Learning Tools Part 1 (学習ツールパートいち)

There are many tools that are helpful when learning Japanese.

Today I'll be covering the SRS Anki.  SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System and basically uses a system of digital flash cards to help you memorize things like the Kana and Kanji (Kana being the 2 types of spelling alphabets and Kanji being the symbols that mean whole words).

There are a good many SRS's out there but I personally use Anki for simplicity.

http://ichi2.net/anki/whyreview.html
(I always thought that it was funny how the Anki website was Ichi2 {I got my display name from the numbers 1 and 2 also...}

The icon is a pair of nice blue stars with a gray backdrop

It will only take a second to go through it's loading sequence

 

The main menu will look similar to this (You won't have anything downloaded yet)

 

Just click on the download button at the bottom left (Near the center) and a crazy list will appear

Honestly, this list is insane... there are like 30million things on it... (Not literally but still a freakin' butt load)

Anyways, if you are just starting out, I'd nab the Japanese Kana deck so that you can learn your Hiragana ひらがな and Katakana カタカナ.  After that, definitely grab yourself a copy of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji (Volumes 1,2 and 3) and then download the Heisig's Remembering the Kanji (RTK) 1-3 and get to work on the 3007 different Kanji that he wrote about...  it is WELL worth it but I will get into that book later on since you should probably focus on the Kana first (PS: I'm only about 30 Kanji in so don't feel like you are behind or anything...  I have only 1% of all of the Kanji :P)

So yea...  Now that you have downloaded the Japanese Kana pack (And maybe the Heisig's Remembering the Kanji just so you have it) you should see this

or if you skipped that and went straight into Kanji (Notice the difference in New Total :P)

But yea...  Just click start reviewing and go through the Hiragana and Katakana (Maybe have some kind of idea of what each is or at least have glanced at a Hiragana/Katakana alphabet before so that you know what to expect) and just chug along at somewhere around 20 per day (Unless you can do more or less...  Just find a number that works for you, don't stress yourself, keep it smooth and consistent)

but yea...  it's not that bad and if you want, you can explore the Deck Properties in the settings menu at the top (On the same bar as File, Edit, Tools, and Help) but that can get a bit complicated...

Anyways, I'll let you get to reviewing the Kana and hope you have fun learning the 430 that come with that deck (Though I can't work out where that comes from...  as far as I can tell, there's only 104 Hiragana and the same of Katakana which adds to be 208...)  I don't know...  either way, have fun and try not to get too stressed out with it