[Nyororin]

I learned the language to the point that I was able to attend university (ie. pass the JLPT1 to be applicable for resident classes, and not as an international student) in a year of being in Japan.

I never took any real classes, and I don`t recall studying. The closest I got was looking up kanji or words I didn`t know in a dictionary while reading books. I think I can count on one hand the times I directly asked "what does such and such mean?" to a person once I was past the stage where I could look it up myself or pull it out by context.

Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out this amazing learning method to be able to recommend it in detail to anyone... If I had, I am sure I could be making tons of money off of it. *sigh*

The best suggestion I can make is to go for a frequency oriented learning pattern, ignoring kanji and the like for a while. THIS is what I think steven was saying people tend to disagree with. I don`t think anyone needs to know kanji until they are pretty far along in their studies - I fall into the "learn as close to a native child`s learning process as possible" camp, which is NOT all that popular as adults want to speak like adults - however limiting that may be - from day one. That`s simply not good for learning, in my opinion.