Let's Learn Japanese! Or try to, anyway.

KANJI SAVES LIVES.
Because there are so many words that sound the exact same and when it's written out, it's impossible to know what you mean if you just write it out in hiragana (well, okay, it might be possible, but no one wants to go through that effort. no one does.)

In regards to importing things, if you're going to import something, go one step further and get a game that you really like completely in Japanese. I know that sounds stupid, but hear me out! I did it and, after a while of seeing the same thing over and over after having looked it up, I started learning what things meant. Eventually, I was able to play the game with little to no problems. It's really rewarded to see something that was once nothing but gibberish and go "AWW YEAH I KNOW WHAT THAT MEANSSSSS".
and then you do a tiny fistpump to yourself because you. are awesome. C:

Immersing yourself in the language you're learning is important too, so you can learn how things sound when they naturally flow. Watch Japanese TV shows (INTERNET no excusessss <3), listen to Japanese music, read Japanese articles, things like that. It goes a long, long way.

What kind of game would you suggest to start off with, something action-y where there isn't that much text (To go easy.) or something like a dating sim where it's mainly all text (Faster to pick up the words/kanji.)? o:

I think memrise has pretty okay lessons for learning hiragana and katakana.
..wait what I just went back to check and everything has changed.

Tricky question. Honestly? I'd say dating sims, if only because the lack of a lot of dialogue in an action games means that whatever words there are are going to be really complicated, at least from my experience. Alternatively, get games that are directed towards children (like Pokemon).

I personally went out on a limb and played Princess Maker 4 on the DS, which was tricky and required a dictionary a lot, then moved on to Love Plus, which was just a little bit harder because they use slang, but you also have someone saying most of the text that shows up.
But I'm insane, so dating sims are probably the way to go, since the market is for younger (middle school/high school level) people.

JUST REMEMBERED WHY LOVE PLUS IS KINDA REALLY HARD.
There's this mode called Love Plus Mode where you can actually talk to the girls. In Japanese.
And they usually understand.
I've only been using this for like three minutes and I've already had to scrape my mind to think up responses to some of these questions, hahaha.

Honestly, the girls can't handle difficult questions either. I did try it several times, and they can only answer simple questions, like "what time is it?" "how're u?" "u're cute" something like that.

Japanese in some ways for me is easier if you want to learn the speaking part. I'm quite okay if it's using Japanese in conversation. But if it's reading or writing...I give up. Kanji isn't my forte (can't blame the kanji, since it's due to me not being diligent...dududu~)

Dating sims (or VNs in general) are great and I'm not just saying that because of the forum. The most important part is having both text and voice so you practise both listening and reading and have two ways for looking up words you don't know. Many of these games also have a button to review past dialogue and even replay the lines which can be an absolute lifesaver if you didn't catch a pronunciation or only figure out the context halfway through the conversation.

Also, they tend to have everyday settings which means you pick up more generally useful terms and less dumb crap that will make you look like an idiot. Embarrassing story time: When I first went to Japan, my mother gave me some souvenir stuff to take along and give to people I met there (she has an enormous hidden stash of that stuff). One of those people was a Japanese friend of my neighbour's who was introduced to me by email; I'd never met her before.

We met up about a week or so after I got there, when I still had basically no Japanese under my belt and was spending most of my evenings watching subtitled Kurosawa movies. Her English was decent, thankfully, but when the conversation wrapped up and I got out the thing I was going to give her, I figured OKAY THIS IS IT LET'S DO THIS and strung together two of the three grammar elements I knew so far and a word I'd picked up to say "This is from my mother".

Except, of course, the form of "mother" I used was an antiquated term I'd absorbed from the samurai flicks, ridiculously haughty and used only prior to the Meiji period. The friend gave me a Look but was way too polite to say anything. She only told me when we met up a second time a few months later (by that time I'd figured out myself how dumb I'd been) and said it made her think I was an "interesting person", except no I'm really not I'm just bad at Japanese.

Anyway, it stuck and I now refer to my Mom as my Honored Samurai Mother in Japanese conversation. My mother does not know about this.

So yeah, be careful what you learn from video games and movies unless you want Japanese people to think you're an interesting person.

Really? I just finished having a conversation with Rinko about what clothes she likes, what food she likes, what her favorite color is...basic questions, but it was a somewhat lengthy conversation, haha~

I think it's easier to speak Japanese because you can get the gist of what someone's trying to say, as opposed to written form where it's not nearly as easy.

Speaking of textbooks, I also like Adventures in Japanese. Granted, I've only used a few different Japanese textbooks, but I like Adventures in Japanese way better than Yookoso. However, I think having a variety of textbooks is never a bad thing. If you aren't picky, you might be able to find some resources for cheap at the Good Will or Powell's or whatever the equivalent is in your area. I recently saw a copy of Yookoso at a super market where people had donated books to be sold to make money for some sort of charity. It was a really great deal. My advice is to just keep an eye out when you are at used book stores or book fairs because you might stumble upon a bargain. Even though I'm not terribly fond of Yookoso, I like having more than one style of Japanese text book because you learn some things in Yookoso they don't teach you in Adventures in Japanese and vice versa.

That said, I wouldn't suggest anyone skip out on lunch to buy a Japanese text book or something when there are a lot of good resources for free online, but if you have a little extra money, it doesn't hurt to look next time you're in a place that sells used books.

I agree with MulMizu, dating simulation is my choice as well. Lack of action and not-too-heavy-yet-not-pack-with-lines story are the advantages of it. Also be a bit careful with games toward children. Since most of the time, Japanese children game uses (most of the time) only hiragana. Sometimes it can be hard to find the word, since usually words in dictionary is shown as kanji. This happens to me when I play Eyeshield and Detective Conan. Especially Detective Conan...all convos are in hiragana. Easy to read, but hard to understand.

For me, the first Japanese game that I tried was Samurai Spirit RPG. Don't ever try it, unless you have a very good Japanese. Iirc the game uses old Japanese words (the type you'll hear in samurai anime). And they only have text of convos, but no voices. Guess I was too enthusiastic back then, since I do like Samurat Spirits series. ^^;

Ah, you got Rinko? I got Manaka instead. She's cute but can be a bit annoying sometimes. Xd

Yeah, the convo would be like that indeed. Iirc you can tease them as well. Manaka's expression was precious when I teased her xD. Also, iirc you can play rock-paper-scissor with them ne? But you have to use Japanese words of rock, paper and scissor.

Yeah, and to be added especially if you watch anime quite many times. Eventually the words would be stuck in your head.

I have one file with each girl.
If anything, just doing something as simple as having that makes learning Japanese easier. Each girl uses different forms of Japanese; Rinko is incredibly casual and will toss around slang like nobody's business, Nene speaks more normal Japanese, and Manaka uses incredibly polite Japanese.

It's a good way to learn how to speak with different people, haha!

As for the Janken, basically:
- CHO/KI = Scissors
- PON = Paper
- GU (goo) = Rock

Thanks for the words~ :) I always had trouble with scissors honestly. For some reasons, I always said it wrong xD.

I think I have one for each girls...but keeping up with them was just intolerable. I'd rather spend time with my boyz in Tokimemo, than with these girls honestly XD. Though I won't mind if Konami decided to make Love Plus for Girls... (hmmm...having Shiba for my own pixel boyfriend...DO.WANT *drools)

A Love Plus aimed at girls? That would be interesting. I wouldn't say no. In fact, I'd say a pretty enthusiastic "YES, PLEASE!" instead.

I WILL MAKE A RESPONSE TO THIS IN THE JAPANESE STEREOTYPE THREAD WOOSH!

That is... oddly adorable?

I got to borrow Rosetta Stone from a friends, and it worked good enough for me, at least in the very beginning. Haven't opened it in a while, though, I'll take a look through all of these links.

I did use a good Japanese site that went through all of the hiragana and gave words that used those hiraganas and tests and it really helped me since I had a plan to follow. I think it also had a 'how to write each hiragana' and some of those had images to better remember and recognize each hiragana. Like how 'Tsu' looks like a wave and could be connected to a 'tsunami', 'to' looked like a 'toe', 'ne' looks like a 'cat (neko)', 'ka' looked like a car driving off the road etc. I'm pretty sure they were on the same site. I need to find that site again...

EDIT: Lol, a quick search and I found this site:
Over here

So it didn't have that hiragana-images.... i need to look for that one as well.

For those of you who are working on learning hiragana and katakana, these sites I recently came across might be of use to you.

The first provides both stroke order and sound for both hiragana and katakana, the second serves as a way to test your recognition.

http://www.umich.edu/~umichjlp/kana.html
http://www.realkana.com/hiragana/

Also, while the site's a little old, JOSHU: Japanese Self Help Utility hosts a number of useful resources on their site.

I... I speak a romance language too.

Does that mean that I...

...

Yes it is, but luckily unless you go to Japanese class, it's unlikely you have to write a lot of difficult kanji! Even if you live in Japan because computers yesss.

I think I need a study buddy who will regularly poke me on my progress of Japanese. I'm planning to just rote learn all the N2 kanji then I can play Japanese games!

My Japanese learning history is bit weird, I did the kanas online, and then did Japanese in school, giant gap, then did more Japanese at university. But being so into Japanese entertainment and having a kanji background, I pick up tons of words so I really don't know what my level is.

For people who knows hiragana and katakana, try reading raw manga might be rewarding too! As long as it doesn't have too much complicated vocabulary. So high school stuff or if you are familiar with that particular universe' special vocab, it's okay too I guess. Do note that manga use super casual Japanese so don't ever use it to a Japanese person you just met!

Great topic guys. I've been studying Japanese for about 15 months now. My primary source has been the JapanesePod101.com website that Anabanana and Canuck mentioned. The main pluses are:

• The lessons are well designed and are in 15-minute bite-sized chunks.
• They focus on teaching real-world Japanese (they originally started as a project by a company that specializes in providing translators in Tokyo and all their lessons include one Japanese host and one native English-speaking host). They go over how Japanese is used both at the casual level and at the more formal business level, they include cultural commentary when appropriate.
• I really like their Flashcards which include Kanji-only cards, word-spoken-in-Japanese audio, Kanji-and-Kana, Romaji, and English. You can turn the options on or off as desired (I turned of the Romaji). In particular I find the word-spoken-in-Japanese audio cards a real strength that I can't get when making my own custom cards.
• If you have a premium subscription they have the lesson dialogs setup so that you can click on a line on the website and it reads just that line to you.

Minuses are:

• The lessons are originally podcasts, so there is very limited practice opportunity (it's mostly just listening, although as mentioned above, the dialogs are on their websites, they also have writeups of the lessons explaining the grammar elements sometimes along with a few -- but not enough -- written practice questions).
• I've heard complaints that they spam you a lot with e-mail, but at least as a paid customer (and I presume as a free customer as well) there's an option to turn it off in your account settings. I told them I didn't want any e-mail from them and I haven't gotten an e-mail since then.

If you do decide to use JapanesePod101.com and want to become a paying customer, I recommend signing up month-to-month until one of their sales hits. I've seen sales as high as 30% off. I ended up getting a two-year subscription during one of their sales.

After going for about 9 months with only JapanesePod101.com I felt that while I understood the grammar theory fairly well and I was picking up vocabulary, I wasn't really getting things down because of the lack of real solid practice. This is where I think Rosetta Stone can be very useful. I spent about 3-months going heavily through Rosetta Stone. I think it would have been frustrating starting out with Rosetta Stone, or only using Rosetta Stone, but I found it invaluable as a supplement. It really pounds sentence structure into your brain, it forced me to repeatedly practice stuff that I had learned about with JapanesePod101.com that I only knew at an intellectual surface level. I also like that with Rosetta Stone you can choose to use just Kanji (with Kana when needed), Kana, or Romaji -- I've actually got it set to Kanji with Furigana (which means little Hirigana over the Kanji telling you how to pronounce things that you don't recognize). The big downside of Rosetta Stone (aside from the cost) is there's no explanation at all about what grammar concepts they are trying to convey. The pictures actually do a surprisingly good job conveying what's going on (I was particularly impressed that they were able to distinguish past and present pretty easily just using their little pictures), but for some of the more advanced grammatical concepts, without seeing them first in JapanesePod101.com, I don't think I would have known what was going on.

One thing that I don't think is widely known about Rosetta Stone that makes a huge difference is that it includes free lessons online with native speaking teachers. My Japanese 1-3 set included 3 months of free lessons, and I've continued on with the lessons after the 3-month period for $10/month. During the summer when I had maximum scheduling flexibility I was actually getting three 1-hour long lessons in a week. Usually the lessons have 2-3 students total in them, although I've sometimes ended up in lessons with just me and the teacher, so basically a private lesson (that's pretty rare though). The teachers are extremely patient. While their questions are generally based on the Rosetta Stone material, they seem fine with you "going off the reservation" and using vocabulary you've learned elsewhere. One limitation though is at least through level 7 (each set is 4 levels, I've finished 7/12 levels) Rosetta Stone only does formal Japanese.

In addition about three months in, I got a copy of Remembering the Kanji. I've managed to get down around 1800 of the 2100 Jōyō kanji a Japanese high school student will have learned by the time they graduate. I read in a lot of places that cramming the Kanji down would really help accelerate your Japanese learning, and I am starting to get a lot of benefits. But it has been a huge undertaking getting them down. I'd say I've probably spent about 30% of my Japanese learning time just studying Kanji instead of learning more grammar or words, and a lot of it really is just rote repetition. I probably spend 15-20 minutes a day just reviewing Kanji. That should drop over time, but right now it's a big time chunk.

Final recommendation everyone should definitely get a Spaced Repetition System (SRS) going with their vocabulary. AIUI SRS's are pretty widely studied at this point and are recognized as the best way to maintain a foreign language vocabulary. Without an SRS you're either going to forget stuff or spend more time repeating stuff than you need to. I think probably the most widely used one is Anki, which has the added benefit of being free (except the iPad version). I run Anki for all my Kanji characters and some of my Japanese vocabulary. The rest of my Japanese Vocabulary I use JapanesePod101.com's internal SRS flashcard system (mostly because I want the audio). I used JapanesePod101.com to memorize their list of 1000 essential words and am now using it to memorize their 2000 most used words list.

I've been trying to find sources of Japanese that I can actually read. I'd be very interested to see what you all have been able to find.

I think for my advanced-beginner level my best website is the hukumusume.com website. It has children's fables which can be viewed in Japanese with Kanji, Japanese with Hirigana only, or Japanese with English translations for each sentence. In addition each of the fables has a corresponding audio mp3 file where they read the story to you. It's still a stretch for me, but I can mostly read them, although I typically need to look up 15-20 words for each story (I've been using a combination of tangorin.com combined with Google translate to double check my understanding). I've been rather surprised to discover that most of the words I don't know are the conjunctions, not the nouns and verbs.

Before I found hukumusume.com I was trying to read Kids Goo, which is a children's version of one of the Japanese search websites. This site is great in that it has a lot of 5th grade or so content. It includes picture books of animals and plants, an entire section on dinosaurs, a section which gets updated everyday with 5th grade science news and information, an astronomy section which is regularly updated. Unfortunately it was a really too big a stretch for me -- it's probably about 3 grade levels too advance for me. Also another great thing about hukumusume is the audio files for the stories, there's no equivalent on Kids Goo.

For videos I've found PocoyoJapan which is kind of fun and is relatively simple (I can probably understand maybe about 60% of it) although it's relatively little amounts of speech per minute, which means its probably not an efficient use of study time. I also discovered Anpanman which is apparently the most popular cartoon for 1-12 year old Japanese kids. There's a bunch of subtitled episodes available on Youtube like this one or this one (turn on Youtube closed captions to see the English translations). Unfortunately at my current level I find these a bit frustrating. With subtitles on, I recognize a lot of words, but I'm still completely hopeless with subtitles off, even though these are supposedly popular with 3-year olds :-(

hukumusume.com also has a Youtube channel up, although it's mostly the audio from their website played over picture slides. No English translations, although I just discovered when going their to get the link for this post, that they have Japanese closed captions! Hopefully that will help me figure out what's going on at least a little bit.

ydejin, have you considered trying books like Exploring Japanese Literature or Read Real Japanese?

They may be above your level, but if you're really hurting for things to read and you have the money, you might want to look into them. Based on two I listed, the books provide just about everything you'd need to understand the story if you've got a handle on the grammar, a knowledge of kana and some kanji, and a willingness to take the time to look things up (either in the book or at some other outside source).

If you want a better idea of what the books have, my copies include a recording (either on CD or available for download), an in-book translation, liberal use of furigana, and (at least in the case of Reading Real Japanese) an explanation of some of the idioms or "unusual" phrases that were used for each of the stories.

Also, exactly what do you mean by formal Japanese? Does it include keigo and teineigo/"humble" and "honorific" forms or only "-masu" forms? I've never used Rosetta Stone, so I'm a little curious.

Apologies if I screwed up my tag. I've never used it before and any explanation of how to do so was buried so deep in my search results that I thought it easier to try figuring it out on my own.

Interesting! These do look a bit above my level, but I'm working on this pretty hard, so hopefully I'll be at that level in the next year or so.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Rosetta Stone sections 1-7 (which corresponds to Level I and most of Level II) uses -masu / -desu only. I've kind of assumed that if I get further, it will also cover informal verb forms, but I've stalled out on the 8th section mostly because I ran into some grammar where I wasn't quite sure what they were trying to say, so I went back and did another season on JapanesePod101.com (just about finished with Beginner Season 4 -- I'd already completed Newbie Seasons 1-5). I've got another 5 sections of Rosetta Stone left, so hard to say for sure what they'll cover, I'm not that far over the half-way point. They might still cover sonkeigo or kenjōgo, although I think this is one area where I think the Rosetta Stone model will do badly. There's no explanation on what's going on just a photo or series of photos, so I'm not quite sure how they would indicate the relationship between the individuals, beyond possibly having one person be a child and the other an adult -- but of course that wouldn't be sufficient to really teach when to use what.

I've been meaning to go back to Rosetta Stone, but there's just so much to do trying to get this language down. I've been pushing to get another 100 Kanji down (I'd like to get the Jōyō kanji all done by the end of the year). As mentioned above, I started trying to read real websites, which I hope will provide a nice complement to my more formal learning. I've been working through Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar website to review what I learned previously on JapanesePod101.com. I've also been sitting on a copy of Genki which is what the students use at the university where I teach. I went through the first chapter a while back, and I've been meaning to use it to get some writing practice in.

It does feel like when I push on one area -- say reading skills instead of writing skills or vocabulary instead of grammar, one of the other areas starts getting rusty. I've been really pounding on vocabulary (with the 2000 most common words from JapanesePod101.com) but while I was doing that, my verb conjugation skills that had gotten pretty good over the summer went down the drain. I also recently had to go back and practice my Hirigana (I've mostly got it down for reading but I was goofing up a few of my stroke orders when writing) and I need to go back over the Katakana, which I've never quite had down as well as the Hirigana.

Anpanman is great! I also love Pythagoras' Switch (Pi-ta-go-ra su-i-chi!) and Kogepan. Doremon is always a good option too.

I used to read a lot of Doraemon manga. That was really fun and helpful.

Looks interesting. There are a lot of websites with copies online and ... alas they are all in English :-( There's a somewhat local Japanese Bookstore (Kinokuniya) that's supposed to be pretty good. I may try to look for it next time I'm in the area.

Oh, I almost forgot about this site. A friend introduced me to kanjibox.net a while back. It quizzes you on your kanji vocab in sentences and drills and has these little quizzes that you can take as well. The vocabulary can go from beginner to advanced and the levels are scaled too the vocab required to take the Japanese proficiency tests. So like if you're training for JLPT 5 then the kanji they'll test you on are all the kanji present in the test. It helps with memorization and reading kanji, but not actually writing it though. Also, you need to make an account, that's free, or log in through your facebook since its sort of a facebook app. I found it useful in remembering my kanji though and reading kanji has gotten a bit easier too. My friend used it to study for her JLPT and it seemed to work for her too.

This thread is a really good idea. :)

Most resources that I use have already been mentioned. I'll second any recommendations for Anki, Denshi Jisho or Remembering the Kana/Kanji.

I would also like to recommend this Kanji recognizer site. It's the best one I've found so far.
The site allows you to write any kanji you want into a box. The site will then give you suggestions on what kanji you drew.
You do need some basic knowledge of stroke order for the more complicated kanji, but so far it's managed to recognize about 90 % of everything I've written.

It will not you give any information about the kanji however, so you still have to copy it to somewhere else. But sometimes I feel it's easier to draw a likeness instead of looking up the radicals.

WHAT IS THIS BEAUTIFUL MAGIC?!

I just finished my fourth year of Japanese classes a few weeks ago, and I'm waiting for my intensive class (one that squishes a year of college Japanese into one semester) to start in May. I have to say, if you take classes and have a break, practice, practice, PRACTICE! When I stopped taking Spanish, I was kind of shocked at how quickly I was forgetting stuff until I made a conscious effort to practice it. This especially applies to kanji; they're pretty easy to forget.

I used to have the Kotoba app, which is a really nice Japanese dictionary, on my iPod, but it takes up a LOT of memory, and it looks like they've started charging for it. Also, I'm seconding the recommendation for the Rikaikun browser app. I use it on a daily basis, and it's awesome.

well.. I just followed a link and hooo Randi' did it. Seems that we are fated to get along, Randi'.

So I started to study japanese on my own, 6 years ago. because I had the opportunity to travel in Japan ( to celebrate my 30, I auto offered myself a travel, Japan was elected half by chance, for this reason: the flight landed in Tokyo exactly on my birthday, and that is something I'll never forget)
So , I studied quite hard 6 month, and landed in Japan knowing katakanas , hiragana, and circa 80 kanjis, the most basics ( first year of nursery school.. I had the vocabulary of a 3 years old :D): numbers, directions, days, animals ( to recognise on the menu if something was made of beef, pork , poultry or fish.. and avoid Shrimps), Man/woman ( and this is crucial when it comes to toilets)
These 80 kanjis were useful on a daily basis I must admit. But not enough to discuss with people, so I tried to stick with people knowing japanese better than I do ( I must say, the travel agency is online, so you can virtually get to know your co-travellers via forum before the trip, and this is great! They also organise dinners with japanese people who learn french or english, so you really meet people there.. )
Then, 5 long years without any possibility to travel, so I stopped to learn. And just got back to it past year, when I decided to go there again. I had almost forgottent everything, BUT the good part is that learning again is much more easy. So I managed to learn around 130 kanjis this time ( I always struggle to remind on-yomi and kun-yomi, thats the most difficult for me, I always tend to remember only one, generally kun-yomi). And very basic sentences. So this time, using the wonderful free time I have at work ( tourism is a very quiet field in January, so I can read at work :D), I'll continue the work, I hope to learn a total of 200 kanjis by next summer. I palan the next travel for this autumn, so, this is a erfect reason to keep up the work.

I've got a lot of books, apps, but sadly for you, most of them are in french.
This one has english, German, Spanish, Russian, Portugues, Thai, Polish, Chinese, Swedish and French version, though. I like the french version a lot, because you actually can practice the kanji by level (for the JPLT) or by school level ( to see what a native child have to know by the end of the school year).

http://fr.appbrain.com/app/obenkyo/com.Obenkyo#descriptionsection

here is the website of the programmers
http://atomusk.free.fr/?lang=fr

and it's FREE!
these are for android, but I'm pretty sure ther is an IOS version somewhere

Japan Activator is a website i use too, there are also Spanish and english versions ( I like the progress system, using judo belts :))
http://www.japan-activator.com/fr/news
it was totally free some month ago, but sadly, new content requires the premium access.
They have an app on android too, that I haven't try for now

Another thing that I do is to listen to the language as much as possible, be it on the web radio (http://mumix.radio.fr/ for example, or the NHK) or watch TV ( this software allows you to watch several channels . It doesn't work perfectly and the picture is tiny , but I don't care as long I can listen to the language - no mtter if I understand or not). A friend gave me dramas DVD ( with english subtitles, so you can easily imagine it's a bit complicated , cause i have to put my mental switch on english before to watch it). I get my hands on drama CD to, and my greatest reward is to recognize more and more words. Same with games for the written text.
Movies, dramas, and everything always in OV with subtitles, only. That's how I learned english first, before to take real english lessons( during the 90's there was a wonderful program on french TV, so I learned basis in english watching the Monty Pythons, the avengers, the persuaders, The golden girls... sadly it was only for english, and doesn't exists anymore, but I can assure you OV wth subtitles worked fine on me)

Nothing pleases me more than to hear someone believes they'll get along just fine with me. Glad to hear it!

(Et je serais très intéressée à savoir quels sont les autres apps en français que t'utilise!)

La plupart des applis que j'utilisais existent en aussi anglais maintenant
http://mobile.brothersoft.com/katakana-recall-1669.html
http://mobile.brothersoft.com/s/hiragana-recall/
et 6 autres de la même série pour les kanjis (qui avaient l'avantage de marcher sur mon vieux nokia de base)

en français, ce sont surtout des sites
http://www.lekanji.com/application/application.php

( and I'll get along easily with people as long as they don't try to mess with my private life, becasue some of my life choices seem not uderstandable for narrow-minded people, and I don't mess ... so my best friends are geeks, goths, punks... so people who in general don't mind real me being kinda asocial, emotionally deficient, cyclothymic or having a very dark humor. I just temperate it when I know it can hurt someone)

Considering the fact I befriended and am still friends with a yandere (who's mellowed out since we've met), I don't think there'll be a problem, so no sweat!

Et merci pour les liens!

All this French in the Japanese thread confuses me.

もう、あんたたちがちょうずるい！フランス語はぜんぜん分かりません。英語で話しなさい！

A book that I like very much ( in french here, and one can find in Canada too ;))
http://www.maniette.fr/

here is the english equivalent
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-Characters/dp/4889960759
I know that somewhere exists a spanish version (Kanji para recordar) and a german version (Die Kanji lernen und behalten)...

That's what I've been going through as well. I'm up to 1850 characters. IMO it definitely makes a big difference in my ability to read and memorize Japanese words. Without knowing the constituent components Kanji all start looking the same. Going through Remembering the Kanji is a pretty huge time suck though, until you get through it.

There's also an iOS app for it and Anki flashcard stacks. I found the iOS app more helpful before they revised it a month or two ago and IMO messed up the Flashcard capability (it no longer keeps track of which flashcards you get wrong, instead it always cycles through the whole list and does not automatically re-review flashcards you've failed on). But overall it is nice having the stroke order clearly animated for you.

There's also a website that you can use with it, although I don't have any experience with it.

purplevelvet can you talk a little more about your trip? Was this a bus tour type of trip? What sort of stuff did you see and how long was the trip? I don't think I can make Japan this year, but I'm considering going in 2014. So I'm very interested in hearing other people's experiences.

I'm guessing even with another year of Japanese down, wandering the country by myself is likely to be an exercise in frustration, but maybe not.

Nope, well first thing to know is that I went alone, the 2 times. But as I said, you get to know the other travellers via forum before.So this year we shared a room with the 3 other girls travelling alone ( i mean, the 3 other girls who had choosen the Sakura House formula- you can choos hotel, but its more expensive)
The credo of the travel is to stay half-organisated, so they take in charge the flight, the transfers, they offer optional excursions, but if you want to get free time, you can . Naturally, if you choose to visit by yourslef, you'll have to pay for your underground fares ( quite expensive in Tokyo). The breakfeast was included, but you're on your own for lunch/ dinner, Not a problem though, there are grocery stores in each street.

So I stayed 6 days in Tokyo - Ikebukuro, then a small part of the group - including me- went by bus to Shikoku, because we had chosen the 3 days in shikoku option. It was a hiking trip, so we stayed one night in a temple - and that was a quite sporty hiking - 19 kms the first day, 22 the second one, I couldn't do the 3d due to sore ankle, cause I fell down a stair just 2 days before the travel, and I needed a less physical day :D.
And after that, we went to Kyoto for 6 days, again in a Sakura house ( it's a kind of youth hostel, I recommend the one in Kyoto which is very clean). and once again, optional visits are optional.

I prefer this kind of travels, I don't like very much the long bus trip with stops decided by the organisation. The travel agency offered only trips to Japan since 10 years, but since this summer, they have some destinations in south Korea, to compense the lack of tourism in Japan after the tsunami and nuclear plant mess. If you want more explanations, you can ask me in private, no problem.

Hello folks, do you think you would be up for creating a 'weekly translation challenge' sort of deal?

For instance, we can go to places like hukumusume.com (a site suggested in an earlier post) and post a selection here. Everyone who wants to participate can work on it and submit it a week later. We can then look over our translations and either compare them with the one provided (if there is one) or use our combined knowledge to iron them out.

I've been wanting to jump back into Japanese for a while but I can't seem to stick with it consistently. (And I suspect I'm not the only one like this.) I figure something simple like this might help with developing more studious habits.

Here's a cute subtitled video of a Japanese TV Drama I found on Youtube -- Zettai Kareshi ((絶対彼氏) Absolute Boyfriend. I actually found this easier to understand than some of the cartoons I've tried to watch earlier, even though the cartoons are for a younger audience. I think it may be because most of the Japanese learning resources are targeted more for office situations and interaction with modern day friends than sweet rolls flying around as superheroes (Anpanman) or exiled spearwomen protecting princes from assassins and creatures from a parallel world (Moribito).

I was very happy that there were long stretches of conversation which I could mostly follow along with. Although there are also long stretches where I don't understand anything and had to depend 100% on the subtitles (including unfortunately about the first 10 minutes).

Anyway basic premise is an office lady interacts with a robot that's designed to be the perfect boyfriend. The whole premise sounds pretty awful and like it could end up with a very off-color not very nice comedy. But I thought they pulled it off rather nicely and the whole show was actually rather sweet. There are 11 episodes total, although I've only watched the first few.