Recent content by Monkeh

To REALLY go off topic, thanks for using the Death of Major Peirson to illustrate the War of Independence. Granted, the scene it shows a fight between the British and French that happened 3500 miles away from the US, but it's nice to see my hometown get a mention...

Katakana and Hiragana are the "alphabets", and are pretty easy to learn on your own. Kanji are the symbols, and are much trickier. Genki is a pretty good Japanese book which will cover most of what you need. EDIT: Yeah, qazmatoz said it better.

Rosetta Stone tries to simulate the way we acquire language as a child, by associating sound with images. It encourages you to make mistakes in early stages and allows you to correct them at a later stage. However, the reason this works in children is because they are constantly surrounded by...

I'd recommend Genki, a lot of the classes over here in Japan use it. Also, Anki is pretty good for learning vocab. I'd also second avoiding Rosetta Stone.