Advice on learning japanese?

[Feba]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

You're not a 3rd grader?

I rofl'd.

Nazo, did you do ALT, or one of the corporate ones?

I think i'll look into that book... I was looking around on internet channel last night, on youtube they had an...interesting video to help learn hiragana, I think i'm gonna check out that site. Also been reading about.com's pages.

[Feba]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

Anyone else heard of Genkijapan.net? It's kinda silly, but there's a weird satisfaction to the games.

And "NUEW JIRANDU" is just hilarious.

[Nazo]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

I started off at a corporate school in Tokyo called Nova for 18 months, it wasn't terrible as a starting point but they work you like a dog and don't treat you great. By the end of that I was pretty burnt out.
After that I did 2 years as an ALT on Jet. Completely different experience, I got paid more, had to work less, and people genuinely cared whether I was ok and made an effort to look after me. I was way out in the sticks though in a town of a couple of hundred people. Nearest foreigner was a 30 minute drive away, nearest city of note was an hour away. That didn't bother me at all, but I know a few of my friends in similar situations were going a little stir-crazy.

I'd recommend Jet over one of the other methods but bear in mind you probably won't end up in one of the glamourous cities.

[Nazo]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

Oh and take a look at http://www.japanesepod101.com, they do free regular podcast lessons which are pretty good. Bear in mind that they take a cumulative approach and have been going a while though so their beginner lessons have now gotten pretty advanced.

[Feba]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

I've heard of NOVA, I can recognize the names of a few of the other language franchise things from reading around, but can't think of them off the top of my head.

Being in a small town does drive me a bit nuts (the town my grandparents live in sounds similar to that, except it's about 30 minutes from a city, but it only has a bar and a post office), but I could probably learn to live with it as long as it has reasonable internet access.

Was that town able to get to a city via public transportation? Taking a train away on weekends and getting out of town would be pretty nice... but I have no intention of buying a car. Car ownership is enough of a PITA in the states, and from what i've heard, this is the cheapest and easiest place to own a car.

[Arctic Wolf]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

I think you should take a look at Inutrunk's first post in this thread, an awesome way to start out, don't you think?. The games look very promising too. But I think you should start out with learning from books first. It's nice to say "uh" "ka" "eh" "ie" for a while, but you're not really going to remember that unless you know what you're actually talking about. Start learning the books!

[Feba]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

Uh, I have read their post, about three times now.

I'm not opposed to books, again, I have some, I just like the site. Definitely easier to remember, for me, to do memory cards or vocal training than memorizing a chart.

You should see me try to multiply (quick, make a sex joke!)- anything that involves multiplying a number over 10 or many multiplications in the 6-8xN range I can't do off the top of my head, for two reasons, partially because my school was fsk'd up, partially because I can't learn from a chart. I don't know 7x6 (in my mind, it's 7x5+7), 7x8 (56? 64? something like that)

I don't know what you mean "unless you know what you're talking about". I know what hiragana/katakana are, and a teeny bit of basic Japanese, unless you mean understanding vocabulary/conversations or such, I do know what they are

[Feba]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Jap...9669396&sr=1-1

Anyone familiar with this book? I prefer it to yookoso simply because my local store actually has a copy, but it also seems to have more positive comments on it.

Also- anyone heard of Firststepworld.com? Are they any good, is it a scam, etc? Looks interesting, if a bit pricey.

[Nazo]

Re: Advice on learning japanese?

Getting to the city was doable on public transport but a complete pain. I had to take a bus to the nearest station and then get the train from there, the buses stopped at something like 6pm or something daft like that. I'd have gone nuts without my car. I guess it depends where you are though, in Tokyo I had no need for a car at all and wouldn't have considered getting one.