A Japanese Forum, my tutor, JFBP and Pimsleur

I sort of miss working on Heisig, so I went surfing for reviews, to bask in my success a bit. This time I decided to do a google search, and I came across an amazing thread in a forum dedicated to learning Japanese. Last month I had no idea language learning forums existed, now I'm totally addicted. I can ask anything I want, and in a matter of hours a bunch of experts will give me my answer. This will revolutionize the way I study.

I started lessons with my tutor. Very difficult. It seems that I don't know enough of anything to converse with her. I can only get about 3 hrs per week too. This will be a challenge. But she is very dedicated, and I won't give up. Just like with Thai, there are too many new words to make a dent in them, so I'm just taking down a few and memorizing what I can. There has been some improvement, but I'm still struggling. And unlike Thai, grammar is a major problem. It made me finish JFBP quickly, but I'm still lacking a lot.

Finishing JFBP was a hard effort. Except for pronunciation, nothing is easy about this language. And about the time I finished it, according to the guys on the forum, I came to find out that it's not a very good book. It's poorly organized, doesn't go into enough detail on the stuff it covers, and doesn't cover very much. In addition, the vocabulary is more business oriented than general learning, so some of is isn't frequently used. Very disheartening. I learned about another book, which is supposed to be the best single text for the English speaking self learner. It's called Japanese for Everyone (JFE).

I'm pleased to say I finished Pimsleur 2. I'm working on Pimsleur 3, which is the last one. It's getting easier, and I can usually finish a lesson in 2 tries now. Without Pimsleur, my tutor work would be a total waste of time.