Learning Japanese

So um yeah, first post, I like to write about things sometimes.  I have a habit of writing things out in Word, and then closing it without saving and passing out.  Dunno why, it just helps with the release of whatever and then I can pass out feeling good. I spent some time a year ago messing with the template here and now it is what it is...  First things first, Ive just finished the complete Rosetta Stone Japanese Program, all 3 levels.  I wanted to write a review, but have no patience for crap like amazon or any other review sites where you have to set up an email and do those nine yards.  I saw some reviews via Google, but there was no way to tell if the person writing the review completed the full program.  Or what exactly the Rosetta Stone entails when it comes to learning a language like Japanese.


I read on Amazon that that the best thing to do before starting a program like Rosetta Stone would be to get a hold of some books that cost money so that you can learn all the Hiragana/Katakana.  This is collectively called the Kana which is the Japanese writing system, an alphabet of sounds if you will.  A quick Google and I came up with a few links:


The First program I used was the Real Kana which is what I wanted, something to tell me what the all of these Kana letters were.  I had listened to enough spoken Japanese from various media (movies and shows) to have an idea of what such Kana letters were supposed to sound like.  For me I wasn't even interested in learning how to properly speak the language, I had no time for that and still don't have much time for speaking.  Plus the language has some similar sounds to Spanish which I speak, therefore it wasn't a huge focus in my learning.  Since I was just starting out I just wanted to be able to know how to say each one of the characters when I saw it.  Again, Real Kana was really easy and simple to use, then its got a practice, you see the character, and type in the English "romaji" equivalent of the sound and move on to the next one.


I spent random times in the day going over the Real Kana, and it got to the point where I could go through all of the practice without missing one.  Once I hit that, I stopped, and waited for the night to try again, and after a few hiccups, I had perfected the Real Kana.  Simple easy, and that's it.  I highly recommend if you are looking to jump into Japanese.  In the next post I'll talk about what I used next.  Time to Pass Out