Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
Unless your hometown is in Kanto (as mine was).
JET tends not to send ALTs to many places in Kanto and/or big cities, it's usually pretty 田舎 (inaka/countryside). I really got lucky getting the outskirts of Osaka.
Quote Originally Posted by jena View Post
30 minutes!? I spent an hour with my nose in a hiragana chart today and I literally only remember a and n.

The people I live with are used to my crazy antics, they won't care if I label everything. They know me well.
It took me about a month-odd to memorise all the hiragana/katakana, though I was working full time and getting settled in as well and I'm often a really lazy student who gets distracted easily. My advice (the way I did it) is just work on sets of 5 at a time, and do both hiragana and katakana.
i.e. get あ/ア い/イ う/ウ え/エ お/オ down pat, then move onto か/カ き/キ く/ク け/ケ こ/コ etc. etc.
Note also that the font/style of the text can really change how the characters look, especially for characters like ko and ri in my experience.