Whew. It feels really great to be done adding new cards to RTK1. I don't plan on taking too much of a break, so I'll probably start up the next phase of my studies this week.. That is, if I knew what on earth to start.. I wasn't sure whether I should make a new post or just post in the 2001.kanji.odyssey thread, but I figured I'd just do it here. So, here's where I am in my studies:

RTKana Done
RTK1 Done
Busy People Vol 1 Chapter 20
Pimsleur lesson 55

See, here's my issue. My initial plan was to go right from here to 2001.kanji.odyssey, learn from there, using anki to do sentences. No idea how to make the cards, but that's another discussion, I guess.. But I've heard that maybe 2001KO isn't exactly for the beginner, so maybe I should stick with my grammar book for a while?

Here's the situation with my grammar book. I'd been using my own SRS through 20 chapters.. Flashcards, little boxes to hold them in for box 1 (3 days), box 2 (7 days), etc. Time consuming as all hell. I had sentences/vocab in kana on one side, english on the other. Thing is, now that I'm done with RTK 1, I want to get kanji involved. But turning my hundreds of paper cards into proper anki cards with kanji seems incredibly intimidating, since I haven't even spelled a single kanji compound at this point. I wouldn't even know where to start.

So, to summarize, do I dive into 2001 KO which sounds like it's over my head grammar-wise, do I stay the current course with my grammar book, which is kana-only, until I've reached xxx point, then work on kanji after that, while keeping my RTK reviews up?

And what about JLPT 4? I'd like to take that in December, but how do I tackle the vocab with all the compounds? So many questions, I'm sorry guys.

If you were in my shoes, how would you proceed in your grammar studies? I'm very motivated, just at a loss on where to go from here. Thanks in advance for all the help.

--Shibo/Mike

Here are some samples from 2001KO: http://www.coscom.co.jp/ebook/2001kanji/...1-top.html
Just click one of the six groups, then choose a kanji, then click one of the 3 examples. You should be able to get a pretty good idea if the sentences will be too much for you.

If you don't feel ready for that, you might want to try that Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar book, as it has a lot of sentences you could start using in an SRS. If you want to just keep studying from your own book though, you might want to just also start reading Tae Kim's guide as well: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/

You could look into getting Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar. It's pretty cheap, and it has the added benefit of being part of a Kanji Odyssey-esque group spreadsheet project. I'm not actually sure how much vocab it uses total, but since it's aimed at people preparing to take the JLPT 3, all the grammar and vocab should be useful for your goal of taking the JLPT 4.

And, once you're done, you should be in a position where Kanji Odyssey is manageable. Maybe not easy, but not migraine-inducing either.

Does UBJG Start out with kanji right away? I'm not dissatisfied with busy people's content at all, I'm just not sure how to turn what I've learned into kanji effectively. I have an absolute ton of flashcards with decent SRS sentences, just not sure that english to kana is something I should still be doing after RTK1.

Yeah, it uses kanji from beginning to end, but only for JLPT 3 level words. Everything else is hiragana. I'm under standing orders to kanjify everything as I type it in, though, so if you use the UBJG spreadsheet we're working on, you shouldn't have that problem.

If you're looking to do the JLPT, get a textbook.

Genki is quite good. Genki I sets you up nicely for level 4 of the JLPT, and Genki II sets you up for level 3.

I would hold back on your kanji ambitions and stick to the textbooks for a bit. Once you're comfortable with Genki I, Genki II isn't too bad.

You could also give Minna no Nihongo a shot. It's a fantastic textbook... I'm just not sure how it matches up to the JLPT.

I can't recommend the following book enough:

"An Introduction to Modern Japanese" by Richard John Bowring and Haruko Uryu Laurie.

Make sure it's not a book with the same name by a different author. I used this book to learn Japanese (by myself) from day 1 and still use it for reference. It starts with kanji right from the beginning, for all level words. Book 2 contains exercises, and I recommend you do them. Unfortunately there aren't answers available, afaik. They claim that one can comfortably finish the book in 1 year, know 2000 words, and be able to tackle a newspaper with the help of a dictionary (I'd toss in a grammar reference as well).

I've never seen UBJG though, so I can't compare.

I really appreciate the responses, guys. I've got all the materials that were mentioned written down. I think I'll start with UBJG. I like the fact that there's a bit of a support group for that book as well. It's always nice to have some friendly faces to turn to for advice when the going gets tough. I've just figured out how to actually type in Japanese this evening, and now I guess I should start experimenting with Anki while I wait for my book to come in. Sounds like I have a lot of learning to look forward to this week. \o/

*edit: Typo ~_~ *