I had planned on following the alljapaneseallthetime.com method; heisig-method kanji, then sentences, but I'm unsure of how I'm gonna tackle the sentences after I learn all the Heisig kanji (I haven't really started yet, but I'd hate to get halfway through and find a completely different yet far more efficient method of learning kanji). So far, the Heisig method seems easiest, but the least rewarding; How am I gonna read a novel if I only know a single word meaning for each kanji? I had originally planned on just using Basic Kanji Book and mnemosyne, making flash cards with the kanji on one side, then the meaning, on/kun reading, and a few compounds on the other, but it proved to be incredibly difficult. It'd also be pretty time consuming entering all that information 2000+ times over.

So, exactly what should I do? I need a "road map" if possible. Not just "kanji, then sentences." But more like "ok use heisig's method to learn kanji, and make sure you learn at least 1 kanji even if you're incredibly busy, each day. after you learn 2000, find sentences and use rikaichan to figure out the english meaning. Make sure you know how to read them aloud" blah blah blah. Of course, I made up half of that. I have no idea if it will really work. I'd like to use khatzumoto's method, but some of it seems a bit vague.

I would like a more detailed path to take straight to fluency. My personal deadline is 3 years to speak, understand, read, and write Japanese with no problem.

Having just finished Heisig, I have to say its not at all the "least rewarding" way to learn kanji. Sure, I can stare at a block of text and have no idea how to pronounce it, but at least the characters are familiar enough to make a sort of educated guess. Knowing 2000 kanji also makes learning vocabulary and new compounds much much easier. I think its the only way to go if you want to be fluent in three years.

What parts of Khatzumoto's method are vague to you? Khatzumoto's blog has some articles about how to go about finding sentences and inputting them into an SRS; have you seen those?

I'd like to give you a roadmap, but mine is: Heisig/kana, "alljapaneseallthetime" environment, sentences.

Sorry, I'm kind of vague too

I'd recommend the Assimil Japanese course for a good starter kit of sentences to use with the AJATT method. It contains 99 lessons, each with a dialog presented in a parallel format. On the left hand side you have the Japanese text with hiragana/romaji pronunciations while on the right you have both word by word and idiomatic translations. Altogether with the course you're looking at a good 1000 sentences of gradually increasing difficulty.

sheetz Wrote:I'd recommend the Assimil Japanese course for a good starter kit of sentences to use with the AJATT method.

I'll have to look into these: my only criticism of the 1000 sentences method was simply of where the hell do the sentences come from. If there's actually a tiered course with hundreds of sentences, then that's great.

Just one minor correction about what I said about the Assimil course: Since every seventh lesson is a review lesson without any dialog it comes out to only 85 dialogs over the course. I estimate that you'll get on average at least 10 usable sentences per dialog, so that'll likely get you up to around 900-1000 sentences in total.

wzafran, your method seems pretty solid. I'll try following that. Thanks. (I'm still open to any other suggestions though)

My plan has been to switch over to alljapaneseallthetime once I finish the first couple of Kanji in Context sections. I think this will give me a solid vocab/compound foundation to work from.

Before Heisig, I tried to learn using the pure sentence method. It was very difficult finding appropriate sentences mainly due to a lack of structure and kanji proficiency. Now that I've finished RtK1, I still want to develop a vocab base before I begin the big sentence hunt.