Seems there were a few posts about learning Japanese recently, so if anyone& #39;s curious, here& #39;s how I did it: https://karice.wordpress.com/2015/10/03/p463/">https://karice.wordpress.com/2015/10/0...

To summarize:

I& #39;ve never taken a formal Japanese class in my life.

It wasn& #39;t taught when I was in kindy, or primary/elementary school - though I did study Madarin Chinese and then Italian.

Later on, as electives, I took Art and Music in secondary school, and Latin at uni.

I learned hiragana and katakana around 2004, when I was on exchange in England, partly so that I could work out basic manga spoilers ^^;;

Then, in 2007, I got into the JET programme. And that& #39;s where my self-study took off in earnest.

At first, I used the basic textbooks the program provided. But I quickly switched over to the text book that my predecessor left behind: the first in the Genki series.

However, I& #39;m not even sure I completed all the exercises in that first book...

& #39;cos early in my first year on JET, somebody recommended the Anki flash card program to me.

Anki& #39;s great, & #39;cos it allows you to set up your flash cards to test whatever you want.

And around that time, I also found out about the Kanji Kentei, and started buying this series of books, which I then used to fill out my Anki account.

I used my flashcards to test three things:

(a) whether I recognized and knew how to pronunce a particular word (one or more kanji included)

(b) whether I could write those words using kanji

and

(c) whether I could translate sentences containing those words (E to J; J to E).

It& #39;s actually been about 10 years since I last looked at them https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">

but here& #39;s what they look like in my Anki app today.

Gotta admit that I can& #39;t actually write most of those kanji these days -- so much for my plan to pass at least Kanken Level 2 (= more or less knowing the 2000 common-use kanji).

For anyone that& #39;s curious -- I only made it to Level 3 during my three years on JET.

But all those Anki drills really set me up, because it had me practicing lots of grammatical structures on top of vocab.

(Anki& #39;s the only reason I passed N1 in 2010 -- I didn& #39;t have time to study all that grammar since I was packing to go home https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">)

Listening comprehension was actually my worst category back then. Now, I think it& #39;s highly likely to be reversed...if I actually had the courage to take the JLPT again, that is https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">

Come to think of it, that post I linked at the start of this thread only goes into the media consumption side of it...

Well, that& #39;s actually the second last ingredient -- media consumption.