I've finished Pimsleur Japanese and have started learning the Hiragana. The main problem I have is that, though I can communicate in Japanese, I have no idea how to write what I am saying.

When I try to write out the sentences that I learned in Hiragana, they never work out properly, and Pimsleur sometimes omits parts of words that aren't spoken.
Example:
I heard: Watashi wa America-jin des
I just learned that des should really be written as desu and watashi as watakashi.

To make matters worse, I have no idea, when to use the handful of kanji I do know.
How can I learn to write what I have just learned to speak?

It will take time but you will be able to learn Kanji well over time. I recommend using Anki, it's a spaced repetition software that helps you memorize things for the long-term. A lot of people here start learning kana first(hiragana+katakana) and then learn kanji via common meanings(Remebering the kanji books are for this purpose). It's so you can understand the majority of common meanings in Japanese before you make the jump to start learning to read them in context. If you choose to do Remembering the Kanji, I recommend you only do the common ones(there a lot of threads about this and I'm sure someone will list them because I forgot there exact names right now).

Mastering how to read/write them/how to use them in the right context will take a lot of time. No arguing this but it's definitely possible, you just need the right tools like Anki and you should be able to get good.

I'm sure there are a lot of other people here in the forums that can better equip you with what you need to do. I'm just giving you what worked for me for learning how to read and understand Kanji.

Incidentaly, 'watashi' is just fine as 'watashi' (わたし) You don't need to write 'watakushi', as it's a very polite form of the word that is not really used on a day-to-day basis.

You're right though, 'des' is actually written 'desu' (です） (what's going on here is called devoicing--the 'u' vowel sound is devoiced here).

My advice is to first learn the hiragana and katakana well.

As for writting what you learned, Pimsleur doesn't provide the script in Japanese anywhere? If they don't, I wouldn't be surprised if they were on the internet somewhere. I've never used Pimsleur, so I have no idea.

In romaji, what you wrote is
watashi ha(sometimes romanzied as wa) amerika-jin desu.

In kana, what you wrote is
わたしはアメリカじんです。 (amerika would be written in katakana because it's a loan word)

With kanji it would be
私はアメリカ人です。

Really, you just need some practice and exposure. You'll get it eventually :-). Learning hiragana/katakana is a great start.

Are you planning on using a textbook? That might help connect everything together for you. Many people here like Genki and Japanese for Everyone. There's tons of good ones available though if those aren't your cup of tea.

There are also free resources online, like Tae Kim's Japanese grammar guide (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/). Take a look at the stickies in this forum, those should also give you some ideas.

I also have a guide of free resources that is in the wiki:
http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Free_Japa.../Materials

You'll probably be doing a lot of "relearning" since you've learned some grammar from Pimsleur, but you'll also have lots of "Aha!" moments because from what I've listened to Pimsleur it doesn't sound like they explain much.

I am personally using:
Japanese for Everyone textbook
Remembering the Kanji
Anki - free flashcards, spaced repetition software (SRS).

Anki has free shared decks for grammar, vocab, kanji, etc.

For kanji, you could either do Remembering the Kanji all in one go over a few months, or you could go slower and also learn vocab/grammar at the same time. Or you don't have to use it at all, everyone's different.

Take a look at the stickies and other resources here. Try to ask yourself how you want to learn. Then try a few things out and see if they work for you. Good luck!

Marble101 Wrote:I've finished Pimsleur Japanese and have started learning the Hiragana. The main problem I have is that, though I can communicate in Japanese, I have no idea how to write what I am saying.

When I try to write out the sentences that I learned in Hiragana, they never work out properly, and Pimsleur sometimes omits parts of words that aren't spoken.
Example:
I heard: Watashi wa America-jin des
I just learned that des should really be written as desu and watashi as watakashi.

To make matters worse, I have no idea, when to use the handful of kanji I do know.
How can I learn to write what I have just learned to speak?

I also did Pimsleur first. I ran into the same problem of being unable to write out what I already knew how to say (although I almost never NEEDED to). What I did was RTK + katakana/hiragana, then started using the sentence method, putting example sentences in anki and over time it all came together. Also reading helped a ton, but that went hand-in-hand with sentence mining anyway.