It seems that Marimokkori's Let's Learn! Japanese blog series died off, but I noticed that quite a few people have started learning the language. Since I'm currently learning Japanese as well, I thought I could share the resources I find useful:
Japanese IME Short for Input Method. This is how you write Japanese characters on a computer. You should be able to install this directly from your operating system. You type romaji, hit space and get a list of matching Japanese expressions. A tip: don't write "tsu" for つ, just "tu" is enough. You can switch between various modes of Japanese input, especially hiragana and katakana. For details see your IME's documentation.
WWWJDIC A very detailed online dictionary. It's the main dictionary I use, especially because it has voice samples by native speakers for most of the words I tried so far (some audio files are missing though). It took me a long time to actually find the voice samples because they were blocked by NoScript. There also are stroke order diagrams for many common kanji:
Denshi Jisho The name says it all: It's another online dictionary. Also very good, but lacks voice samples as far as I can tell.
Rikaichan is a popup Japanese-to-English/German/French/Russian dictionary add-on for Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey.
With Rikaichan, you can hover over Japanese text in your browser and it will display a list of matching translations for words or short expressions. It is not a replacement for actually learning the language, but useful to fill in blanks in your vocabulary on the spot.
Handwritten Kanji Search Draw a kanji and select the kanji you meant from the best matches to your drawing. Especially nice if you have a graphics tablet or similar inut devices, but a mouse does the job as well. Be sure to read the stroke order and direction guidelines linked there. There are exceptions, but for the majority of kanji, stroke order and direction actually is easy once you are used to writing kanji. This site links each kanji suggestion to the respective entry in one of several online dictionaries (customizable).
JLPT Resources The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is a globally standardized test. It goes from level 5 (easy) to level 1 (hard). On this page you can get an overview over the things that belong to each level. I mention it specifically because the vocabulary lists on this site are useful for the next element on my list.
Anki Flashcards for remembering just about anything. It runs on a large variety of platforms. You can create your own flashcards or import ones you find on the internet. I personally got mine from the page mentioned above and then modified and verified the cards as I learnt them. Anki increases the intervals between two showings of the same card as you get better at memorizing it. It is a very efficient method of learning and I find it very easy to keep my learning discipline up with Anki.
I think these are all the tools I regularly use. Feel free to post additional ones!
Did you just read my mind? I was looking for a thread like this literally 10 seconds ago. This should be in the general forum like the learn korean thread. Now all we need is actual content to learn the language to put in the thread along with the tools.
you can search by all kind of things, you can draw if you click the little button right next to "search:" (bottom right, above meaning). you can type in whatever you want if you're not comfortable with grammar yet and it'll tell you what kind of word it is + it's tense.
Edit: Oh obviously it does have all kinds of useful information on kanji as well, animated stroke order and all that stuff. Redid the screeny to show at least what I mentioned above
It's not an online application though, but it's free.
Edit2: Just remembered we had this language exchange thread on TL a while back and the OP was awesome. The OP had a bunch of learning resources in there. I'd definitely check it out if you haven't seen it yet: click me! Just scroll down and look for the spoiler that says "Japanese" or the one that's labeled "general use"
I had 6GB worth of learning material that went on a hard drive that was dropped and broken. So sad I didn't have it duplicated anywhere. Had e-books, videos, workbooks, etc... Lots of good stuff.
If you already speak korean, this is going to make things much faster for you: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar I'm not sure I'd recommend it otherwise. There's also a facebook group for this site, a very active and helpful community.
What a great resource thread! I'm in my 2nd semester learning Japanese and have personally found all the websites OP listed to be super beneficial. Considering flash cards are your best friend while learning Japanese (really any language) definitely check out Anki for anyone wanting to learn a language. ありがとございます!
I have been thinking about continuing a Let's Learn series from about where Marimokkori stopped / began hiatus, but to be honest I'm not anywhere near as qualified as some of the people that I know are around on TL.
I'd recommend the Japanese Headstart course. Intended to train U.S. Government personnel assigned to overseas posts, it can be a useful beginner's tool to go from beginner to intermediate and provides decent knowledge of conversational Japanese.
If you have a tablet and are comfortable using a Nintendo DS Emulator (better yet, if you have a NDS...) I'd also recommend grabbing the game Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten. It's a portable writing dictionary with full lookup features. It's fantastic for Kanji lookup because if you come across a Kanji you don't know how to pronounce, simply write it into the DS / tablet and it will attempt to find the same Kanji and look up the word in whatever dictionary is currently active. It was made for JP-EN-JP so it's really an invaluable tool. Here's a video that convinced me.
On September 13 2013 12:53 hp.Shell wrote: I have been thinking about continuing a Let's Learn series from about where Marimokkori stopped / began hiatus, but to be honest I'm not anywhere near as qualified as some of the people that I know are around on TL.
I'd recommend the Japanese Headstart course. Intended to train U.S. Government personnel assigned to overseas posts, it can be a useful beginner's tool to go from beginner to intermediate and provides decent knowledge of conversational Japanese.
If you have a tablet and are comfortable using a Nintendo DS Emulator (better yet, if you have a NDS...) I'd also recommend grabbing the game Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten. It's a portable writing dictionary with full lookup features. It's fantastic for Kanji lookup because if you come across a Kanji you don't know how to pronounce, simply write it into the DS / tablet and it will attempt to find the same Kanji and look up the word in whatever dictionary is currently active. It was made for JP-EN-JP so it's really an invaluable tool. Here's a video that convinced me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWISyoFF9to
There's actually a way to do that on the iPhone as well. Just install the simplified Chinese keyboard and there'll be an option that lets you write the kanji. Download whatever random Japanese dictionary and voila. It's all free to boot. Might be possible on Android too but I have no idea.
Though, if I remember correctly, it takes into consideration stroke order, so if you don't know how stroke orders work it'll be difficult to use.
I greatly prefer Google's IME over the one that comes with Windows because it'll give you real-time guesses for what you're trying to type.
Also, my favorite dictionary is http://ejje.weblio.jp/ because their sample sentence bank is enormous. They've got translated sentences from a wide variety of sources including wikipedia, technical documentation, classic literature, etc. Yahoo's dictionary can be nice too.
I'm kinda interested in that, so I followed the link... but I get a lot of rubbish text. Normally I have no issues displaying Japanese text, so I'm not quite sure what the reason could be. A couple of chapters seems to display fine, but others are just random meaningless signs. Do I need a specific font?
As you get better at Japanese, I recommend dic.yahoo.jp. Their 国語辞書 is extremely valuable when you're at the point where a simple 1-1 translation between japanese and english just doesn't cut it. You obviously need to be good enough at japanese to understand the definitions to use it though.
If you're into taking the JLPT, the kanzen master books are worth buying, they list exactly everything you need to know so technically you can just memorize them and your chances at succeeding are greatly increased.
i have just finished memorising hiragana+katakana and now have to move onto the next step
what process did you take in your early days of learning?
im thinking the next thing i should do is
a) learn the meanings of some hiragana words (this will help me practice reading/writing hiragana faster)
b) start memorising kanji according to a wordlist
c) start to understand sentence structure (grammar)
i have the google ide (i can press alt-shift to switch to ez hiragana input , after setting my keyboard back to default english)
いいです
i was using memrise at the very start but think its better for me to just write out 5 things to learn (on paper) and add to my paper list. actually i use a £1 white-board (with dry eraser pen) instead of paper.
i recommend learning japanese to anyone who would like to progressively improve at something instead of playing dota all day (lol)
On September 13 2013 16:45 FFGenerations wrote: i have just finished memorising hiragana+katakana and now have to move onto the next step
what process did you take in your early days of learning?
im thinking the next thing i should do is
a) learn the meanings of some hiragana words (this will help me practice reading/writing hiragana faster)
b) start memorising kanji according to a wordlist
c) start to understand sentence structure (grammar)
I would do something like this: 1. Learn basic grammar. I honestly don't know any good resource for this. Taekims guide to japanese (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar) is probably the best online resource I know, but there at least used to be some issues with it. Above all, I would recommend a proper textbook which introduces grammar in a logical fashion.
2. Learn words. Learn the words used in the examples when learning the grammar, and look up some wordlist for basic common words, the wordlist for JLPT5 is a great start. Use anki, memorize them. Using a paper and doing it manually is fine for short term, I usually did that before I entered words into Anki, but you need something for the long term, and Anki is perfect for it. Honestly, your vocabulary is going to be your main asset always, a language where you know a few thousand words will always be understandable regardless of your knowledge in the rest.
3. Learn the kanji for the words you're learning, but I highly recommend NOT just memorizing the kanji as part of the word. Look up the kanji separately, learn how it's written by hand, learn the parts of it, make a mnemonic of it. Study what kind of words it's used in. Don't worry about memorizing the pronounciations, but get comfortable with how the kanji is constructed. This knowledge is amazing to have when you're learning more words using the same kanji.
I listed it in terms of importance, but honestly, everything builds on everything else so you'd do well to try to make it all into one form of study. Learn a new grammatical construct, learn all the words used in the example sentences, and learn the kanji for those words.
I started on kanji very early in my Japanese learning (just after I finished hiragana and katakana), and I found that to be a good way. If you like anime or some other Japanese material, just remember words you hear often and also remember the kanji for it. Don't worry too much about all the readings of a kanji, you get those after remembering more words.
I've never been a fan of studying grammar rigorously, but these things vary from person to person. I just used the language enough to get a feeling of what is correct and not. Of course, this requires a basic understanding of sentence structure to start with.
Write kanji. A lot. And then some more. Make mnemonics or whatever (I never did, but many like this approach). When you have learned the simple kanji, you'll see that many other kanjis are just built out of these. You can often "guess" the pronunciation from other similar kanji.
I personally use the textbooks Genki 1 & 2. They are fine although I really don't have much to compare them to. They cover JLPT 5, 4 and I think at least the majority of JLPT 3 grammer, though I never checked in detail. They come with exercises and a lot of audio material in mp3 format.
Taekim's guide is nice too (see post above).
I recommend using multiple sources for grammar. Different views help you understand better and you can even out flaws in one source.
Learn words, not kanji. Sure, you'll have to learn kanji while learning words, but the word is the important part. Knowing details about kanji can be very helpful, but you should only learn these details as you learn words that use the kanji. I also don't recommend actually memorizing english -> kanji (or rather words using kanji) for the more advanced words, not at such an early stage. Simple kanji are helpful to know like that because they appear all over the place and as parts of complex kanji. Complex kanji however take a long time to memorize and you're probably better off learning more important things first. For example I chose not to memorize how to write 看護婦(かんごふ) - female nurse. It's easy to do on the PC because I know the hiragana and my IME does the rest, but a waste of time otherwise. I do recognize the word from the kanji, of course. Kanji like 女 or 今 and so on, basically all of JLPT 5 and most of JLPT 4 kanji I did memorize. Maybe a few too many of the latter ones.
I learn words with Anki for 30-60 minutes daily, between 5 and 15 new words each day. I always open up WWWJDIC and the handwritten kanji search site while doing so, and write the words in there with my graphics tablet. That way I can check my stroke order or the pronounciation if I'm not sure.
Imo grammar is VERY important in Japanese. Much more so than in English. Especially because so many things can be "omitted" in Japanese sentences, it is very important to know proper grammer to figure out what the sentence means. I strongly suggest that you learn grammar properly.
How much kanji you want to remember is all about what goal you have with your studies. As I live and study in Japan, I need to be able to read and write a lot of kanji. But if you just want to be able to communicate in basic Japanese and read simple books and so, you do not need very much knowledge of kanji.
I guess it all comes down to setting goals that suits your needs.
oh i see, you do write them down then (you dont just stare at anki and learn to recognise them).
hrm thats interesting, i didnt know that "words" can consist of multiple kanji, i think i just thought every word has its own single kanji.
my goal is really pursuing this as a hobby. its challenging, progressive and rewarding (to me). as for living/working in japan in the future, its unlikely (im working on a programming degree..), but its a good hobby for me (i go crazy for MMD)
On September 13 2013 18:04 FFGenerations wrote: oh i see, you do write them down then (you dont just stare at anki and learn to recognise them).
hrm thats interesting, i didnt know that "words" can consist of multiple kanji, i think i just thought every word has its own single kanji.
Nah, it's far more rare that a word has only one kanji than it being a construct of 2 or more. You only need to know about 2500 kanji to almost never run into unknown kanji in most normal Japanese sources. This wouldn't be possible if every word had a unique kanji.
On September 13 2013 18:01 Tasaio wrote: How much kanji you want to remember is all about what goal you have with your studies. As I live and study in Japan, I need to be able to read and write a lot of kanji. But if you just want to be able to communicate in basic Japanese and read simple books and so, you do not need very much knowledge of kanji.
I guess it all comes down to setting goals that suits your needs.
Even if your goal is to be able to write a lot of kanji, it's probably still better to first focus on general vocabulary and then gradually learn how to write the harder kanji to go with your existing vocabulary. Learning how to read words using harder kanji should certainly not be skipped.
People will still be able to read your stuff if you write it in hiragana (and often you can write on a computer), but you won't be able to understand certain things if you lack vocabulary. Learn the most useful things first.
i looked at http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar and understand now what you mean by "learn words not just kanji". following a grammar guide/textbook will give me enough words in hiragana and kanji to construct sentences as i learn the grammar.
Here's an extra piece of advice that a lot of students miss out on: DON'T rely on non-natural resources. For example, jisho.org is my personal favorite E-J dictionary. It has a ton of sample sentences. DON'T use them. These are the same sample sentences as the ones used on wwwjdic and are from the Tanaka corpus. There are tons of mistakes in them and unnatural japanese because of the way it was compiled.
Only use example sentences you are confident are correct, or at least produced by a native. For example, example sentences from the kokugo dictionary on yahoo, or sentences from japanese sources. This makes sure you don't get into bad incorrect habits and get the incorrect mental image of the concepts.
Same if you're looking for language parters or asking for help. If you ask here for example, there's probably lots of people who can help you out, me included, but always keep in mind that what other students teach you might very well be unnatural japanese. It's quite common that a correct usage of a language is unnatural. For example, "I want to go home" and "I want to go to my building" in a sense means the same thing in English, but one is super natural and the other sounds weird even though the meaning is understood.
What's kon and hon? Kun-reading and on-reading of a kanji? For words, you always want to have the spelling of the word in kanji (+ sometimes hiragana) and the reading of the word in hiragana. Trying to deduce the reading of a word by looking at the readings of the kanji the word is made up of isn't going to work.
On September 13 2013 19:26 spinesheath wrote: What's kon and hon? Kun-reading and on-reading of a kanji? For words, you always want to have the spelling of the word in kanji (+ sometimes hiragana) and the reading of the word in hiragana. Trying to deduce the reading of a word by looking at the readings of the kanji the word is made up of isn't going to work.
lol i didnt think i posted that. i edited my post to make more sense
question:
on this page, why does he write a dot between characters:
On September 13 2013 18:04 FFGenerations wrote: oh i see, you do write them down then (you dont just stare at anki and learn to recognise them).
hrm thats interesting, i didnt know that "words" can consist of multiple kanji, i think i just thought every word has its own single kanji.
my goal is really pursuing this as a hobby. its challenging, progressive and rewarding (to me). as for living/working in japan in the future, its unlikely (im working on a programming degree..), but its a good hobby for me (i go crazy for MMD)
DEFINITELY and ALWAYS learn how to write Kanji while learning Kanji imo. That is if you're studying them in Anki don't just look at them but write them down like you said.
It's incredibly easy to look at Kanji and go "oh it's like that, yeah got that" after a couple seconds of staring and you got a basic idea about it, you're probably able to figure out what it is if you see it again but you're going to get in SO MUCH trouble if you encounter stuff that just looks alike and you start to confuse them. And there's a ton of stuff that looks somewhat alike for people starting. As you get better you get an idea on what to pay special attention to and you recognise what the "building blocks" of a Kanji are rather than memorizing every single stroke so it get's easier but there's really no reason to make it easy on you to fall for that common mistake to just "briefly" look at it, get a basic idea and think you're fine.
動く vs 働く
線 vs 緑
as example. If you write them down it's almost impossible to mix them up. If you don't you might end mixing them up because you don't have a clear image of it but rather think like something along the lines of "oh that's the one that has that weird thingy on the left/right side, right?", which might have been something unique at the time you encountered the kanji for the first time
On September 13 2013 19:26 spinesheath wrote: What's kon and hon? Kun-reading and on-reading of a kanji? For words, you always want to have the spelling of the word in kanji (+ sometimes hiragana) and the reading of the word in hiragana. Trying to deduce the reading of a word by looking at the readings of the kanji the word is made up of isn't going to work.
lol i didnt think i posted that. i edited my post to make more sense
question:
on this page, why does he write a dot between characters:
those are words made up out of 2 Kanjis. 学生 is made up out of 学 and 生 (duh) the first part is what's being pronounced がく, the second part is what's being pronounced せい, making it がくせい. The dot inbetween is just there to give a help in understanding how the pronunciation comes to be. Rather than remembering がくせい it put's emphasis on it being a word build out of 2 blocks.
yeah i do learn to write characters, it just confused me when people said "i use anki" when i thought it was more like flashcards (but spinesheath explained he uses writing tools alongside anki)
thanks; i looked up 学 by itself and see that it means school, which is pronounced がく , so understand how this will be helpful in the future
Something that (I don't think) has been mentioned yet that I use are the Kanji in Context books. They are all Japanese so you need to be intermediate/advanced to make use of them but they are fantastic. They take a very logical and practical approach to learning kanji, plus you'll absorb a lot of the common compounds using a given character and how they are used.
A lot has been covered here already so there's not much more for me to say but one thing I really want to stress is your personal goals for the language and the way you learn best are what will determine how and what you study. I know people who can watch anime and understand 99% of what they are hearing but can't read or use grammar properly enough to pass JLPT 4. On the other hand there are people who go nuts memorizing JLPT material and pass level 1 with zero practical use of the language and no speaking ability at all. Neither of those types of people are wrong in the way they studied, they just did their own thing to meet their own goals. There's nothing wrong with that. However, if you want to truly become fluent in the language (your definition of fluency varies but let's say near-native level listening, speaking, reading and writing) obviously no single method of study is going to be enough. Unless you're some sort of language savant it's a massive undertaking that will require years and years of consistent study.
The only real "secret" to learning the language is exactly that: consistency. If you stick with it you will progress, and if you don't you won't. It's as simple as that. Doing the JLPT, or even just practice tests, can be a good way to gauge your progress but don't put too much stock in test results as it only tests a limited portion of your overall learning. Doing something you enjoy like watching anime/Japanese TV/reading manga tends to help too. The first day you begin studying you will not understand a single thing you're seeing/hearing, but try again in a month and suddenly you will pick up a few words. Try again in a few more months and you'll understand even more. While it's not an accurate measure of your progress, I've found doing this to be helpful to stave off the feeling of futility that comes when you've been studying for a while and feeling like you're getting nowhere. It can be something as simple as trying to make small talk with someone in Japanese and realizing how much better you are at expressing yourself compared to a few months ago. When you realize you are in fact making progress you will be more motivated to keep at it.
Sorry to ramble but I hope this helps some of you getting into the language. If you really want to learn Japanese don't get discouraged by the sheer amount there is to learn. Accept it's a process and stick to it.
Niiice I've been looking around for a good source to learn japanese or at least improve mine a bit. Watching some manga in japanese with subtitles taught me a few words and expressions. but i can't read for shit
Also, as far as just practice and corrections go, http://lang-8.com/ is a great place to just type in a sentence and get it corrected by a native speaker.
And for grammar resources, 日本語基本文法辞典 "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" is a really good reference guide, too.
is there some kind of NAVER, DAUM and NATE on japanese sites? these sites really helps and provides korean learning... and was hoping to see one on japanese sites...
example... an all in one site 1. a live chat/messaging site 2. a legit online dictionary not just translations but more than that 3. a forum for learning japanese wannabies 4. grammar related blogs
having understood korean on normal grounds... i learn that learning foreign languages via translation mode is very very wrong... will lead you to making false grammar constructions... nevertheless i like to learn japanese...
from what i could see, this is entry level types... please dont get me wrong...
edit: oh... theres some interesting sites that they posts... thanks for opening this topic...
On September 14 2013 06:14 riyanme wrote: is there some kind of NAVER, DAUM and NATE on japanese sites? these sites really helps and provides korean learning... and was hoping to see one on japanese sites...
example... an all in one site 1. a live chat/messaging site 2. a legit online dictionary not just translations but more than that 3. a forum for learning japanese wannabies 4. grammar related blogs
having understood korean on normal grounds... i learn that learning foreign languages via translation mode is very very wrong... will lead you to making false grammar constructions... nevertheless i like to learn japanese...
from what i could see, this is entry level types... please dont get me wrong...
edit: oh... theres some interesting sites that they posts... thanks for opening this topic...
I guess the closest you get is yahoo.co.jp and mixi.jp. Yahoo is obviously yahoo, it's still probably the most popular "such site" on the net. Mixi is like japanese facebook.
On September 14 2013 12:08 futility wrote: Most Japanese people in japan do not have home computers and do not understand what the internet is. In other words, no.
"Most people" has computers in Japan. Almost 50% of all homes have smartphones. 79.5% uses the internet, according to a study be the Japanese government in 2012. So, you're wrong.
Yes, there are quite a few who don't use the Internet here, maybe more than some other industrialized countries. But to say that most Japanese people don't use Internet and do not understand what it is, is just false and ignorant.
On September 14 2013 12:08 futility wrote: Most Japanese people in japan do not have home computers and do not understand what the internet is. In other words, no.
"Most people" has computers in Japan. Almost 50% of all homes have smartphones. 79.5% uses the internet, according to a study be the Japanese government in 2012. So, you're wrong.
Yes, there are quite a few who don't use the Internet here, maybe more than some other industrialized countries. But to say that most Japanese people don't use Internet and do not understand what it is, is just false and ignorant.
Yes and according to the Japanese government the Fukushima power plants were totally safe.
On September 14 2013 23:44 Frolossus wrote: so whats the consensus here for going through RTK?
Did it. I bumped into AJATT who speaks highly of RTK a few years ago and I decided to give it ago. I was a complete beginner when it came to Japanese at this point.
I personally liked it. It taught me how to write characters (I now write them as second nature, it's like learning how to ride a bike. If you remember how it looks like, you just know where everything goes and the correct strokes / order.)
I also remember most of the characters without problems. (Been awhile since I finished it, gave the book to a friend.)
Though unlike AJATT, I personally think you should combine it with something else, especially if you don't have the energy to rush through it. The book isn't designed to give you all-around Kanji information. Simply how to write them, and how to remember their meaning. So once you finish it, you won't know the Japanese pronunciation, and you will know only 1 meaning of the word, while the truth is, many characters have numerous meanings and sometimes the meaning Heisig gives isn't exactly the best imo.
Anyways, if you feel like the RTK will work for you, why not. Just remember that RTK is one small step when it comes to learning Japanese.
I really don't see the point of learning kanji by themselves. You will still have to learn words afterwards. You might as well just learn words and apply the techniques of RTK as you go.
I agree with spinesheath in that you shouldn't bother remembering kanji for words you don't know. When you are at a more advanced level, maybe (because the words are rare in everyday spoken language), but not at a beginner level. Learn the words first. And try to have fun while doing it!
I've never tried RTK and didn't feel I needed anything of the like. I learned them just fine by simple writing them using Anki.
Get a language exchange partner... Everything else is supplementary.
You're learning a language, so you can't afford to be anti-social.
Written language and spoken language are different, but you will have a much easier time learning the written language if you already have a strong grasp of the spoken.
Don't wait till you're 'good enough' before trying to find someone to speak with in your target language. Whatever level you are at, even if you only know how to say hello, that's enough.
You can memorise vocabulary all you want, but it will be slow, tedious and harder than if you actually try to speak the language. If you don't have anyone to speak with, you're going to have a hard time convincing your brain it matters to remember this stuff. It is also really, really boring to memorise a bunch of crap you aren't using on a regular basis with anyone. You also won't have someone to ask questions about how the word really feels to a modern speaker, which can really impair your understanding.
If you have an android phone (maybe on iOS as well but cannot confirm) Obenkyo is a great app for all kanji and basic vocab. It's great to look over a few notecards on the subway when you have time to refresh yourself. You can include and rank kanji based on Grade or RTK, and have the option to study based on kanji recognition or word-to-kanji recognition.
Also, I'll edit this post after I get back from teaching with another link that's a free japanese OCR program that syncs up with a dictionary for instant readings. It's pretty amazing but I have to search my external hard drive for it and don't have time now.
Regarding Kanji, however you want to learn them that you WONT FORGET THEM works. If you won't maintain retention learning them separate from vocab or grammar, then don't do it (although I learned all 2100 joyo kanji before I touched grammar and it worked for me). And as other people have said, consistency is the best medicine regardless of what you're studying.
Oh, and despite nearly every language text starting out with the -masu forms, in 90% of conversation I end up using short forms. Polite and honorifics are good to know, but don't stress on about them too much.
http://www.wanikani.com/dashboard - For learning Kanji and kanji related vocab. I'm not into writing, I think its redundant considering that IME and text inputs have pretty much taken over. Shit I hardly ever hand write english nowadays apart from filling out forms.
Tae Kim Grammar guide for... Grammar.
Nihon Shock for that free cheat sheet, its pretty handy when you want a quick check up.
Jap friends for help, sometimes I can be bothered talking sometimes I can't. I'm still pretty green though and my conversing sucks. They are a great help for specific translations/phrases etc.