>>31798It was a lot of trial and error. I don't know if I'd recommend all the things I did. I can say what I did, but I followed no guides and figured it was better I start and do something than worry about what's optimal as long as it's not super suboptimal.
There are a lot of guides out there for otaku ( https://[link-ommited]/ ).
Hard to know what is worth mentioning since I don't know where you stopped.
Sorry I am a scatterbrain, and needlessly verbose sometimes because I feel bad leaving things out. This was the most concise I could get it.
If I were to summarize this: Study Kana, Study most common kanji, study basic grammar, study basic most common words. Use tools as an aid to consume Japanese content every day with quick lookups.
￥Kana (basic alphabet)I just used Anki to memorize Hiragana and Katakana. I played a few kana games to get more practice so I could recognize individual characters a bit faster before I started memorizing grammar and words. Some people brag about doing this in a day or a week, good for them. I took several weeks. I could have tried faster, but I didn't care yet.
￥Kanji+VocabI didn't do any of this until I had learned reading kana.
For kanji I used WK in the beginning, but I don't think it's good. I would avoid it for being annoying, besides it costs money. Although perhaps initially a bit more difficult I think it would be much faster to do maybe the first 50-100 radicals in a radical deck ( https://[link-ommited] ) to learn RECOGNIZING most of the little kanji components (do memorize the meaning so you can confirm you recognize it and not mixing it up with something before flipping the card, but don't put too much weight on the meanings since it's all pretty vague and used in many ways anyways), maybe do a few kanji a day in an RTK deck on the side (you don't have to write, just focus on one keyword and ignore the readings and see if you can recognize the image and connect it to this word, the real learning comes later. Being able to separate kanji on an individual level is not super important, but I found it very helpful for learning new words easier) and then do something like [link-ommited] ( https://[link-ommited] ) to get a good base of words. The beginning of learning words is stupid hard because you aren't used to the kanji or the common sounds in the Japanese language. It gets so so much easier if you can get past this hurdle and you will start to see patterns subconsciously too. I started with like 5 words a day by the way. It was stupid hard in the beginning. Once it got easier I increased it little by little until I found the sweet spot for me. I "comfortably" did 20 new words a day after a while. The reviews get pretty high fast, I wouldn't start at 20. Some people do, good for them.
￥GrammarI didn't start studying this until I had learned a few hundred words. It was a lot easier to study grammar knowing most of the words in the basic sentences already.
For grammar I started with Bunpro (costs money sadly) and just did a few a points a day from N5 to N1 and then moved on to other methods. The DoJG deck ( https://[link-ommited][link-om
mited]://[link-ommited][link-om
mited]/ ) is pretty good and is free (it's a stolen textbook). Just start with the basic ones and do like 2-3 new a day and if it starts feeling like too much you can stop doing new ones for a while. You have plenty of time so it doesn't matter. It's not a competition anyways.
￥ImmersionStart easy. Even easy will feel difficulty extreme in the beginning. No point making it so hard you can't understand anything because then you won't learn anything. I didn't bother immersing until I had finished the N5 grammar deck. It is the basics of the basics. It was much much harder for me to learn the beginning N5-N4 than it was N3-N1. Getting used to new structures is difficult. Learning more of the same is easier.
I fortunately like simple romance so this was easy, most of it is little dialogue. I had terrible comprehension, but I slowly worked my way through volumes and slowly understood more and more.
For anime I get subtitles from Jimaku and torrent from nyaa and watch using Memento to instantly look up words. I have some shows I just watch without subtitles and some shows I study new words in from subtitles. In the beginning you're probably gonna be overwhelmed with studying words even from the easiest ones, sorry. Pick something rated easy on [link-ommited] and prepare for it to be difficult. Need to practice for it to get easier. Eventually the things you studied will start to flow smoothly.
The tools are a pain in the ass to set up. You don't have to do everything in one day so just start with Anki, then one day see if you can get Yomitan working to look up words with your mouse in your browser, then try to get Mokuro working another day. You don't need to bother mining until you have finished [link-ommited], you'll know better what to mine after that since you can parse words and sentences a little better after studying a bit.
I basically avoided all communities and instead just talked to my friend or used search engines and did things alone. Don't fall for the learn how to learn optimally clickbait cycle. Just study basics, study a little every day, and try to consume a little every day. Eventually it gets easier, but it does take a lot of hours. Once you are past the basics you need to up the hours and consume a lot to improve fast. The only way to internalize is to get a ton of practice. Remember Anki is just a tool putting things in your brains database, but it's your responsibility to use it so your brain decides it's actually useful.
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