Quote Originally Posted by jena View Post
I am ignoring romanji because I want to actually learn the language properly, like you said.

I have a couple of digital flashcard programs already but I need to do more learning before they become useful.
I taught myself Hiragana and Katakana just by cutting up two sheets of paper into palm sized squares as flash cards. Took me 30 min to memorise all the Hiragana and 60 min for Katakana. I was reading super-slowly, but at least I could recall each character and more importantly, not allowing myself to ever become used to reading Romaji.

When I was living in Japan I knew an American dude (a staff member in charge of looking after international students) who learnt Japanese in Romaji. At the time I met him he'd be living there for some 8 years or so... his spoken Japanese was fluent... but he could NOT read any Japanese text at all (not even Hiragana). He told me that he'd become too dependent on Romaji and just couldn't ween himself off it no matter how he tried. And as fluent as his Japanese was, I later realised that it wasn't as fluent as it should be for someone who'd been living in Japan for so long... and of course it was his Japanese illiteracy that was holding back the development of his spoken Japanese.

Quote Originally Posted by jena View Post
Oh boy, my house is going to become covered labels now, that's such a good idea. The people I live with are going to hate it
Hmm... if you're in a shared accommodation situation you might wanna check with your sharemates first. Maybe just start with your own room - use small discreet labels. You don't need to be able to read them from afar, just whenever you're near them or using them. For example a former colleague of mine (who's a Japanese native) was learning Italian and he'd labelled everything in his home with stickers in Italian - each label with size 12 font Times New Roman in upper case. Just before he finished working with us (he was a casual) our staffroom's microwave died, so he gave us a spare from his home. While the sticker has long fallen off the door, the Italian word for Microwave has become the adopted name for our microwave oven. Whenever we get a new teacher in our faculty (e.g. casual, praccie, intern) I say, "This is our microwave, Microonde."

Quote Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper View Post
Seriously, how can a Japanese course for people who are guaranteed to be in Japan not use furigana, and/or the occasional kanji? It starts three or four months into the job fer crying out loud!
Seriously, if you get over here don't bother signing up for the CLAIR language course, it's a major waste of time.
IMHO the best way to learn Japanese if you're in Japan is to just hang out/party with locals. I learnt way more Japanese from 飲み会 than any book!

Quote Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper View Post
and it's all Standard Japanese so if you make it over here on JET there'll almost definitely be some regional differences in your hometown.
Unless your hometown is in Kanto (as mine was).

Quote Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper View Post
People will still understand and be able to use Standard Japanese just fine (it's the official national language, and is used for keigo or polite/formal speech), but most places here have their own regional dialects which can be a bit or even quite different.
Everyone understands 標準語 (ひょうじゅんご), but a few people don't (won't) speak it. When we were in Osaka there was a Chinese restaurant across the road from our hotel. The manager was an immigrant from Shanghai who's been living in Osaka for 22 years; she married a local man and they have kids etc. -- now she speaks 大阪弁 just fine, but because she learnt the language as an adult and wasn't schooled in Japan, I don't think she learnt 標準語... cos I kept speaking to her in 標準語 and she kept speaking back to me in 大阪弁! (my daughter was even more confused as she'd never had someone speak to her in 大阪弁 before!)

Then when we were in Kyoto my daughter spoke some Japanese to this one store attendant, who "corrected" her 標準語 into 京都弁! Mind you, it's widely known that Kyoto people are rather proud of their dialect which they consider to be the old traditional/imperial language of Japan (as Kyoto was the former capitol of Japan until the Edo Period).

So yeah, sometimes you get people who don't/won't speak 標準語 for one reason or another... but they are admittedly quite rare. 99.9% of the population can/will speak 標準語 if you can't speak their local dialect (although they may do so with a local accent). And sometimes people just accidentally slide into their hometown dialects (force of habit). I had a friend in uni who was from Osaka and while the rest of the people in our circle of friends would speak 標準語, she'd often slip back into 大阪弁. e.g. one time we'd just finished eating at a restaurant and the plan was to head off to Karaoke afterward, so she turned to me and said, 「カラオケに行かへん?」 - I just automatically replied in 標準語, but a second later realised that we just had a bi-dialect conversation!

Quote Originally Posted by Ode to a Grasshopper View Post
Osaka-ben is better, obviously.
お前何言ってんだよ、ウィリス?