From my experience, consuming native material and checking back to a grammar guide when I encountered something I didn't understand was the easiest way for me to gain a very solid understanding of basic fundamental grammar structures.
Of course, to even recognise that something is a grammar structure, I had skimmed through Tae Kim's grammar guide. I started reading simple manga like Yotsuba& while checking back to the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar or Tae Kim before I even knew 1000 Japanese words from the core deck, but seeing grammar structures used in the wild definitely helped me more way more than staring at a grammar textbook ever would (input hypothesis). Bear in mind though, it was torturously difficult at first -- I took an hour to finish the first chapter! -- but the sense of accomplishment when my reading speed and comprehension improved was unparalleled.
I'm not saying that this is the only way to learn Japanese, but this is how I learnt it to a respectable level:
Of course, to even recognise that something is a grammar structure, I had skimmed through Tae Kim's grammar guide. I started reading simple manga like Yotsuba& while checking back to the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar or Tae Kim before I even knew 1000 Japanese words from the core deck, but seeing grammar structures used in the wild definitely helped me more way more than staring at a grammar textbook ever would (input hypothesis). Bear in mind though, it was torturously difficult at first -- I took an hour to finish the first chapter! -- but the sense of accomplishment when my reading speed and comprehension improved was unparalleled.
I'm not saying that this is the only way to learn Japanese, but this is how I learnt it to a respectable level:
- Tae Kim (1 chapter per day or more if I had more time)
- Core6k deck (10 per day at first, slowly ramped up to 30-70 once I was halfway done with it)
- Reading (I started this when I had a 700 word vocabulary)
- Mining words from reading material and suspending duplicates from Core
- Listen to Japanese music when commuting (I barely understood any of it at first, but perhaps I subconsciously learnt some grammar and vocab from it 笑)
- I spent a year in secondary school learning Japanese learning basic grammar, some vocabulary as well as following a textbook so my starting point for self-learning was somewhat similar to yours (I only paid attention to lessons for 6 of those 12 months though
)
- I did not spend more than 2-3 hours a day reading, but I would read for at least an hour a day on average. Some days if I was too tired I would just do Anki and forget about reading completely
- I believe that consuming native material is what helped me gain a strong foundation and understanding of how verbs are conjugated as well as which particles, structures etc would be used in a particular situation
- I did not actively study using any grammar textbooks besides Tae Kim and only used the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar as reference
- I only read things that I was at the very least mildly interested in and did not force myself to read anything that I knew I would not like as doing
- While there are some questionable nuances in Tae Kim's grammar guide, I find that it covers all essential Japanese grammar and there is no better grammar primer for Japanese self-learners right now