[SceptileMaster]

Doesn't it make sense to just learn the dictionary forms and then just to conjugate them depending on what you want them to become.

I mean you you don't need to learn 食べる and 食べます separately. You just need to that it becomes the stem of ichidan verbs is removed in base 2 conjugations. There's no point learning everything separately when you can just learn the rules of verb conjugation. I mean there are only 2 irregular verbs in the language (3 if you count the partially irregular 行く) so there aren't many exceptions.

I mean I'm still a beginner at Japanese so I could be wrong. If I am then I am sorry. This is the way I've looked at it so far though and it has stopped me from running into a lot of the problems like the ones you have just mentioned so far.