not topic markers, they are part of the word itself. It should not be thought of as a broken up word. The whole word is konnichiha or konbanha it is not a topic marker. Where as namae ha, anata ha it is to be a subject marker not connected to the word. The word for name is namae, the word for you is anata. Putting the ha (wa) after them indicates subject. Where as the greetings are just full words that happen to end in ha.

Ok, thank you.  

Grammar is a horribly weak point for me.  I grew up in England, and although English literature was my strongest subject and I grew up reading the classics (and lived in a household where we spoke in a more formalized fashion), I'm hopeless when it comes to the literal "grammar" and grammatical terms.  When I started taking this course, I had to do some quick research on the definition of verbs, nouns, particles, adjectives, etc.  Ugh!

As I'm progressing through the first module, I wish they had added a page to fully explain wa, ga, no, and o, as I'm having to take breaks and research them elsewhere.  I'm assuming they will explain them fully later on, or that perhaps intuitively it will start to make sense.