[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by JohnBraden

Thanks, Kyle, for answering. I now understand the "outside of Japan" when referring to かいがい　(overseas).

Just a technical point (that you probably already know). 海外 literally means something like "overseas" if you translate it kanji-by-kanji. However, if you refer to the 海外 of America, Mexico, Canada, and other countries located in the Americas are still 海外. So, for example, if you take a vacation from California to Mexico, it's still called 海外旅行 even though you cross a land border to get there. But, in context, I can recognize it's talking about "outside Japan." Actually, if we were talking about hot dogs and never mentioned where the speaker was located or contextualized the passage, we might assume 海外で was referring to "outside the United States."

As far as your next query, I made a mistake and it should have read つくりました。 I'm still having a hard time learning new kanji and I usually don't use the convert option on the keyboard. I'm still keeping with hiragana and katakana unless I've learned the kanji within the word, if you can understand what I mean.

I think that's fine. Also, you'll avoid what I call "hyperkanjification." Well, as of ten seconds ago, when I invented the word, that's what I call it

I used -san out of habit. Our instructor keeps telling us to use it and I don't really know why....　

That's weird. It makes you sound like Mister Miyagi, Daniel-san.

Thanks for your prompt response. Little by little I'm learning a bit more

Keep on truckin' and you'll see great improvements. My opinion is that progress is consistent until you get to be somewhere in your intermediate level where lack of kanji knowledge really slows down your progress (you need to read things written in Japanese about Japanese grammar or as examples of Japanese like newspaper articles, and every other kanji you have to look up). Then you learn a crapload of kanji and explode in improvements again.

Good luck!