If you’ve been following along, by now, you should be able to both read and write hiragana and katakana. If you can’t do that yet, I would recommend going back and completing that first. You might be able to get by without knowing how to write hiragana and katakana, but I think this will only come back to bite you later.
Your next step is to twofold. You need to start reading about Japanese grammar, and you also need to start studying kanji. Of course, you can always go about this two ways. You can buy material or you can use free material online. The choice is yours. I prefer to have a book or something to hold in my hands.
Grammar Guides:
Buy — Minna no Nihonogo Series (Book 1 and the English guide) if you end up just buying one of them, get the English guide
- This series is really good. It’s the textbook we are currently using here in the JAS program at Ryukoku University in Japan.
Free — Tae Kim’s Japanese Guide to Japanese Grammar (you should start here)
Learning Kanji:
Buy — White Rabbit Press’ Japanese Kanji Flashcards, Volume 1, 3rd Edition
- I bought these as my first set of Kanji flashcards. I didn’t want to go through the trouble of making my own or practicing with digital flashcards. They are awesome. You won’t regret buying them.
Free — Nihongo Resources Learning Kanji
- Before I bought the cards above I was using this site and was learning 10 new kanji each day. This site also has a lot of other good information. Check it out!
You should also find yourself a Japanese-English dictionary. You’re going to be using it a lot. So I would recommend finding a good one. I have a few, but the one I like the most is the Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary. It seems to have a lot of words that my others don’t.
If you have any questions at all, let me know. I would be happy to speak with you as well. I’ve got Skype, and there’s an icon in the sidebar on the right.
Study hard!
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