[aussielung]

I'm not fluent in Japanese by any stretch of the imagination. I only started learning a year ago and went into Japanese class's at the start of this year but I know enough now that I could make myself understood while in Tokyo last month (but only if I started the conversation and the person being spoken to used polite forms). I use the Minna no Nihongo series in class but we did not start learning Kanji until the second half of book 1. I am also learning at a school that has only Japanese people teaching the language so we kind of get a mix of the standard way of learning and the immersion method. We also learn to write and read the way Japanese children learn to write and read. After studying Mandarin at university I appreciate this method a lot more as Hiragana and Katakana are so much easier to learn that Hanzi but I had to deliberately forget how to read Hanzi in prep for Kanji.

Anyway, my tips are as follows and are net based.

First is smart.fm for drilling vocab and kanji. You can make your own lists and hear the pronunciation. Right now the site has a few problems since they upgraded but once they are fixed it should be good again.

Lang-8 is also a good blogging site. You type your blog in Japanese and then Japanese people will go read it and correct your grammar and Kanji for you, in return you'll correct their English blogs. Pretty neat and the users are all really nice in my experience.

I also like to take time each other day to translate things on my own. At your level you should have a pretty good understanding of grammar and particals so I think the problem you have now with your ability is not a matter or knowledge but of confidence. I think if you tried a little translation (English to Japanese) you'll be surprissed how good you are.

The other thing that I am going to start doing next year is maybe vlogging in Japanese on YouTube and have users come in a correct your vlogs. Gimmeabreakman, Eleven Colors and Hikoseamon are nice guys and will happily volunteer once they know you have a channel.

Another friend of mine when she was studying Japanese was to speak to her cat in the language. I do that every now and then but my cat is a shit head so I know DAME!!!! Really well.