Thanks so much Sashimister! This video is just awesome except I hate the background music :D (pretty annoying) Anyway, the Japanese speaker speaks so loud and clear which makes us easier to learn.

Just thought i'd make another post and see if there are still any errors left in what i'm doing.
I just want to iron out all the mistakes before i start progressing more. I have all the time in the world when i'm at work to learn so before i start spending hours and hours everyday i just want to make sure i'm on the right track.

こんいちはすしをたべますか
いいえチキンをたべます

Anything i'm missing there?
That's meant to be a question and then a response below.
I was told that words like たべます refer to all scenarios (i will eat, i eat, she eats etc) unlike English where you need to change it slightly.

if that is correct, (or not and i understand where i went wrong) then i'll feel very comfortable about moving forward and memorising the symbols.
I started on Hiragana yesturday and quickly memorised あ　い　う　え　お and printed out 300 blank tables. I'm going to fill the tables in multiple times a day and hopefully by the end of the week (approx) i can fill it in by memory alone. :D

こんいち　＞　きょう

There is actually a reading こんにち for the word　今日(today), but it is not used in saying "doing this and that today". It's used to say "today's Japan" or "the world today". For the everyday "today", it's read きょう.

きょうはすしをたべますか。
いいえ、チキンをたべます。

Correct.

My bad, it was meant to say 'hello' at the start but i typed in the wrong character!
こんにちは
This is the problem when typing via an English keyboard. I need to get a japanese one i think.

I'm trying not to use the romanji but just for this example if i type:
konnichiha as normal it comes out like: こんいちは
It seems to discount the second 'n' and just puts in the Hiragana for 'i' instead of 'ni'
However if i type kon(space bar)nichiha it comes out correctly: こんにちは


Clearly i need to get away from doing it this way as it's prone to errors.

I think i'll stop using the PC to type up what i'm learning. I'll just write them down myself the same way i'm doing with learning the symbols.

No just pay attention when you type through the IME. Usually the bigger problems are when you meet pair of letters like んに which turn out as んい or words where you have にや which turn out as にゃ. But I agree that writing helps you learn faster than typing.
Trust me after almost 3 years I still send in my written exercises with those mistakes LOL.

BTW, from what I hear, even native speakers use English IME to type in Japanese and not a Japanese keyboard.

I may have came down on IME a little prematurely. I have just noticed that it auto-corrects it if i press 'enter' afterwards. So that's ok.

Unfortunately i tend to have correction turned off because it tries to change it to Kanji which i don't understand yet...naturally i only want to write things i understand myself so i don't want the computer doing the corrections for me.

I'm going to have to stick with it anyway really but i'm certainly going to write down as much as i can as it is always the best way.


I will need some kind of official learning program soon though. I'm currently just teaching myself the basics with help fro mpeople on this forum and an audiobook for pronunciation.
However i'd really like a course type layout so i could see how i'm pressing properly.

Had a brief look at Rosetta Stone but it looked rubbish to be honest. The methods it claims to use would never work. Teaching you like you learnt your primary language doesn't work when you are only studying a few hours a day. Just can't see the methods working at all.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

Repeat after me, everyone: You type Japanese exactly the same way on both keyboards, and the letter keys are in exactly the same place.

(Of course, there is a very, very slight exception, but it has nothing to do with OP making typing mistakes.)

The secret my friend is to hit the "n" key three times in a row. konnnichi　

Also
works.

Whoa, it does. Cool. I never knew that.