Hey guys! My first time posting in this thread, I'm really interested in giving a genuine effort into learning this language and wanna just post my understanding and making sure I have a solid foundation for the start of this journey after reading the OP and guide.
First, just wanna say thank you to Alanae and Resilence for the amazing write up and guide.
Second, I guess to answer why I wanna learn Japanese, truth be told, I took my first trip to Japan at the start of the year, and it was my first time visiting a country where I couldn't speak the language or communicate with the people, and I also just, loved Japan. I don't necessarily have any ambitions to move to Japan, or work a job / career in Japan, but I do wanna go there again. Multiple times a year to be honest. Currently I'm planning to return to Japan for at least 2 weeks in January 2025, and from there, make it an annual thing where I visit Japan twice a year, specifically during Golden Week and Early January.
I just wanna be able to communicate, understand, and talk to people. Plus, I'm 27 and I heard that one of the hardest things to do as you get older is learn a new language. I've honestly never had to "learn" a language. I mean, I guess I "learned English", but that just came naturally through the education system. I also speak fluent Spanish but it just came naturally from having immigrant parents. It seems like a fun challenge to really put in the time and effort to learn a language, and I wanna do it now before it really really gets harder!
So my general understanding, and the questions I have, is I have a solid amount of free time every day, but so far I'm only willing to commit one hour a day to learning this, because I wanna make sure I can do it every day without missing. Committing 2 hours a day might lead to insane burn out and something I might be discouraged if I fail to do or put off. Is 1 hour a day enough to make a solid effort on this or am I already setting myself for failure at the start by only investing an hour?
So this is the process I'm looking at, prioritizing Speaking and Reading! Please let me know if I'm missing something or can add something and or there's a better way to optimize the learning!
I'm starting off with purchasing these books and going through them, this teaching me the fundamentals and basics and helping me learn the language both written and spoken.
Genki Volume 1,
Genki Volume 2, and also
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar .
These three books, will take me some time to get through, and once I feel comfortable and understand them, I move onto the consuming phase, where I'm capable of listening to Japanese and understanding some of it, I understand Kanji and have practiced it and can read it? So I start watching a few Drama Shows with the intent of learning, and go through the process of writing down anything I don't understand, working through what is escaping me, figuring it out to my best, repeating it and replaying it until I get it. I also should be watching the news, and various other forms of media like Podcasts and Content I'd be interested in (one I just saw that I'm excited to learn using, as a Smash Bros competitive player, is all of Sakurai's Creating Games videos). Change my Twitter feed to Japanese, follow Japanese people and read them to my best, reading Japanese articles and new sites.
I also want to learn how to speak with Pitch Accents, and Dogen's videos and guides are a good way to learn that as I get more comfortable and have an understanding with the language.
Is this a good understanding of the process, and a solid route to go with for my self studying?
Thanks again in advance for reading and any input or help you provide. Also so very open for any other tools and recommendations people have for this journey!
EDIT :
Side note, some of my friends are also attempting to learn Japanese and one of them mentioned Duolingo as a good starter tool, but I always assumed it was just a kind of, not great tool. Should I also attempt to use that to learn words and consume the language at the start?
EDIT 2 :
The links given for learning and memorizing
hiragana and
katakana are broken! Are there any updated links on good ways to get started with learning and memorizing them?