I want to post this to ask anyone who has a minutes tell me about your expericences learning japanese. Let me explain I love learning japanese and I really enjoy learning but i am having some trouble so if anyone could help with some techiniqes like i am having trouble with r sounds and I am ok at learning kanji but i would really like some hiragana reading exercises and vocab. I pass my thanks to anyone who posts on here. Ah and one more thing anyone recommand any books or software?

Hi Steven! Welcome to eduFire! :)

I’m not into Japanese myself, but I can tell you, it’s one of the most popular languages here on eduFire, so you will find lots and lots of resources!

Why don’t you start by joining one of our groups? Quick & Easy Japanese seems like the perfect place to start! :) There are also a couple of great Japanese culture-related groups, too!

Then, if you didn’t find out by now, here’s the great news: eduFire is offering, for a limited time only, classes that you can join for free! You’ll be amazed on how many Japanese classes are on offer!

And last but certainly not least, don’t forget to check our list of fabulous Japanese tutors! :)

Good luck with your Japanese studies and enjoy the site!

Since Sandra has managed to point out all the great resources on EduFire, I’ll point you towards some of the great resources you can find elsewhere.

A couple of months ago Koichi ( Tofugu Blog ) posted a great article including ten of his favourite places to learn Japanese for free. If you didn’t already know, Koichi is a teacher, blogger, and panda-hat owner. Anyway, you should head over to his Top 10 Online Resources for Learning Japanese post, because it includes everything I know to suggest and then some.

Hehe, thanks for the shout-out Graham :)

Like Sandra says too, go check out the classes on eduFire as well. Japanese is:

http://www.edufire.com/classes/japanese

Thanks for all the tips i thank you for all the tips but that is not whats bothering me. I am having trouble going from start to finish what i mean their is so much material online that is really great but they have different teaching methods of which i do not know is best for me see i am a little lost on some matters which i can find but again to truly absorb the material is what i mean. Mayvbe I am just going around in circle but i think it would really help me if someone told me about their expericences their troubles they had. I also want to learn about the culture the adventure that is japanese why others learn? Many things would help I like hearing others opinion on this stuff thanks again for the feedback.

A good start is to look at the old standard books and the criticisms of them and the modern recommendations – look at the reviews on Amazon for Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, Enlarged Edition

the reviews are very informative as there are several good recommendations for other books

Hey Steven!

I’m not sure how much this will help but here are my experiences thus far with learning Japanese. I started self-teaching myself in September ‘08. I began with all of hiragana and katakana (no kanji yet). I spent a good month on just the characters before moving on to vocab. I use http://www.iknow.co.jp/ for vocabulary. After about a month of strictly vocabulary and kana I moved on to sentence structure/particles. It was around this time that I invested in a tutor. I also used http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ to help me understand basic grammar a little better. I also watch a lot of Japanese drama’s and anime to help me with word/sentence recognition. So after 3-4 months of learning Japanese I can hold a very basic conversation in polite form and I’m currently studying verb/adjective conjugation along with utilizing my tutor to strengthen my conversational skills. I am also still constantly studying vocab.

I say take it slow. Its a whole language you’re trying to learn. English is still difficult for me and I’ve been learning it for 24 years! Take your time and focus of one thing at a time. And even if you think you’ve mastered it keep revisiting it so it solidifies in your brain and becomes second nature.

がんばってね