I’m a curious young lady that just earned two Bachelor’s degrees in Film and Japanese Language. Soon I’m moving back to Japan, My dream job is to make narrative cultural studies films. But I would be happy working in Media/ Art. I have ADHD and a penchant for obsessive obsessions. Also I’m a huge nerd

私は上智大学を卒業した. 日本語を専攻した. 今、私はマサチューセッツ州の大学の学生です. 私は映画と日本文学を勉強しています. 私は大学で勉強できるようにアルバイトを見つけた。 私のアルバイ トはコンピュータの修繕,それは非常に退屈だ.

私もベジタリアン,女性運動家,芸術家, オタク,バイオリニスト,バレリーナ,環境保護論者,等.

私の好きなもの:猫,カップケーキ, 音楽,漫画,テレビゲーム, スターウォーズ計画, 大自然と食べ物の写真術, 廃虚,ハイキング,キャンピング, 料理 ,東京, 等.

Okay so if you want to learn Japanese…

I’m happy to help. But first I want to say that that people who genuinely want to learn are never annoying, but the people who pick up words from anime and use them inappropriately and constantly that make me sad. 

Okay well this site:

http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/ has scans of almost every book you will need. I recommend the Genki books the most. If you go through all the chapters, the listening exercises, and the work book pages you will get pretty far. If you finish Genki 2 you will honestly know enough to get by. You won’t understand a lot of what people say and reading things like newspapers will be near impossible but you will know enough to say pretty much anything, in at least a very round about way.

After Genki use the book “An integrated approach to Intermediate Japanese”, it’s by the same people who publish Genki.  Also there is “The dictionary of basic Japanese Grammar” and ones for intermediate and advanced. I suggest those for reference. Sometimes Genki gives limited explanations of grammar. And for kanji learning I suggest going through the kanji in the Genki books, and then after that these http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/search/label/Intermediate%20Kanji%20Book%20Vol.%201%20%28Kanji%201000%20Plus%29 books are good. There is no easy way to learn any of this stuff, flash cards help, but you basically just have to force it into your brain.

Also the site http://jisho.org is a great dictionary program, and this page is actually a really good resource to refer to as you learn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugations_and_adjective_declensions. Also once you start to progress if you want to listen to real Japanese try watching online shows that are broadcast on Japans NHK channel. The news casters speak very very properly so they are easiest to understand but they sound really stiff. But any children’s tv shows that are none anime will do you good. And since they aren’t usually subtitled you will have to listen really hard.

There are also places like smart.fm  and http://www3.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/ which contain lots of study tools as well as the program called JeDict. It’s a Japanese electronic dictionary for your computer and it comes with flash cards for the grammar/ vocab for all the levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Other books I recommend are “13 secrets for speaking fluent Japanese” and “All About Particles”

Just avoid trying to learn from Anime or Manga. They use lots of colloquialisms and slang. And the words / habits you will pick up there just make people sound silly. And stay off the forums for translating manga scans. Often the people there have really sloppy translating methods. And If you really want to learn you can go to a school known for Japanese Language like I did and spend lots of money getting a degree in it. But only do that if you really hate yourself and want to never have free time in college. I hope this all helps.