[steven]

I'd say just study the words you're studying enough to get by with decent grades. In the mean time, try watching as much Japanese television as you can. I'm sure some of the words you study will come up, and when they do it's important to listen to them spoken in the middle of real Japanese phrases, and not what the book has to offer.

I've studied with Genki before, but personally found it kind of boring. Some people really liked it. I remember showing it to Japanese people and them laughing at it. My opinion on textbooks is that you should do what you gotta do to get passing grades on whatever tests or homework you've got. Otherwise, if you are extremely dedicated, you can learn the language by intense listening and observing of native speakers.

I think a good grammar book would help to suplement whatever you study in Genki, though. For example, a thick yellow book entitled "Basic Japanese Grammar". This book will pretty much be all you need for everyday communication. I have all three of them and don't find myself using (or frankly hearing) much of the grammar in the more advanced books. If you have a Japanese friend, maybe ask him or her to help you mark the grammar that is used the most often. This is kind of what I did. There are also examples of bad grammar usage in the book, which might be confusing at first, but will help you avoid those mistakes.

I used to lay out in my back yard in the sun reading that book during college. I've probably read it front to back twice. During that time I was hanging out a lot with study abroad students from Japan, thus being able to slowly pick out certain phrases and then being able to look them up later as I remembered them-- I would remember stuff after I'd heard it enough times which usually signified those phrases' importance.

If you have the ability to make study abroad friends, this method will be great. The more you meet, the better. Going out in groups allows you to listen in on their conversations. It took me about half a year to go from the head teacher telling me to quit Japanese to being able to understand and communicate with my new Japanese friends in Japanese.