Learning Japanese (for obvious reasons)

[Sev]

I am 150% clueless when it comes to understanding Japanese this is quite normal for some of us on the Forum. However those of you who do understand Japanese are able to relish in the joys of iDOLM@STER much better than those of us who don't know.

I myself am planing to register for Japanese Classes at my local College in January ( i probably won't be done in time for iM@S 2) But what I would like to know is who else here is undergoing steps to remedy this handicap.  Those of you here who already know the language please feel free to tell us how you learned it.

[Kyo]

Those of you here who already know the language please feel free to tell us how you learned it.

Bought a kana workbook and practiced writing everything until I had them memorised. Self-studied with grammar and vocabulary books.

Enrolled for two semesters worth of Japanese classes in university.

Bought this dictionary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodansha_Kanji_Learner's_Dictionary) and looked up kanji whenever needed.

Read manga in the original language and with furigana beside the kanji. Shounen manga has a lot of specimens.

My Japanese still sucks after all these, but it's better than nothing.

[mastersteve89]

If you end up with a teacher who's like mine, ignore the fact that he/she's from Japan and follow the textbook, no matter what changes the teacher wants to make.

And study up on Hiragana. Without it, you'll be left in the dark in most writings. Trust me, I have to learn the hard way.

[Kaminos]

I took some classes for like 6 years, and spent some months in Japan.

IMO, the best way to learn Japanese is to get a Japanese gf who can't talk in your language ... But it's hard to find outside Japan xD

I'd say, before enrolling to Japanese classes at college, try to learn like 50 kanjis, and then you'll know if you have enough courage to learn the language.
The good thing about IM@S is that it actually teaches you some kanjis, as everything is dubbed. So when you know a word but not its kanji, you understand the sentence but also learn some new vocabulary. How cool is that !  

[Cael K.]

I remember the first book I ever picked up was Essential Japanese Grammar by Everett Bleiler, but... well, it only teaches grammar (that's not a bad thing, mind you), and everything in it is in romaji (odd, but again, only for grammar). You'd have to go elsewhere for the characters, but you'll get that in your first year. I dunno if it's the best way to go about it, but that's what I did.

Get something that'll give you an overview of basic Japanese grammar and make sure you're familiar with it. Fill in the blanks as you learn your first year, and it should be relatively smooth.

One point advice...
This is not a short road, and it's not an easy one. How long was it before you stopped asking your mom what something meant in English? Yeah, repeat that process. ^^;
Grammar is more important than vocabulary starting out, I think. Being able to relate words with a dictionary is better than knowing the words but not how they relate to each other, I think.
Particles are important, but the kicker is some of them are more understood by gut feeling rather than by logic. Just keep absorbing material, you'll gradually learn by example and get a feel for them. This applies to regular words too, by the way. Connotation and denotation and stuff.
Keep your mind open. Even when a word is mostly a 1-to-1 translation from English to Japanese, the Japanese might view the concept slightly differently. Be ready to rewrite how you think.
Whatever you might feel about kanji, you must learn them to learn the language. Don't worry, they tick a certain way so you can make them work for you. Again, be ready to rewrite how you think.
Sheer memorization will be involved. You'll have to power through this.
Observe. You might see patterns.

... Of course, having said all that, I'm still doing like, all of that.

[animagic4u]

One point advice...
This is not a short road, and it's not an easy one. How long was it before you stopped asking your mom what something meant in English? Yeah, repeat that process. ^^;

So true. But I think the best part of learning a language is when you've come a long way and not noticed how far you've come until you suddenly realize you can understand all these things you couldn't understand before.

Good luck!

[Raestloz]

So true. But I think the best part of learning a language is when you've come a long way and not noticed how far you've come until you suddenly realize you can understand all these things you couldn't understand before.

Good luck!

Exactly my case with English.

When it comes to Japanese, though, I'm stuck at Hiragana and Katakana. No, I can read them and write them alright, it's just that I can't advance from the next lesson: verbs and adjectives

I swear, vocabulary is a b*tch. Now I'm left with the remaining bits of hiragana and katakana I learnt, not even the grammar I remember

[TweenDoriru]

Immersion is a good way, though not everyone can do spontaneous trips to Japan XD I know I can't.

I've never taken a class or anything, so I'm entirely in the dark with grammar and sentence structure. However, I can read all hiragana and katakana (this is, honestly, thanks to iM@S. I couldn't remember how they looked when I studied them from a book) and some of the more common kanji (i.e. 亜美と真美 XDD).

I can't do a thorough understanding of iM@S like a native-speaker (or someone who's actually taken classes and learned the language would), but I can usually get the gist of what's going on in commus (though I use ICOMU-M@STER for the answers).

It's nice being able to read the morning greetings (all but one in particular...) and the menus. Though I do wish I could understand more of what they're saying. XD

[azuyuki]

I'm still trying to get into my Japanese class at UCF, and I'm close to graduation too...

[Picup]

Everyone has shared a lot of what I would say, so there's not much left.  But my friend and I had a chat about learning languages, and the easiest way to probably learn is to actually live in the country (Japan in our case); but that's a bit hard.

I saved a bunch of sites and stuff from what other people use, but really, learn hiragana and katakana first, and then just slowly take in kanji.  First year Japanese will go over hiragana and katakana, and then slowly into Kanji -- while learning about a lot of grammatical things along the way, at least that's what I'm doing at this moment...

If worst comes to worst, you can always play this game!