Okay.
1. Learn Kana asap. If you're dealing with any language that doesn't use romanized lettering, whether it's Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, whatever. Learn the writing system first to avoid romanized teaching. If your target language is Japanese, you should avoid any learning material that teaches via romaji (roman transliteration of Japanese) instead of the actual Japanese language. There are exceptions, but the rule proves to be true.
You can learn kana - both hiragana and katakana - within a few hours to a few days. One resource for this is Heisig's Remembering the Kana. You can find it on Amazon here, or just get it from the internet shop. You learn both syllaberies in three hours each as the book advertises. So if six hours isn't worth paying for, don't buy it, but I personally find it to be a worthwhile investment. Plus, it's cheap and quality should be paid for.
https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kana-Reading-Japanese-Syllabaries/dp/0824831640/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464822662&sr=8-1&keywords=remembering+the+kanaIf Heisig doesn't work for you, there's a tons of other resources online that do the job such as Tofugu:
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/2. After learning Kana buy a game or movie in your target language that has a lot of signage in your target language using the writing system you just learned. Signage is a great way to replace immersion if it's not available to you. If you're learning Spanish and you need signage, if you're near a local Spanish place just go to there and practice reading in Spanish. This step is mostly beneficial for languages that do not have Romanized lettering. Thankfully, Japanese is great for this because it's one of the top nations in the world for producing media, especially games, that allow you go at your own pace and immerse yourself in the details of the environment. Doing this for romanized languages is much harder. For example, there's lots of games that take place in France or Italy (Assassin's Creed) but how much signage do they have compared to modern settings? Very little. On the other hand, the benefit of these languages is you generally have wider access to those languages if you live in Europe or America, especially if your L2 (language 2) is Spanish.
Games that take place in Japan and have Kana:
Yakuza games are great at this. There's lots of signage of modern Japanese and you can use this as practice for your kana to help instill them. This allows you to start reading stuff in Japanese from literally day 1. Just from this image alone you should be able to make out words with kana. Whether you know what they mean or not is irrelevant, what matters is that reading this hardens the kana in you after learning them so you can recall them as easily as our own ABC's.
Other games with lots of kana all over the place are Shenmue:
Surprisingly, there's not a lot of Japanese games that take place in modern settings and have lots of kana in them.
If playing a game for a learning purpose isn't your style, you can just read websites that interest you. You can simply go to www3.nhk.or.jp/ or
www.famtsu.com and practice reading kana. You should be able to make a few things out with practice, especially katakana-based words. I suggest games instead though because you can play them at your own speed and while it costs money, you don't have to feel like you're overwhelmed by a shit ton of incomprehensible text.
3. Download Anki.
http://ankisrs.net/Anki is a website and app that teaches via SRS flashcards.
What is Anki?
Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it's a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.
Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup (via LaTeX), the possibilities are endless.
For example:
Learning a language
Studying for medical and law exams
Memorizing people's names and faces
Brushing up on geography
Mastering long poems
Even practicing guitar chords!
It has a large community and one of its main purposes is language learning. If you're learning a language, seriously just go to Anki and download a deck. For now, you're going to want to download a Kana deck and do those kana to drill them into your head.
One of the great things about Anki is you can make your own decks too. So if you're watching a tv show and don't quite understand a word, you can just write it down on a piece of paper, get a dictionary and find the translation. Then when you're finished watching, enter the word and the translation/context into your very own Anki media vocab deck and review later so that when it comes up again you'll know it.
Anki costs 25 dollars on the iOS app store but I swear to you it's fucking worth it. Using it right, you will have exceeded over 25 hours using that app within just a few weeks. It is free on Android.
4. Buy Assimil's Japanese With Ease and Heisig's Remembering the Kanji.
You can do these two in any order. You can do RTK before JWE or JWE before RTK. Maybe both at the same time. Just stick to your day to day schedule.
I personally suggest doing both at the same time if possible.
Japanese with Ease is a textbook. Remembering the Kanji is a method to help you learn the meaning of, how to write, and remember all of the regular use (joyo) kanji as directed by the Japanese Ministry of Education which is 2,136 characters as of 2010. Heisig's method is a revolutionary way of maintaining Kanji knowledge and is one of the most respected and highly praised models of teaching the writing system today. The course for RTK should last upwards between 3 months to 6 months depending on your rate. On average, most people do between 20-25 kanji per day. Some do 10 per day. Doing 25 per day should get you finished with the book in three months time with a daily and regular schedule. Doing RTK is a good litmus test for Japanese learners because it weeds out people who don't have that much of an interest in learning the language and makes it a full on daily investment.
Example of RTK:
Amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-Characters/dp/0824835921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464824752&sr=8-1&keywords=remembering+the+kanjiIt should be obvious that you should use Anki as an assistant for this book. Download a deck for the most recent version of RTK and go to town. Anki will help you review the kanji you learned that day and the ones before that too.
I suggest Assimil over the most oft mentioned Genki because Genki's main purpose is that of a grammar book. While Genki is great, it's a college textbook mostly aimed for college students. If you're taking a college class on Japanese, chances are you're using Genki. But Genki isn't made for self learners. Assimil is. Assimil is also better.
Assimil is made of a passive stage and an active stage. The passive stage lasts 50 lessons. The active is another 50 lessons. The reason I suggest Assiil over Genki is because Japanese with Ease comes with cds that tie to its lesson plans. Each lesson begins with and is entirely about the audio on the cd. The cds contain ZERO English. Only Japanese. The point is to listen to the cd audio, look at the translation, then look at the Japanese in the textbooks, and repeat what they're saying. A description of the Assimil method as per Dutch With Ease's explanation:
1. Listen to the text with the book closed. It does not matter if you do not understand what is said. You will gain a general impression of the sounds, hearing the pronunciation without being influenced by the spelling.
2. Listen to the recording a second time while looking at the English translation.
3. Read the Dutch text aloud (with the aid of the phonetic transcription if necessary). Be sure you understand the meaning of each sentence, comparing it with the translation as required.
4. Now read the Dutch text again, but this time without looking at the translation.
5. Listen to the recording twice, once while looking at the English translation, and once while looking at the Dutch text.
6. Listen to the recording again with the book closed. At this point you should understand what is being said.
7. Listen to the recording once more. Stop the machine after each sentence, and try to repeat it aloud.
8. Carefully read the comments several times. Examine the Dutch sentences being explained. These notes are very important.
9. Read the exercises. Repeat each sentence several times. The exercises review material from the current lesson and from preceding lessons. If you have forgotten certain words, consult the English translation.
10. Examine the examples of sentence structure. They show how words and phrases are combined in Dutch, which is not always the same as in English.
As you can see, this is thorough. Personally, what I also did is after learning what each thing means, I listened to the audio again, and I translated it into English. Then I look at the English translation I made, and I translated THAT into Japanese writing it in kana without listening to the audio. This made me really, REALLY, good at not only listening comprehension, but also translation, writing, and memorizing kana. The audio also is done by native speakers so when you repeat, you're going to sound like those native speakers. Great for speaking practice too.
One Assimil lesson is fine a day. Two at most during the passive stage. During Active, you're going to go through so much shit that one lesson is enough per day.
One of Japanese with Ease's weaknesses is that it comes with romaji. But it eventually knocks it off and the wheels come off. Someone who already learned the kana from the previous kana practice should be ignoring the romaji at all costs. Some people even black it out. Fuck romaji. FUCK ROMAJI.
For seeing how fucking effective Assimil is for language learning, just check this out:
Assimil has been around since the early 1900's. If you're learning any language, look into the At Ease series for that language. If it's good (not all of them are apparently good), then you can thank me later. Seriously.
One reason I suggest doing both at the same time is because I remember early on, I did this and one of the first kanji you learn in RTK is 早 which means early. The first lesson of Assimil uses this character. It's actually the first fucking word. That was amazingly satisfying, reading a kanji like that. Just like that, and knowing what it meant. But in this case, it meant hurry, not early. The word also was はやく(hayaku). While RTK does not teach what words mean in Japanese, only in English, and only one meaning (the most common one), doing Assimil side by side or even after RTK will help you fill in the blanks.
Unfortunately, in a lot of the western world, Assimil isn't exactly widely known. This can make it rare to find and sometimes expensive. But it's worth it. If you cannot find or afford it, the internet shop offers a great alternative assuming it's the latest edition.
5. Finishing Assimil and RTK should give you a base knowledge to start going at native material. After you should finish RTK, you should start doing the Core series, which is vocab. There's Core 2k, Core 4k, Core 6k, Core10k;etc. and doing this will help you fill in what those kanji actually mean in Japanese. Doing Assimil should also help greatly. Download Core via anki like usual and set your daily minimum limit. This is where the real work begins, because even at this point, native materials pose a challenge.
To help supplement this you need to fill in gaps of knowledge and have a firm understanding of Japanese grammar. Assimil should help with that, but extra is great too. Buy Japanese The Manga Way. It's a grammar book that uses manga to teach Japanese grammar. It's also the best grammar book ever and should be the basis for all grammar books in language learning going forward. Unfortunately, not every language works like Japanese though. In English for instance, comic writing is stylized and weird and normal people don't speak like that. But manga - depending on the genre - is spoken like actual every day Japanese. Also again, ignore the romaji.
The Tofugu review of JTMW is pretty clear on why it's so essential:
https://www.tofugu.com/reviews/japanese-the-manga-way/One of JTMW's weaknesses though is that it has no tests or quizzes or work. Thankfully, some people have made Anki decks for it. Anki fucking owns:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/jtmwGoing through JTMW should you seal your understanding of Japanese sentence structure. Now pick up Graded Readers.
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Graded-Readers-Level-Vol/dp/4872177118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464827487&sr=8-1&keywords=japanese+graded+readersThis series in particular is fantastic. It goes from levels 0-4. 0 is suggested on where you should start. They come with their own stories and cd's. The cd's should be listened to along with the stories. Read that shit. Any vocab you're not familiar with, add it to a deck.
More actual Japanese from excellent native sources:
https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292?ie=UTF8&ref_=redir_mobile_desktop&ref_=s9_simh_gw_d0_g14_i1
https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=6V11Y3ZFDPQPPETX4W0H
https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568364156/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51qm7gZSHWL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR110%2C160_&refRID=32GJT0CQ6Q0W5CAH9JWG
https://www.amazon.com/Shadowing-Speak-Japanese-Beginner-Intermediate/dp/4874243541/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464827754&sr=1-1&keywords=shadowing
http://www.yesasia.com/us/yotsubato-1/1036602702-0-0-0-en/info.htmlSurprisingly, I don't suggest reading children's books because they lack any kanji and the words run together and as someone who can read kanji at that point, it's just tedium. Some of the aforementioned titles include children's stories but with adult writing. By learning kanji, you're learning how to read and speak Japanese like an adult. Remember that how we speak English as adults is a lot different than how children are taught to speak. Japanese works similarly. Don't even bother unless there's kanji IMO. There's much better sources for learning at that point.
6. If you want to practice writing and reading your target language (any language), join Lang-8 and Skype.
http://lang-8.com/It supports multiple languages. It's a social network meets language study. You make friends with natives of your target language. The point is you write something in your target language, and one of your native friends who knows that language corrects what you wrote and makes suggestions. Then you help people learn your native language. It's a give and take process. Some people (like me) write what what they're thinking in their native language so someone trying to learn English can read what I'm writing and then read the Japanese version I wrote. That way they can compare and help themselves too and we can help each other get better. It's an amazing resource. You can use Lang 8 with Genki if you get Genki. Genki is made for a classroom setting and one of the things about that is that there's homework to be graded. You obviously can't grade your own homework on your own. So one way to use Lang 8 is writing your Genki homework in Lang 8 and having someone correct it. The main issue with Lang 8 is it is entirely dependent on that persons level of language. We obviously all don't use the same rules and styles of the same language, but it's generally an amazing resource no matter what language you're learning.
Skype will allow you to talk directly to natives who speak your target language. There are programs on the internet that people do and speak to each other to help listening comprehension, speed, vocab, whatever.
7. Read Japanese sites regularly, still review your Anki decks, play games in Japanese. You've made it past the hump.
While playing Dragon Quest 7 iOS any time there was grammar or vocab I didn't understand, I'd stop what I was doing. Grab a piece of paper and pen and write it down. I'd look at a translation on Jisho (THE premiere Japanese online dictionary - found here -
http://jisho.org/) and then write that down too. When it came time to review in Anki, I'd add it to the personal vocab deck and make sure I got it. Same applies to those other native materials mentioned above.
Learning Japanese isn't as hard as people make it. It just takes a lot of diligence and you have to really want it. I tried learning Spanish recently and learning the basics and getting past beginner Spanish is pretty easy. But past the beginner phase and into intermediate it's totally different and gets overly complicated and annoying. I don't like it at all. Japanese is the opposite for me. Getting past beginner is a battle. But once you're intermediate it's smooth sailing for the most part. For example, Japanese grammar and sentence structure is fucking easy compared to Spanish or especially English. Its biggest obstacle is the writing system and once you've got that you're good. I originally did this because I was sick of waiting for DQ7r. I beat DQ7 iOS and I met my initial goal. Now I'm working on getting even better. Just ordered Shadowing Intermediate to Advanced and some other materials (another textbook) such as Tobira. I'd like to become advanced so I can use it as a possible career move and possibly work in Japan for a while to make a name for myself.
Doing RTK should take 3-6 months depending on your rate. Assimil should take 100 days (one per lesson) for both phases. Core 2k doesn't take too long after doing Assimil which fills in the gaps. After that, you've got a good foundation in becoming good at the language. Personally it took me three years to be able to get this far since I made this thread. IMO, if you've got the drive you can do it in one or two with three or four hours per day of studying. But remember, even one to two hours is better than zero and showing up is actually 100% of the work. With doing something rather than nothing, you'll get to your goal no matter what it is.
You just have to want it and enjoy it.
Don't learn a language because you think you need to. Do it because you enjoy it. The language to learn is the one you're passionate about.
Queen out.
