Dan S's unorganized thoughts on learning Japanese. This page will look nice someday...

My thoughts on learning Japanese:
There are many aspects to the language that should be taken into consideration
and prioritized when deciding your plan of attack for tackling Japanese.
1) The writing system (Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana)
2) Vocabulary
3) Grammar
4) Formality levels
5) Listening skills
6) Pronunciation
(I will give some insight in how best to prioritize and pursue these in the future)

Short story (general):
   In order to maximize your efficiency for learning Japanese, you must learn what pieces of Japanese are important
at which levels and also what the level of difficulty is of learning each of these components are. Knowing this will allow
you to construct (and update) a studying plan that both lets you optimize learning speed while maintaining your
learning motivation.

Beginner priorities:
 As a beginner you should decide what your goal is and study accordingly.
Short term basics - For people planning a visit to Japan or exchange greetings with friend/family
   japanese.about.com is definitely the best for this. Study greetings and basic phrases.
Casual comprehensive - For people who want to learn everything eventually but don't want to put a lot of time into it
   Greetings/basic phrases, katakana, hiragana. Then start working on kanji through RTK version one while adding
vocab via Jdic and Japanesepod101.com lessons. Utilize an SRS to maintain vocabulary and grammar memory.
Anime/conversation - For people who want to chat fluently with friends and/or watch Japanese anime/movies but
want to gain conversational proficiency much more than written. (Since the kanji are SO numerous one can really
save a lot of time if one completely disregards the writing. Be prepared for a buzzkill whenever you need to check
any sort of Japanese reference).
Long-term fluency (<~ 5 years) - For people who want to be fluent completely in Japanese with respect to all categories.
Follow casual comprehensive path but maintaining MAXIMUM exposure to Japanese. This means that you minimize
English-based entertainment. Japanese music, Japanese TV, Japanese movies, blogs, etc. And constant SRSing!




Below is a list of websites that I have found useful in learning Japanese:
Basics:
Japanese.about.com - About.com's Japanese resource, good for basics.
Dictionaries/examples:
Jdic - Dictionary with example sentences. Excellent resource, multiple servers (link to JP server).
JLPTdictionary- JLPT based dictionary
Tatoeba - Example sentences in Japanese and other languages. (Haven't tested it much, might complement jdic, but not a great standalone).
Tanos's JLPT resources - Vocab lists for each JLPT level
Rikaichan - A Firefox add-on that pop's up English translation of Japanese text. Very useful for Japanese webpages and e-mails.
Kanji:
Reviewing the Kanji - Complement to Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig.
Kanji Damage - Possibly a great competitor to RTK. A humorous guide to the regular (jouyou) kanji. Really cuts through the BS. Also, there's a nice downloadable anki deck for it!
It works great with the iphone anki app.
Animated Chinese Characters - Helping with stroke order for certain characters.
Strategy:
Anki! - Excellent SRS (spaced-repetition-system). Can be sync'd with iPhone/iTouch and other handhelds.
All Japanese All the time - A blog by a guy who claims to have become fluent in Japanese in 18 months while still.
maintaining a job, school, girlfriend, etc. I haven't read much of it because it's not exactly well organized, but it may have
some good content.
Reddit/learnjapanese- A subreddit for people talking about, posting links about, asking questions about, etc.. learning Japanese
Multiple:
Japanesepod101.com - Podcast based learning. Free for audio, costs for extras.
Smart.fm - Very well done site/learning system. For better or worse it is basically an independent system. It has a built in SRS and vocabulary list
with examples. Quite comprehensive. But hard for me to work into my current SRS routine..








(in bold) -> things I use EVERY day.

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