-- Learn Japanese via a language OTHER than your native . (I get Japanese - French, Japanese - Chinese, Japanese - German guides, in addition to the standard Japanese - English ones)

PROS
1) It's kinda fun. (Even more fun if you have a friend who's a native speaker)
2) You get to practice/learn another language.
3) Stuff somehows sticks better when you practice expressing concepts in multiple languages.
4) Mitigates language bias. I noticed that learning Japanese via French is different from Japanese via English due to ingrained cultural differences.

CONS
1) oooowww headache.
2) The other language has to be roughly equal or slightly better than your Japanese. Otherwise you just mess up both languages.

-- Shop from the "Japanese" side of the bookstore. Or hang around the bookstore and watch which books the high school students pick. High school students have a natural instinct for short cuts.

( http://www.zkai.co.jp/books/search/book ... p?ID=11451 ) One of my favourites.

PROS
1) A number of Eiken guides typically sport short Japanese passages/essays and their corresponding english text.
2) Since this is for Japanese consumption they tend to patronize you a LOT less.
3) You also see a lot more interesting and practical Japanese usage. As an added bonus if the book (see above) is a guide to english idiomatic expressions, now you know how to say it in Japanese. ;p
4) You get legit reason to scope out high school girls and ask them for their opinions on guide books. (It's a great opener. Trust me it's the stuff phone numbers are made of )

CONS
1) Only works in a Japanese bookstore.
2) Only if you don't actually NEED to be patronized.
3) Since this type of book is written to teach Japanese to communicate with non Japanese, the Japanese "translation" does not necessarily reflect the way a Japanese would write in his own cultural context.
4) Wierd looks over the counter when the cashier realizes a gaijin (pardon my french) is buying an Eiken guide. Also a possible PRO depending on how twisted you are.

Side Note :I have a book about writting business e-mails for Japanese. The e-mails are in perfect Japanese, but it's so unlike anything I've actually received from Japanese. It's more the way an american who's learnt japanese would write ...

-- If you're not in a hurry. Lay off Babelfish or your dictionary. Goggle the word and search "Japanese sites" only.

PROS
1) There is a good chance you will hit the japanese word in the wild and in it's natural habitat.

CONS
1) Of course there is also a chance that the writer sucks at Japanese too and it's used incorrectly.
2) You need a lot of spare time. You also need to cross-check the usage with other sites if unsure of the grammatical correctness of said sentence.

-- Install Microsoft IME and practice typing out Japanese sentences in kana and converting into Kanji. Try practice writing the kanji on a piece of paper before converting.

PROS
1) Hey it's better than playing solitaire.
2) Practice enough and it helps with your pronunciation because the IME will not allow you to make common mistakes like ?and ?? or miss out a ?.

CONS
1) Usually addictive.
2) Sometimes you type out stuff that should really be locked tightly in the deep recess of your soul. ??

-- Watch tons of anime on youtube. Pause on each sentence spoken and type via IME the japanese as it is spoken (pick out kanji if possible). Replay the sentence until you can visualize the whole sentence in your brain before typing. Try not to watch the subtitles but may use it as aid if necessary.

PROS
1) Fun and entertaining.
2) Helps in gain vocabulary and aiding recognition of the words in multiple contexts, different conditions and under near native speeds.
3) Language is natural but simplified due to target audience. Animes have less conversation than say dramas since so much time is taken up with fighting sequences.

CONS
1) Do you REALLY want to speak like Honoka Yukishiro?
2) I want to be there when you address your boss as "te mae" :icon_mrgreen:
3) Slow

Side note :
I had the unfortunate experience of being caught in the middle of a battle between a 10 year old baka-ranger-fanatic, an 8 year old Honoka-wannabe and a bunch of 30+ year-old-AD&D- ... urm well.

Let's just say my experience of Pretty Cure comes from watching tv while waiting for the DM to finish up being "killed" by baka-ranger Black/PC White. Somedays he takes forever to get back to the gaming table.

More later if I think of any....

You know what I am going to try some of these haha.

Wow .... TOoo bad my Japaneses is sooo Friggin basic that I could barely type three Hiragana or Katakana, much less a Kanji or two ... argh, I need to study that Japanese guide posted by Sparky, from what I could tell it was pretty good

No problem. ?.

This is all you need to learn to live in Japan!




:icon_mrgreen:

You know what I am going to try some of these haha.


What you mean the part about scoping out girls? :icon_mrgreen: I stand by it!

One new observation.

When you study a language, there's a critical mass of words recognized that you must reach before your learning will really start to fly.

This is (for me) around 1000 concepts (words).

When you can easily read and recognize this many words, you can start to understand simple articles on the internet and your vocabulary should expand really really quickly.