Hello everyone! I plan on visiting Japan for 3 weeks in 2025, and I want to begin learning Japanese so I can have basic conversations with locals. ie: order food, talk about my travel, where I work, ask them questions about life, ask for directions, etc.
I want to respect the culture and try to integrate myself in the environment. I figure one year studying minimum should do the job for my goals.
TLDR Alert:
I used Duolingo for 6 months to learn some French and literally studied every day for a minimum of 30 minutes. When I went to France on vacation, I actually had basic conversations and was able to communicate on a basic level which was amazing.
Now onto Japanese… I’m learning online that Duolingo is pretty bad for Japanese and I’m realizing this language is a much bigger challenge than expected. From my research, here are the questions I have for the experts:
1) Do I really need to learn how to write/read Kanji based on my goals? I’ve seen some say that if I don’t learn Kanji, vocabulary will become confusing as I won’t be able to differentiate similar sounding words.
2) Is Duolingo really that bad? Should I use LingoDeer? If no to either, do I need to do Anki Core 2k/6k/10k or Torii-Srs?
3) Thoughts on using Bunpro in conjunction with a vocab deck (Anki/torii)?
4) If Kanji is a must, is RTK a good resource/recommendation?
Is my thought process overkill based on my goals of just having basic conversations in Japanese for vacation? Or do you recommend I go through a ton of resources with no intention of taking any tests or being N1-N5 certified?
My head hurts just researching the best learning process/resources for my journey.
I sincerely appreciate your time and help here. I am a bit lost as you can tell…
Thank you,
New Japanese Learner